Poems for the Eye Are Not Merely for the Sake of Eye
What is poetry? Pressed for an answer, Robert Frost made a classic reply: “Poetry is the kind of thing poets write.” In all likelihood, Frost was not trying merely to evade the question but to chide his questioner into thinking for himself. A trouble with definitions is that they may stop thought. The nature of poetry eludes simple definitions. Definitions will be of little help at first, if we are to know poetry and respond to it. We have to go to it willing to see and hear. To a particular poem, thousands of readers will have thousands of understandings. A poem can please us in many aspects. We usually concentrate our attention on its sound, wording, and figure of speech. In fact, a poem in stanzas can please us by its visual symmetry. This kind of poems is usually called the poems for the eye including spatial free verse and picture poems. Though many poets seem hardly to care about it, enough importance should be given to the visual element of poetry. At least some of our pleasure in silently reading a poem derives from the way it looks upon its page.
Poems for the eye can be divided into two types. One kind is the visual quality predominates the whole poem; the other is the visual remains subordinate to the aural and other elements of the poetry.
There are indeed some spatial poems that can bring us pleasure through their words arrangement. And far from being merely decorative, the visual devices of a poem can be meaningful, too. For examples:
The Dissertation on Emily Dickinson One Poem Poetry
IAn outsider looking at the poetry of the United States sees mainly Walt Whitman's beard, with the sombre mask of Edgar Allan Poe looming immediately beyond it. He will be as familiar with both of these figures as though they were Europeans, compatriots even. I believe I have seen a Dutch translation of Leaves of Grass, while decades ago all declaimers made the raven caw, often in a typical Dutch ...
ta tuck a
ta tuck a
ta tuck a
ta tuck a
ta tuck a
This is William Carlos Williams’ poem that describes an energetic bellhop runs downstairs. Beside the words sound like that man is running downstairs, the appearance of the whole poem is like the stairs. This is not only good onomatopoeia and an accurate description of a rhythm; the steplike appearance of the lines goes together with their meaning. This kind of appearance or words arrangement makes the common words “ta tuck a” vivid.
The same with the following Kenneth Patchen’s (1911-1972) poem:
The
ball
bumps
down
the
steps…
In the two poems above, the visual quality dominates the meaning of the whole poems. You can say that the shape of the words arrangement overweighs the meaning of the words. But it does bring us pleasure. It is more interesting and meaningful and stronger than just say, “ta tuck a…” and “The ball bumps down the steps…” Maybe this is one of the great charms of this kind of poems.
Picture poems are usually more complex than the spatial free verse. They usually use the shape of an object as their form. Picture poems are an old tradition. In most cases, the words meaning dominates the whole poem, but the shape of the poem also plays a very important role to the meaning of the poem.
good picture poems should be those that the visual appearance points out the meaning of the poem. The shape of the appearance can help readers understand the poem better and make the poem more beautiful and understandable.
Easter Wings by George Herbert (1593-1633), written in meter, is an early example of picture poem.
Easter Wings
Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store
Though foolishly he lost the same,
Decaying more and more
Till he became
The Essay on Rhyme Scheme Poem Wind Speaker
In "Ode to the West Wind," a poem by Percy Bys she Shelley, the speaker expresses his fascination with power and with those forces- both destroyers and preservers- that inspire the same powers within the speaker. The author uses imagery, metaphors, and rhyme scheme to add to the poems meaning. Through word choice, sentence structure, and alliteration Shelley shows that wind brings both good and ...
Most poor;
With thee
Oh, let me rise
As larks, harmoniously
And sing this day thy victories;
Then shall the fall further the flight in me.
My tender age in sorrow did begin;
And still with sicknesses and shame
Thou didst so punish sin,
That I became
Most thin.
With thee
Let me combine,
And feel this day thy victory;
For if I imp my wing on thine
Affliction shall advance the flight in me.
(In the next-to-last line, imp is a term from falconry meaning to repair the wing of an injured bird by grafting feathers into it.)
If the printing of the poem is rotated ninety degrees, the poem looks like two pairs of angels’ wings; this wings-like shape of the print embodies the poem’s theme of personal diminution and regrowth. If we see the poem as a picture, we will have to admit that Herbert’s word design does not go far. It renders with difficulty shapes that a sketcher’s pencil could set down in a flash, in more detail, more accurately. Herbert’s effort was not wasted. It makes the poem not only meets the eye but also the mind by the visual pattern. Here, visual pattern points out meaning. The following is also a very typical one which the visual pattern indicates the meaning of the poem.
40—love
middle aged
couple playing
ten nis
when the
game ends
and they
go home
the net
will still
be be
tween them
This poem talks about problems and the imbalance between the middle aged couple. The author uses “40” to stand for the 40 points in the match score
and “love” for the zero point. This is a very big gap. A vertical line is laid between the two parts of the poem. It looks like a net used for the tennis game and symbolizes the problems between the two people. Here the appearance of the poem play a very critical role, otherwise the poem will definitely lose its original meaning.
The Essay on Comparison Of Whitman And Dickenson Poems
America experienced profound changes during the mid 1800s. New technologies and ideas helped the nation grow, while the Civil War ripped the nation apart. During this tumultuous period, two great American writers captured their ideas in poetry. Their poems give us insight into the time period, as well as universal insight about life. Although polar opposites in personality, Emily Dickinson and ...
William Blake (1757-1827) deeply cared about the poems’ visual appearance. He was a graphic artist and engraver as well as a master artist in words. He apparently strove to make the meaning of poem and appearance of poem a unity, striking mind and eye at the same time. His good examples are the two poems: Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. Many poems of Walt Whitman (1819-1892) are also good picture poems such as his free verse O Captain! My Captain! (For the poem see next page)
This poem was a memorial poem for American president Abraham Lincoln soon after he was assassinated. Whitman used his free verse to express his respect to Abraham Lincoln and mournful feeling to the death of Lincoln. He compared American to a big ship and Lincoln as the captain. Words used in this poem are very powerful; strong feeling can be felt through the contented words. The poem is a very good organized one. Besides all of these, the shape of a ship emerge out of the printing form of the poem.
In this poem, the appearance is not as important as the contents and even subordinate to the contents. But the appearance of the poem helps the contents. It makes the poem colorful and attractive, at least to our eyes.
O Captain! My Captain! 1865
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red.
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
The Essay on Poem Analysis 2
Under Fire Everyone’s been through tough times. Whether someone close passes away , or a parent loses a job, or a separation of a family, misfortunes happen to all. After the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman, a poet and Abraham Lincoln fan, wrote “O Captain, My Captain,” an elegy, to express his grief of his beloved president’s passing. “Maryland, My Maryland,” however, expresses the ...
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread.
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
Ever since Gorge Herbert’s day, poets have continued to experiment with the looks of printed poetry. Notable efforts to entertain the eye are Lewis Carroll’s rimed mouse’s tail in Alice in Wonderland and the Calligrammes of Guillaume Apollinaire, who arranged words in the shapes of a necktie, of the Eiffel Tower, of spears of falling rain. Here is a bird-shaped poem written by John Hollander, which is more recent inspiration than Herbert’s.
Swan and Shadow 1969
Dusk
Above the
water hang the
loud
flies
Here
O so
gray
then
What A pale signal will appear
When Soon before its shadow fades
Where Here in this pool of opened eye
In us No Upon us As at the very edges
of where we take shape in the dark air
this object bares its image awakening
ripples of recognition that will
brush darkness up into light
even after this bird this hour both drift by atop the perfect sad instant now
already passing out of sight
toward yet-untroubled reflection
this image bears its object darkening
into memorial shades Scattered bits of
light No of water Or something across
water Breaking up No Being regathered
soon Yet by then a swan will have
gone Yes out of mind into what
vast
pale
hush
of a
place
past
sudden dark as
if a swan
sang
The poem describes a very beautiful scene that a swan is swimming leisurely on the surface of water in the dusk. The appearance of the poem is like a swan swimming on the water, and its body shape is reflected by the mirrorlike water. The appearance of the poem is very agreeable with the title of the poem. It is very interesting and pleasant to read poem like this. It seems like that you are evaluating a picture with a poem in it.
The Essay on Leda and the Swan Poetic Analysis
William Butler Yeats? poem ?Leda and the Swan? is a hauntingly beautiful recreation of the Greek myth in which Zeus takes the form of a swan in order to seduce Leda, who, as a result of this brutality becomes the mother of Helen of Troy?the woman who is credited with starting the Trojan War. Yeats? choice of employing the sonnet format (sometimes associated with romantic thoughts) in order to ...
From all examples above, we can see that good picture poems don’t go too far on the shape of the printing character. Most of them consider enough between the contents and the shape. They used their ingenuities to make the shape agree with the contents and make the poem more beautiful and more meaningful. This is one aspect that we can enjoy the poetry. Of course we should not lay too much emphasis on the appearance of a poem, but at least we should know good picture poems are not merely for the sake of eye. People who are evaluating poems should pay enough attention to the appearance of the poem, because it is an important factor of the poetry too.
Works Cited
Robert Di Yanni, Literature Reading Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and the Essay.
Comcom, Inc. 1994.
Robert, Wallace. Writing Poems. Little, Brown and Company Boston, 1987.
X. J. Kennedy. Literature An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.
Little, Brown and Company Boston, 1987.
