Title From visual to vision: visuals as symbolism in poetry

Znaki czy nie znaki? III Józefina Piątkowska, Giennadij Zeldowicz eds. Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2019

The notion of imagery is central to literary criticism as it underpins some of the most palpable experiences we have when reading fictional literary texts, prose and verse alike. Yet, its practical use is fraught with impressionism as the verbal image appears based on a relativist ontology that varies with readerly differences, both intrinsic and strategic (e.g. one may have a more visual or a more auditory memory, or give emphasis to more abstract, propositional aspects of a text). As a consequence of this, the verbal image also appear substantially independent from linguistic forms, which makes it problematic for stylistic analysis. This paper addresses and undermines the latter assumption and, in doing so, sets out the basis for a stylistic model of verbal imagery. My approach is twofold: on the one hand, I identify a 'nuclear' image on the basis of semantic and syntactic criteria-this I call the image-frame as opposed to more extensive realizations (i.e. image-complexes) or dynamic ones (i.e. image-scenes); on the other, I attempt to map semantico-grammatical variables onto perceptual effects, focusing on shooting distance and image resolution. In doing so, I draw inspiration from the complementary attempt of Kress and Van Leuween, who in Reading Images: the Grammar of Visual Design (2006 [1996]) propose an array of correspondences between visual strategies and grammatical structures. All the verbal images presented and discussed in this article come from Wilfred Owen, Marianne Moore and Philip Larkin: three poets who have effectively exploited the potential of realist mimesis (i.e. a faithful reproduction of external reality) within a twentieth century aesthetics.

2012

Poetry first existed as a strictly oral practice, and long before writing was invented, let alone printing. It relied on the sound characteristics of each language. Now we are used to print our poems on the whitest possible paper with the blackest possible ink, forgotting that in so doing we are using colours. In the middle of the twentieth century there appeared throughout the world a number of poets willing to make use of the other possibilities of the visual signs: form and colour, in addition to the usual sound characteristics. They were stimulated in doing that by the progresses made in the printing techniques. Of course form was readily usable even in black print, and there were many forerunners, even in the Greek antiquity. Colour began to be used in the Middle Ages, but to very little import. The possibilities of modern printing totally changed the situation, and the Visual Poets,- as they came to be named,- took full mesasure and advantage of these new means. In the present...

Utsanga.it, 2024

The wide spread emergence of machine learning has brought the question of an ‘AI poetics’ into focus as these systems demonstrate the centrality of human perception and interpretation to the creation of meaning. Rather than rendering human creativity obsolete, AI emphasizes the importance of reflective, critical judgment supported by connoisseurship. These developments are not unprecedented: the recognition of language in visual poetry and the collage techniques invented by the historical avant-garde anticipate the nonsemic works of contemporary AI by attenuating the semiotics of intentional encoding. This capacity to impose coherence on disparate elements arises from distinctions between reading and seeing that are not inherent to written language, but emerge from the entanglement of perception and enculturation. They reveal how semantic cues and past experience guides the recognition and completion of fragmentary or ambiguous forms to play a central role in poeisis.

In this article, I present a framework for the analysis of postlinguistic visual poetry through a discussion of several works by Canadian poets derek beaulieu and Donato Mancini. This poetry eschews words to manipulate parts or hints of letters, exploring the minutiae of typewritten form for meaning construction. Drawing on recent work in cognitive science, I show how visual poems disrupt common understandings of language through its materiality, how the creators engage in improvisations around these under- standings to develop the unexpected, and how the poetic artifacts prompt dynamic inferences and improvised understandings in readers. Meaningful understandings of the poems emerge especially from the development of relational understandings between fragments of letters through the perception of fictive motion and fictive change. I show how cognitive improvisation facilitates these perceptions and meaning construction in the contrastive styles of beaulieu’s and Mancini’s poems. I argue that improvisational cognitive processes on the part of both the writers and readers play a crucial role in how postlinguistic forms come to be meaningful within the context of bibliographic and material expectations.

2012

Russell West-Pavlov states in the opening lines of Space in Theory that attention to space in literature is a recent phenomenon generated by new communication technologies: 'It is perhaps only in the age of the word processor or PC that, as writers, we have begun to pay attention to the spaces between the words'. 3 However, not only does West-Pavlov eliminate the reader from the equation, but he also disregards the fact that questions about the function of empty spaces in literary texts were already asked long before he raises the issue, most famously so in 1897, when the French Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé published his influential poem Un Coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard. The poem appeared in the French journal Cosmopolis, and was preceded by a preface in which Mallarmé explicitly directs the reader towards an awareness not only of the spaces between words, but of the entire space of the printed page. 'Les "blancs", en effet, assume l'importance, frappent d'abord', Mallarmé states ['the "blanks" take on importance, and are what is the most immediately striking']. In his manifesto-like preface, then, Mallarmé puts forth a counter-intuitive claim, challenging the notion that the black type reigns supreme.

2010

Starting from a brief comparison in Lessing's Laocoon between poetry and visual arts, the paper succinctly examines their reciprocal relationship, from the point of view of representation. A characteristic of modern poetry being that of crisis , differently defined by different authors, a modality of alleviating it is proposed, under the form of interactivity between the poem and the reader.

E): Given that visuality is as much a part of all narration as the fact that we view images by reading them as though they were texts, this essay proposes to speak about an uncanny encounter between the two. In order to illustrate this mutual implication, as well as to bring in the theme of the spectral (that Freud suggests all experiences of the uncanny entail), it offers a cross-mapping between three different media at three different historical moments: a novella by the late Victorian author Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a series of photographs by the late modern photographer Francesca Woodman, and a film by the postmodern film maker Amenábar. Abstract (F): Cet article part de deux observations : à savoir que la visualité fait partie du champ plus large du récit, et que nous regardons les images en les lisant comme si elles étaient des textes. À partir de là, on examine la rencontre du textuel et du visuel comme une forme de l'inquiétante étrangeté. Afin d'illustrer leur implication réciproque et d'introduire la notion de spectre (dont Freud pose qu'il est sous-entendu par toutes les expériences de l'inquiétante étrangeté), l'article procède à l'analyse comparative de trois médias à trois moments historiques différents : un récit par une auteure des dernières années de l'ère victorienne, Charlotte Perkins Gilman ; une suite de photographes par la photographe du modernisme tardif Francesca Woodman ; et un film par le réalisateur postmoderne Pedro Amenábar.

English Text Construction 3.2 / Textual Choices in Discourse, 2010

Visual poems employ the materiality of language (such as letter- and word-forms and page layouts), to help develop their meanings, thereby synthesizing visual and verbal cues. To discuss this multimodal genre, I posit a framework based on cognitive research of fictive motion, frames, simulation, and blending. I apply this framework to two works by Canadian poet bpNichol to illustrate some of the central cognitive processes and connections required to synthesize and understand them, something previous theoretical positions have struggled with. My analysis illustrates that these apparently simplistic poems are far more complex than we realize. The posited framework can easily extend beyond visual poetry to other multimodal genres, such as comics and advertising, and can also contribute to discussions of genre, style, and other issues of form in literature.