The Page Is The Final
Verdict, And Nothing Else
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Illustrating Poetry With Images
(Is It Marriage Or War?)
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How often have you clicked upon an internet page and been
bombarded with words and images-- images winning.
Pretty often,
would be my guess.
How frequently is 'text' sacrificed
to style, or flash content that's loading, loading, loading?
How far have we traveled down the road in pursuit of clever
presentation that's either lost sight of content - or content is
playing a muted second-fiddle to the whirlygigs of
dizzying graphics or some darling new doo-dad?
When did words become filler?
I have my own forumla when striking a poem to the page,
and it's very simple: choose a format that's attractive, without
being distracting-- then repeat it. While still remaining pleasant,
but in the background- it allows the words themselves
to become what a reader sees as changing, thereby
allowing the text to become what interests most
in browsing page to page.
Perhaps the most wrong-headed approach, is to try
to interpret a poem via the images. To my mind,
that conflicts with what a poet tries to do in writing the
poem in the first place: to create a space for the reader
to form their own impression of the words. To slap up
an illustration that purports to be what the poem is
about- seems like a 'Cliff Notes' approach to
presenting poetry. Let the reader
have free reign...
that's what it's about.
One of the things that makes poetry different from
prose, is it's not purely expository writing; even the
narrative poem has spaces for leaps in interpretation,
and the images formed from reading it should rightly
come from within the mind of the person reading,
not the formatting for the page.
In poetry- as in all things in life- it's a sense of
perspective and balance that guides us. What is more
important: the look-- or the meaning? If a poem
is presented well that point should be moot. One thing
must compliment the other, never overshadow it.
It makes the experience so much closer to holding a
book in the hand: the thought, not the picture, comes
first. If not- it's a graphics rush- not one
of the mind and heart.
See that old man up there?
He's just written a poem about Death.
Someone's illustrated it like something
from Starship Troopers...
He is understandably
confounded.
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