1522 VIRELAI starkly with the outdated fi n de siècle theme and form by Guillaume de Machaut, Jean Froissart, Christine of his hero’s poem. But William Empson’s “Villanelle” de Pisan, and Eustache Deschamps) produced much (“It is the pain, it is the pain endures”) of  was uncertainty among recent prosodists about how both highly mod.; and when W. H. Auden adopted the forms should be defi ned, so that one must approach form, his villanelles, like Empson’s, were *pentam- any mod. defi nition with great caution. Most recent eter: almost all earlier Eng. villanelles are *tetrameter commentators follow Th éodore de Banville (Petit or *trimeter. Dylan Th omas’s fi rst villanelle was a  traité de poésie française, ), who, relying on the *parody of Empson titled “Request to Leda,” but it was authority of the th-c. prosodist le Père Mourgues Th omas’s  “Do not go gentle into that good night” (Traité de la poésie française, ), tried to settle that ensured the villanelle’s survival and status in Eng. matters by defi ning the lai as a poem in which each poetry. Th roughout the s, s, and s, major stanza is a combination of three-line groups, two lon- poets occasionally wrote villanelles. ger lines followed by a shorter one, with the longer Elizabeth Bishop’s  villanelle “One Art,” along lines sharing one rhyme sound and the shorter lines with the emergence of *New Formalism, introduced another (aabaabaab ccdccdccd , etc.). Th en, calling on what might be called the postmodern villanelle. In a false etymology of virelai —from virer (to turn) and the last quarter of the th c., poet after poet adopted lai —he defi ned the virelai as a lai in which the rhyme the villanelle, often making use of a new license to use sounds are “turned” from stanza to stanza; i.e., the *near rhyme and near refrain and overtly obeying or rhyme of the shorter lines becomes the rhyme of the challenging to the supposedly strict, traditional rules longer lines in the following stanza (aabaabaab, bbcb- of the form. Poets also began to invent similar forms, bcbbc , etc.). Calling the virelai thus defi ned the virelai most unique but some not: the prose villanelle, the ter- ancien, Banville goes on to describe the virelai nouveau , zanelle (a hybrid with terza rima), and, most notably, which bears no relation to the virelai ancien and is, a ludicrously repetitive form invented by Billy Collins. if anything, more like the *villanelle. Th e virelai nou- Th e paradelle , which Collins claimed was a langue d’oc veau opens with a refrain, whose two lines then recur form of the th c., is a “parody villanelle” whose origin separately and alternately as the refrains of the stanzas story is only slightly falser than the one commonly told following, reappearing together again only at the end of the “real” villanelle. of the fi nal stanza, but with their order reversed. Th e J. Passerat, Recueil des oeuvres poétiques (); stanzas of the virelai nouveau may be of any length and D. Gaullyer, Abregé de la grammaire françoise (); employ any rhyme scheme, but the poem is limited to P. Richelet, Dictionnaire des rimes, ed. P. C. Berthelin two rhyme sounds only. Here again, Banville merely (); T. de Banville, Petit traité de poésie fran- follows le Père Mourgues, whose “Le Rimeur rebuté” çaise (); E. Gosse, “A Plea for Certain Exotic is used as an illustration. John Payne’s “Spring Sadness” Forms of Verse,” Cornhill Magazine  (); (virelai ancien) and Austin Dobson’s “July” (virelai J. Boulmier, Villanelles (); C. Scott, French Verse- nouveau) are the only evidence that these two forms Art (); D. G. Cardamone, Th e Canzone Villanesa have excited any interest. alla Napolitana and Related Forms, – (); E. Gosse, “A Plea for Certain Exotic Forms of R. F. McFarland, Th e Villanelle (); J. Kane, “Th e Verse,” Cornhill Magazine  (); G. White, Bal- Myth of the Fixed-Form Villanelle,” MLQ  (); lades and Rondeaus (); Kastner; H. L. Cohen, Lyric Th e Paradelle , ed. T. W. Welford (); A. L. French, Forms from France (); Le Gentil; P. Le Gentil, Le “Edmund Gosse and the Stubborn Villanelle Blunder,” Virelai et le villancico (); M. Françon, “On the Na- VP  (). ture of the Virelai,” Symposium  (); G. Reaney, J. Kane; A. L. French “Th e Development of the Rondeau, Virelai, and Bal- lade,” Festschrift Karl Gustav Fellerer (); F. Genn- VIRELAI (also called chanson baladée and vireli ). rich, Das altfranzösische Rondeau und V. im . und . Originally a variant of the common dance song with Jahrhundert (); F. Gennrich and G. Reaney, “Vi- refrain, of which the * rondeau is the most prominent relai,” MGG .–; N. Wilkins, “Virelai,” New type, this med. Fr. lyric form developed in the th c. Grove; Morier; R. Mullally, “Vireli, Virelai,” Neuphi- and at fi rst may have been performed by one or more lologische Mitteilungen  (); J.-F. Kosta-Th éfaine, leading voices and a *chorus. It begins with a *refrain, “Les Virelais de Christine de Pizan,” Moyen Français  followed by a stanza of four lines of which the fi rst two (). have a musical line (repeated) diff erent from that of the U. T. Holmes; C. Scott refrain. Th e last two lines of the stanza return to the music of the refrain. Th e opening refrain, words and music, is then sung again. Th e virelai usually continues VISUAL ARTS AND POETRY. See carmina with two more stanzas presented in this same way. A figurata; concrete poetry; ekphrasis; painting virelai with only one stanza would be a bergerette . In and poetry; ut pictura poesis; visual poetry. Italy, the th-c. *lauda and, in Spain, the *cantiga , fol- low the same form. Th e syllables vireli and virelai were VISUAL POETRY probably nonsense refrains that later came to designate the type. I. Forms Th e large number of variations and optional ele- II. Functions ments both in the * lai and in the virelai (as practiced III. Development VISUAL POETRY 1523

I V . Free Verse written in stanzas of similar shape. Th e basic shape of V . Mixed and Electronic Media the *sapphic stanza, e.g., is recognizable even in ex- Visual poetry is poetry composed for the eye as well treme variations. as, or more than, for the ear. All written and printed poetry is visual poetry in a broad sense, in that, when I I . Functions . Th e viability of visual poetry as a lit- we read the poem, the visual form aff ects how we read erary mode depends directly on the functions that it and so contributes to our experience of its sound, can be served by visual form. Th ese fall into two movement, and meaning. Th e overwhelming majority classes: (a) those that reinforce the sense of the poem’s of lyric poems are meant to fi t on a codex page, hence, unity and autonomy and (b) those that point up its to meet the reader’s eye as a simultaneously apprehen- *intertextuality. In group (a), we can enumerate six sible whole. As Mooij points out, “written poetry al- integrative functions: () to lend prominence to pho- lows for devices of foregrounding not available to oral nological, syntactic, or rhetorical structures in the text poetry.” Among these devices are lineation, line length, (this would include scoring for performance and the line grouping, indentation, intra- and interlinear white use of white space to express emotion, invite contem- space, punctuation, capitalization, and size and style plation, or signal closure); () to indicate juxtaposi- of type. In traditional verse, however, the written text tions of images and ideas; () to signal shifts in topic, serves mainly a notational role, and its visual aspects tone, or perspective; () to render iconically the subject are subordinate to the oral form they represent. In vi- of the poem or an object referred to in it (incl. the use sual poetry in the strict sense, the visual form of the of white space as an icon of space, whiteness, distance, text becomes an object for apprehension in its own void, or duration); () to present the reader with an right. In some visual poetry, text is combined with abstract shape of energy; and () to help foreground nontextual graphic elements. the text as an aesthetic object. In group (b), we can identify six dispersive functions: () to signal a general or particular relation to poetic trad.; () to allude to I . Forms. In general, the visual form of a poem may various other genres of printed texts; () to engage be fi gurative or nonfi gurative; if fi gurative, it may be and sustain reader attention by creating interest and mimetic or abstract. In cl. and Ren. pattern poetry, texture; () to cross-cut other textual structures, pro- we fi nd fi gurative visual form that is mimetic, the ducing counterpoint between two or more structures printed text taking the shape of objects (see techno- occupying the same words; () to heighten the reader’s paegnion); the best-known examples are two poems awareness of the reading process; and () to draw at- by George Herbert, “Th e Altar” and “Easter Wings.” tention to particular features of the text and, more Th ere are also th-c. examples of mimetic visual generally, to defamiliarize aspects of lang., writing, and form, among them the *calligrammes of Guillaume *textuality. Th e visual form of a given poem may real- Apollinaire and some *concrete poetry. Poems in the ize several diff erent functions, even ones from the two shape of geometric fi gures such as circles and lozenges, opposed classes, at once. another kind of pattern poetry, realize the possibility of fi gurative visual form that is abstract: in the Ren.,  III. Development . Historically, “all poetry is originally such forms are enumerated by George Puttenham. Less oral, and the earliest inscriptions of it were clearly ways rigidly geometric forms are not uncommon in conven- of preserving material after the tradition of recitation tional poetry (Ranta). had changed or been lost” (Hollander). Subsequently, Th e visual form of most poems is nonfi gurative: “the development has been from . . . visual organiza- such poems are isometrical or heterometrical, hence, tion of phonological data . . . to a visual organization consist of regular or irregular blocks of long and/or that carries meaning without reference to the phono- short lines. Open arrangements of lines in the page logical” (Cummings and Simmons). “[O]nce the in- space are usually also nonfi gurative. Such nonfi gurative scribed text was fi rmly established as a standard . . . visual form may contribute signifi cantly to the eff ect of end-product of literary art and typical object of literary the poem. In the case of short poems, the shape of the appreciation, it was only natural that the literary art- whole poem is apprehended immediately as open or ist would exploit the rich aesthetic possibilities off ered dense, balanced or imbalanced, even or uneven, simple by the inscribed medium” (Shusterman). From ca.  or intricate. In stanzaic poems, the regular partitioning bce , visual eff ects have been exploited in various modes of the text may convey a sense of order and control of visual poetry and in mixed-media works. and generate an expectation of regular closure. Further, Perhaps the best known of the modes of visual po- the individual stanzas themselves are apprehensible vi- etry is what is anachronistically called pattern poetry, sual units. Stanzas in symmetrical shapes may suggest a mode used by Western poets from the th c. bce to stability or stillness, while asymmetrical shapes may the present. Less familiar than poems in fi gurative or suggest instability or movement in a direction. Stanzas geometric shapes are versus intexti , also called carmina of complex shape may convey a sense of elaborate cancellata , a subgenre of pattern poetry. Such poems ar tifi ce. Stanzas where lines of diff erent lengths, or with were composed on a grid,  squares by , each square diff erent rhymes, are indented by diff erent amounts, containing a letter, with type size and, later, color and as in John Donne’s Songs and Sonnets, may appear esp. outlining used to distinguish visual images from the highly ordered . For the reader steeped in poetry, the vi- background of the rest of the text. First composed in sual forms of stanzas may also recall antecedent poems the th c., they reached their fullest devel. in the work 1524 VISUAL POETRY of Hrabanus Maurus (th c.). Another ancient visual So light a rain genre, the *acrostic, subverts the convention of read- fi ne shreds ing from left to right and from top to bottom. Inscrip- pending above the rigid leaves. tions, originally cut in stone with no regard for the Less commonly, the visual form takes on a privileged, appearance of the text, acquired beautiful lettering in pattern-making role. Where lines do not coincide with Roman monumental art, which was reproduced and units of the text’s linguistic structure, they may, esp. in imitated in the Ren. In the th and th cs., esp. in the case of short lines, set up a counterpoint to it. Free- northern Italy, they fl ourished briefl y as a literary genre verse poets, notably W. C. Williams, sometimes arrange in printed books (Sparrow). Th e form, used mainly their lines in “sight-stanzas,” perceptible as stanzas only for religious and political eulogy, was really lineated by virtue of having equal numbers of lines and creating prose—prose composed and printed in centered lines iterated visual patterns. Here, the visual order of the of uneven lengths, with the line divisions supporting stanzas may compensate aesthetically for considerable the sense. A mixed-media genre, the *emblem, fl our- density or sprawl in syntax or argument. In other free- ished during the Ren. Typically, it comprised a short verse poems, white space serves to defamiliarize split or motto, a picture, and an explanatory, moralizing poem. isolated textual elements, as in these lines from the Ca- Th e th c. saw a diverse abundance of highly vi- nadian poet bpNichol’s Th e Martyrology : sual works. Th ese were heralded, just before the turn of the century by Stéphane Mallarmé’s late work Un hand coup de dés, a visual composition with text in various type sizes arranged in the space of two-page spreads. It the h & was followed, early in the century, by Apollinaire’s cal- what else ligrammes, in which lettering (often handwriting) of diff erent sizes typically sketches the shape of an object, V . Mixed and Electronic Media . Besides exploiting e.g., a cigar with smoke. Th e typographical experi- the visual elements of written lang. for various eff ects, ments of *futurism and *Dada, the typewriter compo- experimental poets occasionally incorporate pictorial sitions of the Am. poet e. e. cummings, and concrete elements in their texts. Some poets compose, or col- poetry all use visual form in ways that counteract the laborate with visual artists in composing, works that transparency of the written medium. combine visual art and text. Asian poetry has a long trad. of such work. William Blake’s illuminated books I V . Free Verse . Visual form plays a more important are a major Western example. Th e artist’s book, a mode role in the prosody of *free verse than in that of metri- developed by visual artists, has been used by some con- cal verse. One distinguishing feature of much modern- temp. experimental poets to explore the visual prop- ist free verse—the eschewal of line-initial capitals—is a erties of texts. Along the continuum from purely lit- purely visual feature. On the one hand, besides serving erary art to purely visual, there are many possibilities to label the verse as nonmetrical, the use of lower-case for visual poetry with a dual aesthetic appeal—even letters at the beginnings of lines (unless they are also for poetry without words. Other lines of poetic ex- beginnings of sentences) may have the eff ect of reduc- perimentation also off er visual possibilities; thus, scores ing the visual prominence of the line as a unit. On the for *sound poetry have been treated as a type of visual other hand, where lineation and line grouping are not poetry . determined by meter and rhyme, lines and line groups In recent decades, the wide availability of the com- may be constitutively visual units. Even where lines puter has given poets a means of text production and are phonological, syntactical, and/or semantic units presentation that opens new possibilities for visual po- as well, their visual aspect may be important to their etry. For the visually oriented poet, its value lies not eff ect. in its allowing automated generation of text (see elec- In most cases, visual form in free verse assumes a tronic poetry ), but in its facilitating creation of spa- subservient, pattern-marking role. E.g., lineation, in tial form, integration of graphic elements with text, use its visual aspect, may serve to juxtapose images, as of color, and, esp., control of the pace of appearance in Ezra Pound’s classic imagist poem “In a Station of and disappearance of segments of text (see typogra- the Metro.” Lineation, layout, and other visual fea- phy). Th is control allows poets to incorporate temporal tures may serve to score the text for oral performance. rhythms into visual form. Charles Olson, in his  essay *“Projective Verse,” See lettrisme . claimed that there should be a direct relationship be- G. Puttenham, Th e Arte of English Poesie (), rpt. tween the amount of white space and the length of in Smith; J. Sparrow, Visible Words (); R. Massin, pause. Regardless of whether it signals pause, intra- or La Lettre et l’image , d ed. (); Speaking Pictures , ed. interlinear white space can work mimetically, expres- M. Klonsky ()—anthol.; J.J.A. Mooij, “On the sively, and rhetorically. Many free-verse poets exploit ‘Foregrounding’ of Graphic Elements in Poetry,” these possibilities through arrangement of text in the Comparative Poetics, ed. D. W. Fokkema et al. (); page space, as does Denise Levertov in this passage J. Ranta, “Geometry, Vision, and Poetic Form,” CE from “Th e Five-Day Rain”:  (); Visual Literature Criticism, ed. R. Kostela- netz (); R. Kostelanetz, Th e Old Poetries and the Sequence broken, tension New (); Morier, under “Blanchissement,” “Vide”; of sunlight broken. R. Shusterman, “Aesthetic Blindness to Textual Visu- VOICE 1525 ality,” JAAC  (); M. Cummings and R. Sim- fi gures in Gr. lit. During that time, oral strategies— mons, “Graphology,” Th e Language of Literature (); singing, *recitation, memorization—were not simply H. M. Sayre, Th e Visual Text of W. C. Williams (); supplanted by a literate culture’s documentary prac- S. Cushman, W. C. Williams and the Meanings of tices; instead, the two modes entered into “competi- Measure (), chap. ; C. Taylor, A Poetics of Seeing tion and collision.” Th e jostling of literacy by the traces (); Hollander; W. Bohn, Th e Aesthetics of Visual of orality never ended: “the Muse never became the Poetry , – (); R. Cureton, “Visual Form in discarded mistress of Greece. She learned to write and e. e. cummings’ No Th anks ,” Word & Image  (); read while she continued to sing.” Metaphors of orality J. Adler and U. Ernst, Text als Figur (); Th e Line in continue to inhabit, unsettle, and complicate the tex- Postmodern Poetry , ed. R. Frank and H. Sayre (); tual realm to the present day. Th e earlier, crucial func- “Material Poetry of the Renaissance / Th e Renaissance tions of poetry, however, have been replaced by more of Material Poetry,” ed. R. Greene, Harvard Library Bul- peripheral, optional practices. Rather than a warehouse letin NS . (); Experimental—Visual—Concrete , for a culture’s knowledge, poetry now serves, e.g., as ed. K. D Jackson et al. (); Visuelle Poesie , ed. H. L. an entertaining pastime, a form of individualized or Arnold and H. Korte (); J. Drucker, Figuring the collective aesthetic expression, or a tool in commercial Word (); New Media Poetics , ed. A. Morris and T. marketing. Swiss (). Th e profound if confl icted affi liation between oral- E. Berry ity and literacy is the subject of numerous investiga- tions of textual communication that take voice as the VISUAL RHYME. See eye rhyme. central operative term. In his work on orality and literacy, Ong posits writing as an extension of speak- VOICE . To defi ne voice in written poetry immediately ing and, thus, uses the term voice to refer to both. As poses a problem, for there is no literal voice in the temporal rather than spatial practices, both writing poem: voice is an oral *metaphor employed in the de- and speech permit access to interiority—they exterior- scription and analysis of the written word. It is not just ize thoughts and feelings in human expression—and, any metaphor, however, but one that foregrounds fun- therefore, enable communication. As Ong has it, spa- damental distinctions underpinning Western culture: tial practices objectify, but temporal practices enable orality and literacy, speaking and writing. Regardless intersubjective exchange. While writing has spatial, ob- of how much one insists that writing is not speaking jective qualities (see book, poetic; visual poetry), it and that voice is not literally present in the poem, lit- is fi rst and foremost temporal and communicative. For erary critics have persistently relied on metaphors of Ong, as for many other theorists, poetry’s operations voice to analyze writing; it is diffi cult to imagine how are the ideal example of literary communication. In the one would go about discussing poetry in particular if *lyric poem, the author masks his or her expression by we were forbidden to use the terms voice , speaker , and speaking through an objectifi ed fi gure of voice. In this other vocal terms like * monologue or * song, to give a few way, the “poem . . . advertises the distance and remote- examples. Teachers, students, and scholars regularly say ness which, paradoxically, are part of every human at- that poetry “speaks” and readers “listen.” Th e hist. of lit. tempt to communicate, and it does this in so far as crit. is saturated with more or less self-conscious uses it is under one aspect ‘objective,’ . . . which is to say, of oral and aural terms for poetry. Th ough there are non-vocal.” But under another aspect, it is not objec- theories of narrative “voice”—see the work of Bakhtin tive, since it is trying to communicate; in this sense, the and Genette, e.g.—poetry is regularly imagined to be poem has a voice. Th at voice is not simply individual the privileged site of vocal *presence; those who seek but compound, however, since the speaker anticipates to demystify that presence work to dislodge or trouble the listener and vice versa. Th ey meet in the poem. oral metaphors that cleave far closer to poetry than to A number of landmark romantic and postromantic fi ction, nonfi ction, or perhaps even drama. studies place voice, and particularly what has come to Studies of orality off er one approach to explaining be known as lyric voice —a fi gure that closely associates why voice is so closely affi liated with poetry. Th ese the poem’s “speaker” with the author’s perspective—at studies tend to agree that poetry is a crucial vehicle their centers, without commenting explicitly on their for the transmission of information in oral cultures. use of oral and aural metaphors to defi ne written prac- Th e repetitive sound structures that defi ne poetry— tices. William Wordsworth’s Preface to the d ed. of *rhythm, *rhyme, *refrain, *alliteration, *assonance, Lyrical Ballads () defi ned “the poet” as “a man *parallelism, *anaphora—are a central technology of speaking to men” in “a selection of the language re- cultural memory and historical transmission. In the ally spoken by men.” Here the spoken word is clearly absence of written documentation, sound patterns the inspiration for Wordsworth’s thoughts about writ- form a lang. system that enables recollection and reci- ing poetry; he seems to mean that the *poet should tation. Th ough oral cultures are certainly not extinct try to write after the manner of everyday conversa- and though oral practices coexist alongside written tion. Distinguishing between poetry and eloquence in practices in literate cultures, there is an abundance of “What Is Poetry?” (), John Stuart Mill famously as- work on the historical transition from orality to literacy serted that “eloquence is heard; poetry is overheard. in Western culture. Havelock, e.g., off ers a theory of Eloquence supposes an audience. Th e peculiarity of po- the “literate revolution” in Greece in the th to th cs. etry appears to us to lie in the poet’s utter unconscious- bce that accounts for the saturation of vocal and aural ness of a listener.” Here again, Mill uses oral terms to