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EQUENTIAL BOUNDAR OETRY BEYOND SEQUE NDARIES COMICS POE EQUENTIAL BOUNDAR OETRY BEYOND SEQUE NDARIES COMICS POE Y OND SEQUENTIALBOU POETRY BEYOND SEQ ARIES COMICS POETR EQUENTIAL BOUNDAR OETRY BEYOND SEQUE NDARIES COMICS POE EQUENTIAL BOUNDAR OETRY BEYOND SEQUE NDARIES COMICS POE PLEASE TYPE THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES Thesis/Dissertation Sheet

Surname or Family name: Bennett

First name: Tamryn Other name/s: Maree

Abbreviation for degree as given in the University calendar: PhD

School: English, Media and Performing Arts Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences

Title: Comics Poetry: Beyond Sequential Boundaries

Abstract 350 words maximum: (PLEASE TYPE)

Since Will Eisner defined comics as ‘sequential art’, critics have continued to employ narrative definitions and linear approaches to the form. As a result, many non-sequential and experimental forms of comics, especially in the field of ‘comics poetry’, have been ignored. Consequently, a new model for comics analysis is needed to encompass and address narrative, non-narrative, multi-linear, abstract and experimental developments within the form.

In response to narrative assumptions and the lack of non-linear modes of analysis, my practice-led research proposes ‘segmentivity’ as an alternative model for comics criticism. This concept of ‘segmentivity’ stems from Rachel Blau DuPlessis’ attempt to distinguish the components of poetry from ‘narrativity’ and ‘performativity’. By assessing how poetic segments are employed in a myriad of narrative and non-narrative comics case studies, this model of segmentivity enables comics analysis to advance beyond sequential lexicons and limitations, ensuring the relevance of comics theory to contemporary practice.

The critical survey of comics within this study includes examples of ‘comics poetry’ by Dino Buzzati, Kenneth Koch, Alan Moore, Warren Craghead as well as primary interviews with comics poetry practitioners Matt Madden, Bianca Stone, Michael Farrell and Alexander Rothman. The works of these creators evidence the need for a non- sequential model of comics analysis that challenges the dominant understanding of comics as a purely narrative form.

Both my critical and creative works focus on the relationship between comics and poetry. Considering comics scholarship is characterised by the closeness of creators and critics, I felt it essential that my creative work engage with the practice of making comics. Accordingly, my creative work develops the comics poetry series, ANEKI, which innovates approaches to comics outside of traditional media and linear panel grid structures. An account of this collaborative process is also framed within the discussion of comics poetry examples.

Ultimately, this study broadens approaches to comics creation and criticism, advancing potential modes of analysis and the multimodal possibilities of the form.

Declaration relating to disposition of project thesis/dissertation

I hereby grant to the University of New South Wales or its agents the right to archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or in part in the University libraries in all forms of media, now or here after known, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I retain all property rights, such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation.

I also authorise University Microfilms to use the 350 word abstract of my thesis in Dissertation Abstracts International (this is applicable to doctoral theses only).

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Comics Poetry Beyond Sequential Boundaries by Tamryn Bennett

Part I - Dissertation

Dissertation submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy, Creative Writing, University of New South Wales, March 2012. Since Will Eisner defined comics as ‘sequential art’, critics have continued to employ narrative definitions and linear approaches to the form. As a result, Abstract many non-sequential and experimental forms of comics, especially in the field of ‘comics poetry’, have been ignored. Consequently, a new model for comics analysis is needed to encompass and address narrative, non-narrative, multi-linear, abstract and experimental developments within the form. In response to narrative assumptions and the lack of non-linear modes of analysis, my practice-led research proposes ‘segmentivity’ as an alternative model for comics criticism. This concept of ‘segmentivity’ stems from Rachel Blau DuPlessis’ attempt to distinguish the components of poetry from ‘narrativity’ and ‘performativity’. By assessing how poetic segments are employed in a myriad of narrative and non-narrative comics case studies, this model of segmentivity enables comics analysis to advance beyond sequential lexicons and limitations, ensuring the relevance of comics theory to contemporary practice. The critical survey of comics within this study includes examples of ‘comics poetry’ by Dino Buzzati, Kenneth Koch, Alan Moore, Warren Craghead as well as primary interviews with comics poetry practitioners Matt Madden, Bianca Stone, Michael Farrell and Alexander Rothman. The works of these creators evidence the need for a non-sequential model of comics analysis that challenges the dominant understanding of comics as a purely narrative form. Both my critical and creative works focus on the relationship between comics and poetry. Considering comics scholarship is characterised by the closeness of creators and critics, I felt it essential that my creative work engage with the practice of making comics. Accordingly, my creative work develops the comics poetry series, ANEKI, which innovates approaches to comics outside of traditional media and linear panel grid structures. An account of this collaborative process is also framed within the discussion of comics poetry examples. Ultimately, this study broadens approaches to comics creation and criticism, advancing potential modes of analysis and the multimodal possibilities of the form. I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best of my knowledge it contains no materials previously published or written by another Originality Statement person, or substantial proportions of material which have been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at UNSW or any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in the thesis. Any contribution made to the research by others, with whom I have worked at UNSW or elsewhere, is explicitly acknowledged in the thesis. I also declare that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project’s design and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expressionssion is acknowledged.acknowledged.

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Dated ...... 16.9.2012...... Copyright Statement Authenticity Statement I hereby grant the University of New South Wales or its agents the right to archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or part in the University libraries in all forms of media, now or here after known, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I retain all proprietary rights, such as pat- I certify that the Library deposit digital copy is a direct equivalent of the final ent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) officially approved version of my thesis.s. Noo emendation of content has occurred all or part of this thesis or dissertation. I also authorise University Microfilms to and if there are any minor variations inn fformatting,ormatting, they are the result ooff ththee use the 350 word abstract of my thesis in Dissertation Abstract International (this conversion to digital format. is applicable to doctoral theses only). I have either used no substantial portions of copyright material in my thesis or I have obtained permission to use copyright material; where permission has not beenen grgrantedranted I hhaveave appapplied/willlied/will appapplyly fforor a Signedgned ...... partial restriction of the digital copy of my thesis or dissertationdissertation.. Dated ...... 16.9.2012......

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Dated ...... 16.9.2012...... For Memo who showed me how to see Sincere thanks to all of the artists who brought ANEKI to life, Skye O’Shea, Jackie Cavallaro, Guillermo Batiz, Tamara Elkins and Anastasia McCloghry. Thank you Acknowledgements to each of the creators and critics who generously shared their work, their ideas and energy in interviews, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Scott McCloud, Matt Madden, Bianca Stone, Michael Farrell, Alexander Rothman and Sean Michael Wilson. Also deserving of recognition is Randy Scott for his generous assistance during my research visit to Michigan State University’s Special Collections. Thank you to Kernow Craig (Blood and Thunder Publishing Concern) for designing these pages and to my wonderfully supportive family, friends and my supervisor Dr. Paul Dawson for constant encouragement and healthy doses of criticism.

I’m also grateful to the editors of journals and hosts of conferences in which sections of this research has appeared: – Fractured Words/Broken Images, Lancaster University, 2010. – Poetry and the Contemporary, Deakin University, 2011. – English in Australia. Volume 46. No. 3, 2011. Contents 3 Abstract 4 Originality Statement 6 Acknowledgements 10 Introduction

Chapter I: 16 Connecting comics and poetry

Chapter II: 30 The mist of space and time: Un-McClouding comics criticism Chapter III: 45 Segmentivity vs sequentiality Chapter IV: 55 Contextualising comics poetry Case studies: 128 John Hankiewicz: Rhyme and reason 133 Richard Hahn: Liminal spaces in LUMAKICK 62 Alan Moore: Poetic parallels 141 Eroyn Franklin: ANOTHER GLORIOUS DAY AT THE NOTHING FACTORY 73 Chris Ware: Labyrinths and lexias ANEKI: Comics poetry and collaborative process 80 Dino Buzzati: Seeding the POEM STRIP 149 85 Jas Heriot Duke: Destiny Wood 89 Kenneth Koch: THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE Afterword: 156 Towards comics poetry 95 Michael Farrell: BREAK ME OUCH 101 Bianca Stone: The evolution of poetry comics Bibliography: 110 Alexander Rothman: Circulating Drafts 159 References 117 Warren Craghead: HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE 124 Matt Madden: Comics and constraints Appendix: 168 Interviews with Rachel Blau DuPlessis,Bianca Stone, Matt Madden, Michael Farrell, Alexander Rothman Since Will Eisner defined comics as ‘sequential art’, critics have continued to

Introduction employ narrative definitions and linear approaches to the form. As a result,

many non-sequential and experimental comics, especially in the field of

‘comics poetry’, have been ignored. Consequently, a new model for comics

analysis is needed to address narrative, non-narrative, multi-linear, abstract

and experimental developments within the form.

Existing comics criticism frequently borrows lexicons from narrative

theory, film and cultural studies, semiotics as well as visual communication.

Such comparisons are seen by comics creators like Gregory Gallant (a.k.a

Seth) as increasingly inadequate. Seth argues

Comics are often referred to in reference to ﬁlm and prose — neither seems that appropriate to me. The poetry connection is more appropriate because of both the condensing of words and the emphasis on rhythm. Film and prose use these methods as well, but not in such a condensed and controlled manner. Comic book artists have for a long time connected themselves to ﬁlm, but in doing so have reduced

10 their art to being merely a ‘storyboard’ approach figure out just what each panel has to do with the next’ (abstractcomics. (Seth: 2006:19). blogspot.com). Wolk’s statement is symptomatic of narrative assumptions that

continue to limit much of Western comics criticism and creation.

These ‘storyboard’ approaches don’t reflect the potential for comics to Sequential narratives require audiences to practice what McCloud communicate beyond sequential narrative boundaries and linear limitations. terms ‘closure’ (1993). In other words, readers must negotiate the gutters

Narrative, cultural, visual and semantic studies have doubtless done much to between panels by bridging the narrative gap to create ‘meaning’. Like visual advance the understanding of comics, yet until now, no methodology has linguist Neil Cohn, I take issue with the linear narrative assumptions of adequately investigated all forms of comics, (including the expanding body of ‘sequential art’ and the practice of ‘closure’. In his article ‘Closure’s work that experiments with non-linear and non-sequential devices as well as assumptions’, Cohn contends, ‘[j]ust because we experience reading sequenc- poetic techniques). es of images linearly doesn’t mean that is how we understand them’ (2008:1).

Comics critics like Scott McCloud, Charles Hatfield, David Kunzle, Using empirical and cognitive research strategies, he looks beyond linear

David Beronä and Douglas Wolk, among others, view comics as narrative panel relations to argue ‘[s]equential image comprehension must be thought constructs, preferencing images in sequence over all other elements in the of as the union of conceptual information that is grouped via unconscious visual-verbal comics vocabulary. This narrative assumption is evidenced in hierarchic structures in the mind’ (Cohn:2010). These structures are not

Wolk’s review of Abstract Comics: The Anthology (ed. Molotiu, Andrei:2009) inherently linear or narrative as demonstrated by the experiments of Dr. in which Wolk states, ‘anyone who’s used to reading more conventional sorts Morton Ann Gernsbacher. By rearranging page sequences, Gernsbacher of comics is likely to reflexively impose narrative on these abstractions, to concluded ‘people’s comprehension did not appear overly damaged by

11 flipping the composition of images’ as audiences grouped story by segments DuPlessis focuses on using the term specifically to distinguish poetry from rather than linear sequence (Cohn: blog.emaki.net/2011/09/segmentations- prose, segmented ‘matter’ is recognisable across forms of drama, history, in-visual-narrative.html). Cognitive approaches like Cohn’s have significantly verse, film and visual design. Rather than viewing poetry as being subsumed progressed procedural comprehension of comics, yet linear structures and by narrative, I argue that poetic devices and segmentivity underpin narrative narrative suppositions continue to limit comics criticism and creation. To structures. Evidence of poetry, thus segmentivity, can be found in most forms

of literature and, as such, provides a framework for a comprehensive theory of redress narrative assumptions and the neglect of non-linear comics, my

linear and non-linear comics. practice-led research develops ‘comics poetry’ and proposes ‘segmentivity’ as a

This concept of segmentivity does not limit poetry or comics to purely new concept for analysing both sequential and non-sequential comics.

linear or non-linear forms, nor does it suggest that poetry is what enables

comics to break free of linear or narrative boundaries. Instead, it demonstrates The concept of ‘segmentivity’ stems from Rachel Blau DuPlessis’ attempt to

that by looking at comics through the lens of segmentivity one can analyse distinguish the components of poetry. According to DuPlessis, the

individual components in various combinations, be they linear, non-linear, underlying characteristic of poetry as a genre is its ‘ability to articulate and multi-linear, abstract, narrative or non-narrative. Poetry, like comics, has the make meaning by selecting, deploying, and combining segments’ potential to be created and critiqued in multiple directions. The combination (DuPlessis: 2006:199). Segmentivity involves identifying and implementing of components is malleable as evidenced by the evolution of both forms and ‘bounded units’ such as words, sentences, stanzas and spaces (DuPlessis). As the various definitions of comics and poetry. In poetry, like comics, the notion such, segmentivity is a means to examine the ‘quanta’ of literature (quanta of the line continues to motivate linear interpretations for creators and critics. being the fundamental component of interaction within matter). Although 12 Such interpretations are not negative, they are simply too narrow to This does not dismiss the value of sequencing in poems, nor the existence of encourage and encompass all forms of comics, including abstract, non- narrative in poetry, rather it exposes ‘seriality’ as an alternative to sequential narrative and non-linear works. In searching for a model to expand analysis narrative. Where narrative relies on sequence to disclose meaning, DuPlessis of comics beyond linear panel associations, (most commonly interpreted as suggests seriality in poetry ‘is based on smaller units of material…organized words and images in sequence), DuPlessis’ notion of seriality proves useful. by leaps, associative logic or juxtaposition, vectors of concerns (rather than

Applied to comics, segmentivity offers a model for analysis of visual- mono-direction argument)’ (2011). Seriality, as a mechanism of segmentiv- verbal components (panels, visual fragments, captions, speech balloons, page ity, can be employed to apprehend both linear and non-linear, narrative and layouts, typography, gutters, etc.) and how they operate to signify meaning non-narrative comics. Words and images in series may be read in multiple

(akin to poetic arrangement of stanzas, line breaks, typographic experimenta- directions, or as equal to one another rather than left to right or up and down. tion, etc.). Through an examination of segments in comics and poetry, this Hence, segmented seriality offers a more advanced model for comics analysis study deepens understanding of the ways in which image and text can be than a purely sequential system. As DuPlessis states assembled both sequentially and non-sequentially. I am also employing …poems are texts that use segmentivity of segmentivity to counter linear assumptions and the problem of ‘closure’ the word and line, as deﬁned by meter and/ or rhyme, by rhetorical rhythms, by the line within comics. As discerned by DuPlessis, narrativity and performativity break and its attendant white space, and by ‘indicate the practice of sequencing event, gesture and image’ whereas poetry segmentivity of the sentence or paragraph often uses ‘disjunctive strategies’ (as evidenced in the simultaneity of (in the case of the prose poem) as the main elements. Poetry is, then, the practice of writing concrete poetry) that are not ordered by narrative disclosure (DuPlessis: 2011). in lines (or, in prose-poem variants, in segmented 13 sentences) where syntax and the chosen t)PXEPDPNJDTBOEQPFUSZJOUFSBDUBOEJOGPSNFBDIPUIFS signiﬁers are deployed in ways that extend, super-saturate, and possibly overrun the t8IZJTUIFDPODFQUPGQPFUJDATFHNFOUJWJUZSFMFWBOUUPEFWFMPQJOHBNPEFM GPSBOBMZTJTUIBUDPNQSFIFOETCPUITFRVFOUJBMBOEOPOTFRVFOUJBMDPNJDT semantic, message-bearing functions of language’ (DuPlessis:2012:62). t8IBUJTADPNJDTQPFUSZBOEIPXDBODPNJDTVUJMJTFQPFUJDEFWJDFTUP broaden the creation and criticism of comics to encompass the multimodal QPTTJCJMJUJFTPGUIFGPSN

By answering these questions, this research aims to illuminate possibilities

DuPlessis, like many comics critics, focuses on the line, yet the breaks and for interaction between comics and poetry by incorporating poetic lexicons segments inherent to both poetry and comics reveal a range of alternatives into the visual language of comics and vice versa; remedy the dominance of

sequential comics concepts by demonstrating how a model of segmentivity for word-image associations. Multi-linear image-text associations can provide

can examine the creation and critique of both sequential and non-sequential profitable alternatives that ‘overrun’ traditional meanings. When one remains comics; increase awareness of a growing number of non-linear comics and open to the ‘gaps’ and possibility of both linear and non-linear readings in counter the lack of analysis in this field. These objectives are achieved via comics, as in poetry, profitable new directions for navigating the work appear. comparative analysis of comics and poetry in chapter one. A model of segmentivity offers the means to these alternative readings. Chapter two examines the two schools of thought in comics

In developing and implementing the mode of segmentivity for comics, scholarship, exposing the neglect of many non-sequential works, especially this investigation asks: in the field of ‘comics poetry’, as a result of the narrotological focus of comics t8IBUJTQPTTJCMFUISPVHIUIFDPNCJOBUJPOPGDPNJDTBOEQPFUJDGPSNT criticism. In chapter three, a methodological discussion of segmentivity and

14 the relevance of its applications to comics and poetry is be presented. This creation of comics poetry, ANEKI, in collaboration with visual artists Skye methodology is then applied via a critical survey of works that combine com- O’Shea, Jackie Cavallaro, Guillermo Batiz, Tamara Elkins and Anastasia Mc- ics and poetic devices. Cloghry and. As comics scholarship is characterised by the closeness of crea-

Developments in the field of comics poetry are discussed in chapter tors and critics, my work is simulteanously practice-led research and research- four, followed by case study examinations of poetic devices and how they oper- led practice. This creative and collaborative process also informs my survey of ate in comics. Many of these examples fall outside the traditional narrative comics and an interest in exploring the creative works of others in the field. A definitions of comics, including works by Alan Moore, Chris Ware, Dino Buz- brief discussion of my creative work in relation to the genre of comics poetry zati, Jas H. Duke, Kenneth Koch, Michael Farrell, Warren Craghead, Richard informs the final section of this examination.

Hahn and Eroyn Franklin. To further illustrate the interaction of comics Critical engagement with developments in experimental comics and and poetry, this research comprises interviews I have conducted with com- the cross-pollination of comics and poetry, requires a universal model un- ics poetry practitioners such as Matt Madden, Bianca Stone, Michael Farrell constrained by linear definitions. ‘Segmentivity’ is this alternative, offering a and Alexander Rothman. Excerpts of these interviews are included to support synthesised mode of analysis that embraces all forms of comics and poetry, be analysis of specific comics poetry examples throughout the case studies and they sequential or non-sequential, narrative, non-narrative, linear or non-line- deepen understanding of the creative processes within their works. ar. Ultimately, this thesis concludes that advancement of comics analysis and

Through close analysis of comics in chapters four to nine, this thesis multimodal comics practices is dependent on a model of segmentivity that demonstrates the importance of a non-linear paradigm for understanding the comprehends all forms of comics beyond the boundaries of sequential art. evolution of comics practice. Underpinning this critical investigation is my

15 Chapter I Possibilities for comics are endless, and so too are endeavours to define them. Scott McCloud, arguably the most influential comics scholar to date, states,

Connecting ‘[o]ur attempts to define comics are an on-going process which won’t end Comics and Poetry anytime soon...’ (1993: 23). Every thesis has an antithesis, nevertheless, by drawing attention to developments and differences in modes of comics

creation and criticism, this research reveals the need for current definitions

of comics to be reassessed if non-narrative and experimental works are to be

comprehended.

The ancestry of comics is invariably disputed. McCloud suggests

Egyptian hieroglyphs, Mayan codicies and the Bayeux Tapestry are early

examples of comics. Critic Robert C. Harvey argues such an approach is

too broad, instead asserting that comics derived from the Italian word for

card, ‘cartone’, and usage of the term ‘cartoon’ to describe murals and patri-

otic scenes as well as satirical drawings about government first published

by Punch magazine in London in 1843 (2001:77). In English, etymology of 16 the term comics may be traced further back to the Greek ‘komikos: of or ‘the components of the medium’ and ‘the art form’s parameters’, a first for

comics studies in the English language (Eisner: 2008 revised ed: xii). pertaining to comedy, from komos: revel’ (Oxford Dictionary: 2005). During

In Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (1993), McCloud expands the Middle Ages, the word comedie referred to poems and stories with happy Eisner’s definition of ‘sequential art’ to include ‘juxtaposed pictorial and other endings. In France and Belgium the term ‘bandes dessinées’ removes implica- images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or produce tions of comedic content and stems instead from the art form of drawn strips. an aesthetic response in the viewer’ (1993:20). McCloud states Bandes dessinées (BDs) are regarded as a ‘ninth art’ in which creation and criticism are largely free of ‘low art’ prejudice. In Italy, ‘fumetti’ is the plural No genres are listed in our definition, no types of subject matter, no styles of prose or poetry. word for comics, referencing the ‘little clouds of smoke’ that look like speech Nothing is said about papers and ink. No printing process is mentioned…No materials are ruled and thought balloons. What can and can’t be considered comics is contended out by our definition…No schools of art are by creators and critics alike and will be elaborated upon in chapter two. The banished by our definition, no philosophies, no movements, no ways of seeing are out of following is a progress report of some recent attempts to define the form. bounds!...The world of comics as it is…is only one Will Eisner is often referred to as the grandfather of American comics, of many possible worlds! (1993:22-23). having coined the definition of comics as ‘sequential art’ in a series of sporadic essays printed in The Spirit Magazine and later collected in the text- This rhetoric revolutionised comics scholarship and McCloud is conceivably book Comics and Sequential Art (1985). His seminal work set out to examine the most quoted creator and critic, yet his definition is not without issue.

17 Seeking to colonise new comics territory, McCloud includes Mayan codex vessel’ is useful for dismantling genre stereotypes, but it dismisses the dual fragments, stained-glass windows and the wordless ‘woodcut novels’ of Lynd uses of the term medium. As Dylan Horrocks notes, ‘the medium of comics

Ward and Frans Masereel in his definition of the form, but eliminates single could be said to be ‘ink on paper’ (or, if Scott [McCloud] has his way, ‘pixels panel comics as well as children’s picture books. These exclusions strike on a screen’). But ‘comics’ are just one use to which that medium can be me, as they do Horrocks, as rather arbitrary; They are dependent ‘more on put’ (2001: Horrocks emphasis). Cohn also contests McCloud’s assumption what relationship we wish to see between words and picture in comics than that comics are a medium, stating ‘[t]here is no argument here for why on any objectively valid criteria’ (Horrocks:2001:5). By focusing on images “comics” should equal “sequential images,” it is just a definition that is in sequence and linear panel transitions, McCloud excludes possibilities of constructed out of the already stated assumptions that “comics” is some kind non-sequential works and single-panel comics like The Far Side and Dennis of medium’ (2006: Cohn’s emphasis). I argue comics are a form of literature the Menace. His sequential definition also leads to linear assumptions that that combines words and images in narrative and non-narrative ways. The juxtaposed images equate to time passing rather than the possibility of medium of comics is the mechanism (ink on paper or pixels on a screen) that image/text segments representing simultaneous elements within a scene or conveys these words and images. While McCloud, like Eisner, acknowledges moment. ‘image reads as text’, their focus on pictures in sequence upholds a hierarchy

In separating form from content, McCloud insists comics is ‘the that fuels word and image rivalries. These rivalries are increasingly redundant medium itself’, a vessel capable of containing any idea or image, not only in understanding an art form saturated with synthesised visual-verbal spandex-wearing heroes and villains (1993:4). The metaphor of ‘form as interactions and comics creators who combine both in complementary

18 compositions. Although still clinging to sequence, McCloud has recently Charles Hatfield claims ‘[c]omics are undeniably an interdisciplinary discussed countering the obsessive quest for balance and structured grids phenomenon; indeed comics are antidisciplinary objects, insofar as they in comics pages, suggesting that ‘...chance can be the source of as many nudge us out of accustomed habits of thought and into productive gray areas interesting compositions and premeditated design’ (process notes: 2009). where literature, art, semiotics and mass communications overlap and inform

This is a significant shift towards a more inclusive approach to comics each other’ (2004). His study, Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature creation and criticism. (2005), focuses on comics as narrative, elucidating the experimentation that

Rather than redefine the form, Douglas Wolk, in Reading Comics has helped to legitimise the form, from underground ‘comix’ to the evolution

And What They Mean (2007) offers a list of what comics are not: ‘[c]omics are of graphic novels. He suggests, ‘[c]omics, like other hybrid texts, collapse the not prose. Comics are not movies. They are not a text-driven medium with word/image dichotomy’ although his continued concentration on narrative added pictures; they’re not the visual equivalent of prose narrative or a static seems at odds with alternative comics that have relied on ‘rejection of version of a film. They are their own thing…’ (2007:14). Wolk sidesteps an mainstream formulas’ that previously limited comics to superhero plots, set absolute definition in his mission ‘to explore some of the ways it’s possible to materials and sequential ideology (Hatfield:2006:37). Also in opposition to read comics,’ though he treats them as a predominantly linear, narrative form sequential definitions, comics creator and critic, Dylan Horrocks, highlights

(2007:14). These are valuable studies, yet the continued neglect of non-linear, the limiting nature of comics descriptions. His essay ‘Inventing Comics: non-narrative and new media comics has seen criticism grow stale in the Scott McCloud’s Definition of Comics’, (2001) dissects McCloud’s essentialist wake of recent non-sequential and multi-linear creative practices. concept of comics, arguing:

19 Nowhere in Understanding Comics does Scott things that people call “comics” that ﬁt nearly attempt to justify why “Sequential Art” should every possible distribution of these elements. be seen as the one deﬁnitive element in comics (emaki.net: 2006). to the exclusion of all others: the combination of words and pictures, the use of certain conventions (eg. speech balloons, panel borders), Informed by cognitive studies, Cohn lists several examples of ‘comics’ that particular formats, styles, genres, etc. don’t adhere to McCloud’s definition, instead suggesting ‘[visual language] is (Horrocks: 2001: 2). the medium – comics are the (most widely used) carrier of it (2006).

Semantic concepts of visual language also underpin definitions of

By identifying these established comics elements, Horrocks further exposes comics in The Language of Comics: Word and Images (2001) edited by Robin the potential for comics to shed sequential definitions. His approach also Varnum and Christina T. Gibbons. Both authors note the contradiction of illuminates the problematic nature of essentialist ideals within a multi- McCloud’s treatment of ‘comics as both a partnership of separate elements modal form. Following Horrocks’ lead, visual linguist Neil Cohn attempts to and as a unique language’ (Varnum and Gibbons: 2001: xiv). Overcoming this

‘UN-define’ comics, stating hierarchical separation of visual and verbal elements, they suggest comics

The reality is that a notion of “comics” is not can be viewed as an integral or hybrid system made of painting and writing entirely grounded in aspects of structure (text/ (2001:xi). The issue of a contest between images and words is again taken up image, sequential images). “Comics” are not by several of the essays within The Language of Comics, including studies by “juxtaposed sequential images,” nor are they “text/image relations” [...] there are examples of Kunzel, Beronä and Frank Cioffi who define comics as ‘a narrative form 20 consisting of pictures arranged in sequence.’ (Varnum and Gibbons:2001:xvi) verbal units are deployed in all modes of comics, be they narrative,

Opposing visual narrative assessments are critics like R.C Harvey who argue non-narrative, linear, non-linear, abstract or representative.

‘[c]omics are a blend of word and picture – not a simple coupling of the verbal and the visual, but a blend, a true mixture...’ (1994:9). N. C As with comics, attempts to define poetry invariably lead to exclusion of some

Christopher Couch, Marion D. Perret, Jan Baetens, Catherine Khordoc and form or other. There’s an assortment of subjective statements about

Dr. Gene Kannenberg Jr. also view comics as a synthesised visual-verbal form. expression, inspiration, ‘the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’

In light of multiplying definitions and the various labels of strips, funnies, (Wordsworth: 1800); while other definitions focus on meter, materiality, wordless comics and graphic novels, Varnum and Gibbons group these forms, rhythm, lyricality, spatial arrangement. Yet none of these terms is specific to like most creators and critics, under the term ‘comics’. Although Cohn poetry. DuPlessis suggests the lack of a definitive description for poetry often disagrees with such subsuming categorisation, this study also applies the resulted in it disappearing into discussions of ‘narrativity’ and ‘performativ- term ‘comics’ to the broad field of works, including, but not limited to, single- ity’. In response, DuPlessis set out to distinguish poetry. panel comics, strips, single issues, comic books, comics series, graphic novels …I wanted a space where poetry was not erased! and comics poetry. Thus my attempt at a “ivity” to distinguish poetry. While ever comics continue to evolve, so too will definitions of the I think distinguish is a better word than deﬁne. form. Rather than limit the potential of what comics can and can’t be, this So I worked on it and came up with a suggestion: segmentivity. The reason I like segmentivity is study proposes ‘segmentivity’ as a means to understanding the core that is works no matter what the historical era, components of the form and advancing the ways in which these visual and

21 and even no matter what the culture. It does not grammatical ordering; interesting clashes when depend on rules of meter to deﬁne segmentivity, sentences (one kind of segment) articulate though of course it hardly excludes these… across lines (another kind of segment). The (RBD interview: 2011). traditional line markers, rhyme and repeated meter, are emphases of segmentivity; poetic syntax (skewed word order) may be a result of those segmentivities (2012: 60-62). DuPlessis’ proposal is arguably the most inclusive. It doesn’t deny any form or style, it is open to oral and written, visual and verbal, narrative, non-narrative, linear and non-linear poetry. By focusing on ‘what fundamentally Segmentivity apprehends the ‘disjunctive strategies’ of poetry (juxtapostion, distinguished poetry as a practice’ she arrived at the core of poetic fragmentation, anacoluthon) through analysis of irreducible segments or construction, stating ‘bounded units’ of words, images, stanzas, line breaks that operate regardless

of style, culture, structure and musicality. Poetry, like all literary forms, is Simply put, a poem is a formed object of/ in language in lines and segments that is constructed of segments. By assessing where and how each component is culturally received as a poem. “Segmentivity” used, a richer understanding of spatial and syntactical experimentation can constitutionally distinguishes the poem. This be reached. means poems are formed by their uses of segments – gaps at the turn of every line break; Applied within comics, segmentivity can be used to examine the segments counted as/created by regular rhythm; mechanics of panels, captions, speech balloons, gutters etc. and the ways caesura or the intralinear use of page space; gaps between stanzas; leaps and gaps in the in which these elements can be used in both narrative and non-narrative 22 works to realise the potential of word and image interactions beyond Traditionally, comics feature rectangular frames and nine-panel page linear narratives structures and grids. A question arising from a model of grids with linear plot progressions. In poetry, meter and rhyme were once segmentivity for comics has been whether such an approach is staple elements, but modern poetic techniques have expanded the possibilities anti-narrative. In short, the answer is no. The process of developing and of the form via spatial arrangement as well as syntactical and sound applying this theory doesn’t dismiss narrative, rather it seeks to encompass all experiments, to name a few. In comics, segmentivity exposes possibilities forms of comics. Narrative comics certainly account for the largest percentage for expanding techniques for composition and criticism. Through a model of the market and any comprehensive model must address these works, yet I of segmentivity, creators and critics can shape and study comics that operate found there were gaps in narrative approaches when it came to understanding in a linear narrative order or how panels may be equal rather than sequential and analysing the spatial arrangement and liminal spaces in ‘comics poetry’ in non-linear compositions. An extended description of segmentivity and its like Warren Craghead’s HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE, Michael Farrell’s possible applications will be offered in chapter three.

BREAK ME OUCH, multi-linear works like Ray Fawkes ONE SOUL or the Comics poetry works collected in Andrei Molotiu’s Abstract Comics: The Anthology. Another term in need of explanation is ‘comics poetry’. Within this study,

The lack of alternatives to narrative analysis and a desire to shine a comics poetry is used to describe the growing field of works that experiment light on new developments in comics ignited my investigation into the ways with the combination of comics and poetic devices. Comics poetry comprises poetry could profit the creation and critique of comics. Segmentivity offered works that do not strictly operate as sequential art. These works are often a starting point as it addressed components in narrative and non-narrative, non-linear and non-narrative. linear and non-linear works.

23 The form experiments with simultaneity, word-image assembly, thesis and within my own creative work, ANEKI. metaphor, countermeasure, repetition and rhythm as a means of exploring The aim of comics poetry is to experiment with the visual-verbal the possibilities of textual-visual language in comics forms within panels, language of panels, frames, captions and speech balloons, or as comics poet gutters, captions, speech and thought balloons. Alexander Rothman states, to create ‘something propelled by both verbal and

Comics poetry differs from concrete poetry, visual poetry and illus- visual rhythm, that needs all its parts to work’ (2011). For this reason, draw- trated poetry. What distinguishes comics poetry from other forms of visual ings put to poetry, as in the cases of Classics Illustrated (1952) and The Adapt- poetry is the conscious and consistent use of inherent comics devices included Victor Hugo (2001) are not considered within the scope of this study. Like ing panels, captions and speech balloons. It’s true that comics poetry and Rothman, I consider comics poetry involves the consistent combination of visual poetry share segmented components, yet comics devices are not con- comics and poetry devices used to break boundaries and conventional defini- sistent or critical in visual poetry as they are in comics poetry. Captions and tions of these forms. In addition to the case study examples of comics poetry, speech balloons may appear in visual texts like Tom Phillips A Humument: this form can also be identified in alternative comics such as those collected in

A Treated Victorian Novel (1970) but as the title here suggests, these occur- Molotiu’s Abstract Comics anthology and Kramers Ergot issues. This growing rences are secondary to the ‘treatment’ of the novel. For a work to be classified field of work diversifies expectations of comics creation and definitions. comics poetry it must consistently employ combinations of explicit comics and In Alternative Comics, Hatfield investigates ‘how alternative comics poetry devices as demonstrated in all of the case studies examined within this have breached the limits of the traditional comic book on every level, includ- 24 ing packaging, publication, narrative form and thematic content’ arguing that Varnum and Gibbons also cite a ‘multidisciplinary body of word and image

scholarship’ by Gotthold Lessing, W.J.T Mitchell, Erwin Panofsky, E.H ‘[i]n the process they have spawned the vital yet often misunderstood genre of Gombrich, Nelson Goodman as well as comics studies by Jan Baeten and the “graphic novel” (2005: x). Comics poetry similarly eludes traditional com- Pascal Lefèvre to suggest that comics scholarship can profit from employing ics definitions as it re-envisions aesthetic and thematic possibilities of both visual-verbal vocabularies (2001). Lefèvre’s analysis is supported by Francis comics and poetry forms. Just as Wolk brands comics ‘their own thing’, it Dwyer’s studies in visual-verbal relations that concluded materials featuring would be expedient to label ‘comics poetry’ a form of its own (2007:14). visual-verbal symbiosis carry stronger messages than when either element is

However, to do so would ignore the visual and verbal disciplines from which used in isolation (1994). The terms ‘visual-verbal symbiosis’ and ‘visual-verbal comics and poetry emanate. Varnum and Gibbons draw attention to the discontinuity’ were coined by Roberts A. Braden who, like Dwyer, suggests

combined ‘visuals’ and ‘verbals’ enhance message reception. Other additions entwined nature of word and image in comics: [b]oth texts and images are decoded visually to the visual-verbal vocabulary include Rune Petterson’s term ‘verbo-visual’ and, for the most part, produced manually. In and Mitchell’s ‘imagetext’ which refers to ‘an inseparable suturing of the comics, words take on some of the properties of pictures, and conversely, pictures take on some visual and the verbal, the “imagetext” incarnate’ (Mitchell:1994:95). of the properties of words. From the point of The visual-verbal comics vocabulary of gutters, speech balloons, view of semiotics theory, images and words are equivalent entities, and comics is a system panels and captions also has grammatical rules. Nate Piekos’ ‘Comic Book of signiﬁcation in which words and pictures Grammar and Traditions’ (2010) provides an illustrated guide to the aesthetic are perceived in much the same way (2001:xi). conventions of comic devices. What follows is a summary of this inventory.

25 Balloon tails should point toward the mouth of the speaker, the Foreign languages are signaled by a < (less than) symbol before the more direct the line from the tail to mouth the more clear the speech or caption and a > (greater than) symbol at the end. In the sense of narrative voice. first instance of usage an asterisk sometimes follows >* to indicate a caption that introduces what language is being translated. Breath marks consist of three vertically stacked dashes that come before a cough, splutter or scared speech. Breath marks often Italics are used in a variety of ways within comics. Traditionally feature in wavy balloons. italics denote time and location, narrative captions, internal monologues, telepathic messaging. They are also used in thought Bursting balloons are used to indicate increased volume, screaming balloons, book and film titles as well as audio broadcasts. or shouting. These balloons have jagged edges or tails and often Increasingly, italics are used to simulate handwritten fonts, foreign feature underlined words that emphasise tone. words and flashbacks.

Capitalisation is a default of comics lettering. Typographic experi- Thought balloons are sometimes called thought bubbles or clouds mentation in comics, especially alternative comics, has resulted in due to their shape. Traditionally the balloon tail consists of three experimentation with lower case lettering. (The default capitali- smaller bubbles, descending in size and positioned towards the sation in comics is also applied to most quoted comics material character’s head, not their mouth. within this thesis.) Wavy balloons are used when a character is in danger or distress Captions, according to Piekos, are categorised into four types: and encapsulate speech that is usually stuttered and broken by ‘Location & Time, Internal Monologue, Spoken, and Narrative.’ elipses. Location and Time captions are conventionally italicised although block fonts have also begun to surface in mainstream comics. Inter- Whispering is indicated via a balloon edged with dashes. Italics, nal Monologue captions are mostly italicised and are used in place lowercase lettering and faded balloons are also sometimes used to of thought balloons. Spoken captions convey character speech not suggest speech is whispered. present in panel or page. Narrative captions are often italicised and signal an omnipresent speaker or the voice of the writer.

26 Cohn’s ‘Visual Language Glossary’ (emaki.net/glossary.html) also provides interacted with and constructed. While left to right reading and sequential a useful summary of visual structures employed in comics. Understanding ideology seemingly dominate Western comics, there’s no absolute authority comics conventions is not only connected to the sensory experience of that forces readers to follow a set path. This is evidenced by the ‘phenomenon’

‘reading’ comics, it is also relevant to discussing the subversion of these of non-linear, abstract and comics poetry examples that preference conventions in comics by Chris Ware, Bianca Stone and Michael Farrell simultaneity over sequence (Baetens: 2011). Simultaneity can be found in among others. Although the usage of a speech balloon appears inherent, comics by Koch, Craghead, Ware and Hankiewicz who experiment with acknowledging their existence within a web of interconnected visual and freeing images from panels, circular page constructions and loops of text that verbal systems is crucial. reveal an alternative reading possibility for comics. Overturning predictable

In addition to the grammar within panels, it’s helpful to discuss the sequencing of traditional comics, these works demonstrate there is no longer structure of the page spread. Japanese manga pages, for example, are read any need to cross point b to arrive at c. Increases in the usage of simultaneity right to left, bottom to top. There are also page spreads featuring vertical further illustrate how the form has breached the narrative limits and columns, spiralling text, accentuated negative space and overlapping panels expectations of traditional comics (Hatfield: 2006:x). that don’t follow sequential rules. McCloud makes reference to the ascending It is also important to clarify the usage of terminology that intersects with zig-zag method of reading Egyptian hieroglyphs, ancient ancestors of con- both literary and visual disciplines. The following glossary outlines the temporary comics. New technologies are re-shaping the way comics are purposes for which specific terms are employed within this study. 27 Hypertext: Hypertext was deﬁned by Theodor Nelson in Literary Given the on-going process of re-invention within comics creation and Machines as a mode of ‘non-sequential writing’. (1980) Hypertexts present information as linked units which enable viewers and or scholarship, many of the possibilities McCloud initially outlined have been readers to navigate in a non-linear fashion. Hypertexts are not tied to a technology, content, or medium (Keep, McLaughlin and explored and even more have arisen as technologies free comics from the page Parmar: 2000). and linear, sequential constraints. This investigation addresses a fraction of Multimodal: As a multimodal form, comics employ visual and verbal semiotic systems to communicate linear and non-linear, narrative these developments in the hope of broadening approaches to creating and and non-narrative information (Kress and Van Leeuwen: 2001). critiquing comics. Simultaneity: Within this thesis, the word simultaneity is used to refer to a work with multiple reading paths instead of a prescribed The scope of this research invariably excludes some past, present and narrative line. potential forms of comics. Although outside the confines of this investiga- Visual language (VL): Visual language is a culturally relative communication system consisting of visual elements. VL uses three tion, also deserving of critical analysis are developments in comics poetry by interlocking cognitive systems ‘graphic modality, meaning and sequential structure (i.e. grammar)’ (Cohn: 2009). Alejandro Jodoroswky, Eddie Campbell, Neil Gaiman, Lynda Barry, Garry

Despite McCloud’s acknowledgement of the limitless possibilities for comics, Sullivan, Austin English, Seth, Daniel Clowes, Carla Speed McNeil, Derik many critics are yet to move beyond sequential boundaries. By evidencing the Badman, Tom Neely, Anders Nilsen, Ben Katchor, Sammy Harkham, Yumi developments in non-sequential comics practices, this thesis illustrates the Sakugawa, Peter Blegvad, Souther Salazar, Sommer Browning, Renee French, need for non-linear methods of analysis if comics scholarship is to remain Paul K. Tunis, Sean Michael Wilson, David Mack, Ray Fawkes and Malcy relevant to contemporary practice. Duff, to mention too few. 28 Another rapidly expanding field in need of attention is digital comics.

Fine examples for future studies include works by Emily Carroll (emcarroll. com/comic/); Pat Grant’s Blue (boltonblue.com); Decrypting Rita by Egypt

Urnash (egypt.urnash.com/rita/2011/05/introduction); Dylan Meconis’ Family

Man (lutherlevy.com); Ryan A.’s Our Bloodstained Roof (ryan-a.com/comics/ roof.htm); Western Park by Timmoty Kidd and Patrick Farley’s Electric Sheep

Comix (electricsheepcomix.com). Developments in non-sequential Japanese comics, as well as the massive body of bandes dessinées, also warrant further consideration, though the primary focus of this thesis is limited to comics creation and scholarship in English.

29 Chapter II ‘Young and scrawny’ is how Douglas Wolk describes the language of The mist of space comics criticism (2007: 16). While it’s true that dedicated comics studies have emerged only as recently as the 1980s, the origins of comics criticism can be and time: traced much further back. Un-McClouding Early comics investigations in the 1940s and 1950s focused on comics criticism audience reception, in part fuelling fears that comics and their cast of mutated characters would corrupt the minds of children who consumed them. Fredric

Wertham’s 1954 study Seduction of the Innocent, claimed comics degraded

language, corrupted children and caused ‘linear dyslexia’, a view that

pervaded comics studies for some time (Hatfield:2005:34). Classification of

comics as literature was once absurd and comparisons to the form of poetry

equally impossible. While there are still creators and critics who would agree,

this once marginalised art form has been enriched by a recent wave of

multidisciplinary attention in fields of narrative theory, semiotic studies,

visual communication, film theory and art history. Despite these diverse 30 approaches to comics scholarship, few critical examinations, until now, have rial fact that any printed, drawn or pixelated symbol of any alphabet is first appraised how comics might operate beyond linear and sequential narrative perceived visually (Braille exempt) should no longer be ignored. Similitude of boundaries. What follows is an examination of the origins of comics criticism, visual and verbal communication was espoused by Simonides; ‘poema pictura the resulting poles of scholarship and the gaps in knowledge this research laquens, pictura poema silens’, which translates as ‘poetry is a verbal picture, seeks to address. painting is a silent poetry’ (Wolk: 2007:127). Horace summarised this dictum

Opposing reductive definitions of comics as ‘sequential art’, I side as ‘ut pictura poesis’, or ‘as in painting so in poetry’ (Wagner:1996:5). Yet with critics like Horrocks, Cohn, Varnum and Gibbons, amongst others, who essentialist theories reject such statements and parallels between art forms. view comics as a complex ‘cultural idiom’ comprising words, pictures and Gotthold E. Lessing called for the separation of ‘sister arts’, view- grammatical conventions. Before analysing anything called ‘comics’, it’s ing the motion of poetry and the stasis of painting, as reciprocally limiting. necessary to unravel perceived visual-verbal rivalries. The hierarchy of word In Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry (1766) Lessing and image has long been debated, from mimesis to museums and in modern argued there is an essential difference between words and images; words are comics alike. Graphemes (the fundamental units of written language) and temporal, sequenced one after another in time to produce meaning, whereas images share a semiotic and spatial sphere of visual signification. Often-cited images are spatial, observed all at once. He suggested that to blur the examples of graphic similarity are Chinese ideograms and typographic info- boundaries between words and images would weaken them, turning paint- graphs that function simultaneously as visual-verbal segments. Comics ing ‘into speaking picture’ and poetry into ‘a freakish kind of writing’ (3rd ed. explicitly remind audiences that seeing is reading, whereas literary theory trans. Frothingham: 1963). W.J.T Mitchell’s Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology often overlooks the visuality of the page and the marks upon it. The mate- (1986) diagnoses Lessing with ‘iconophobia’, a fear of images that produces a

31 ‘war of signs’. Historicising the foundations of the paragonal struggle their interdependence. These synthesised visual-verbal between image and text, Mitchell suggests word and image are divided due to theories are increasingly relevant for multimodal forms like comics. usage, choice, need, interest, habit and convention rather than the superiority Synthesised approaches to word and image have also been suggested by of one mode over another (1986:70). reception studies that concluded messages are communicated more effectively

James A.W Heffernan’s ekphrastic research maintains that images via visual-verbal combinations than words alone (Dwyer:1994). belong to the still, silent domain of space and as such should concern them- The majority of comics criticism is divided into two camps. There are those selves with composition rather than attempting to tell stories. Accordingly, like Eisner, McCloud, Kunzel, Beronä, Groensteen, Hatfield and Wolk who words should be limited to conveying ideas and emotions rather than attempt- argue sequential images are the fundamental components of the art form. ing to depict imagery. These dichotomies continue to generate limited ideas of Others like Horrocks, Harvey, Couch, Cohn, Perret, Baetens, Khordoc and

‘representational rivalries’ between words and images (Heffernan: 1993). Kannenberg Jr. view comics as a synthesis of word and image capable of

In contrast, a shift toward synthesised word-image interpretations is communicating beyond sequential boundaries. For Varnum and Gibbons, championed in critical works by Valerie Robillard, Norman Bryson, Willard the biological term ‘hybrid’ best describes the mixture of word and image in

Bohn, James Elkins, Johanna Drucker, Mieke Bal and some comics comics. They argue that ‘[t]he very existence of comics can be said to blur the scholarship. Bal’s Reading ‘Rembrandt’: beyond the Word-Image Opposition distinction between literature and the visual arts’ (2001:xi).

(1991) crosses disciplinary borders in an attempt to resolve visual-verbal This body of research has substantially broadened the ‘young and rivalries. Her investigation focuses on the dialogue between word and image, scrawny’ language of comics and its literary links. Yet few critics have charted artwork and caption, ekphrastic poem and source material, to demonstrate the relationship between comics and poetry, and even fewer have developed a

32 non-linear alternative for reading and analysing comics. The ensuing images can operate both temporally and spatially. He claims that ‘[i]n the summary surveys the successes and failures of comics scholarship, exposing modern comic strip or comic book, the device most fundamental to the trans- the need for an alternative to the model of comics as sequential art. mission of timing is the panel (or frame or box)’ (2008 revised ed:26). For

Out of sequence Eisner, panels segment both time and space into a sequence. This is disputed

Western comics scholarship recognises Eisner as the pioneer of dedicated by Neil Cohn who argues there is ‘no evidence that each panel represents a comics studies. As creator, teacher and critic, his work is both a practi- “moment in time”’ (2008). Indeed, it is possible for panels to present simul- cal guide to the principles of the discipline and a springboard for potential taneous aspects of different scenes, or for a panel to split a single scene into criticism. In Comics and Sequential Art he suggests ‘[t]he format of comics several parts of a single moment in time. As Cohn also notes, cognition of any presents a montage of both word and image’ acknowledging they are ‘sequence’ is still reliant on readers, each with their own relative concepts of

‘derivatives of a single [graphic] origin’ (2008 revised ed:7). For Eisner, the time and space. Despite Eisner’s sequential narrative assumptions, his graphic treatment of words is part of the continuation of imagery as evidenced recognition of segments supports a case for segmentivity as a model that by bold, wavy and textured lettering styles that are able to convey the tone, examines individual components of comics as well as their broader context. sound and speed of language. He highlights the ‘expressive potential’ of the Eisner’s definition is further elaborated by McCloud in Understand- combination of words and images but stresses it is possible for comics to tell ing Comics. McCloud’s work has been described as both ‘a powerful piece of stories solely through imagery (2008 revised ed:10). polemic’ and arguably the most significant comics manifesto published to

According to Eisner, a sense of time is also critical to the success of date (Horrocks: 2001:1). While McCloud posits, ‘[t]oday the possibilities for visual narrative. In contrast to Lessing, his verbal-visual division suggests comics are – as they have always been – endless’, his definition of comics as 33 ‘sequential art’ is not without limitation. Like Eisner, he shares the view that to its very substance the way pictures are comics are dominated by ‘images in deliberate sequence’ (1993:9). Within his (McCloud quoted in Horrocks: 2001:3). work, the terms ‘comics’ and ‘sequential art’ are virtually synonymous. Visual sequencing and panels are useful tools but not the only way to understand Like Horrocks, I take issue with the assumption that comics are a visual comics or fully explore the potential of the form. Many experimental comics medium confined to sequential form. Horrocks argues that for McCloud demonstrate what is possible when grids, panels and images are removed. ‘[i]t’s as if the very presence of words – any words – in a comic is a potential

McCloud argues that comics do not require words, but that a comic threat to its identity as a comic. To protect that identity, it is essential for cannot exist without images. In an interview with Harvey, he asserts pictures to dominate the words’ (2001:5). McCloud’s statement contradicts

his earlier acknowledgement of the shared roots of word and image. His ...[w]ords and abstract images can be included [in comics] but pictorial [images] is the necessary, essentialist separation of the verbal and visual preserves representational essential element; the others are optional. It rivalries but here the logocentrism of Lessing’s essentialist stance is inverted. must have pictures. It must have some visual representation of a visual phenomenon... I Horrocks contends that ‘[f]or Scott…each artform is distinguished from see the visual component as being deﬁnitive. every other by an essential nature and the borders between them’ resulting Without pictures, it’s simply not a comic. Whereas I feel conﬁdent that there have been in the ‘logophobia’ of McCloud’s approach to comics (2001:5). By privileging wordless comics... So when talking about words pictures over a synthesis of word and image, McCloud constricts the endless and pictures together in comics, we’re talking possibilities for comics that he advocates. about a vital and huge subset of what’s being done with the medium, but it’s not hardwired Another issue with McCloud’s sequential definition is the limiting 34 and persistent illusion of space and time as a linear construct. He suggests six flexibility, his insistence on ‘images in deliberate sequence’ has resulted transition ‘types’ that characterise sequential panel relations within comics: in predominantly linear narrative analysis of comics (McCloud:1993:20).

These linear and narrative assumptions may, in part, be due to McCloud’s

focus on the immediate relation of panels as evident in his example of tran-

sitions ‘types’. Five of the six examples given by McCloud illustrate a linear

interpretation of panels and restriction of panel sequences to ‘moment to

moment’, ‘action to action’, ‘subject to subject’, ‘scene to scene’ and ‘aspect to

aspect’(1993:74). By focusing on image interactions within closed grid struc-

tures, current scholarship has not encouraged creators and critics to move

beyond linear panel sequencing and narrative assumptions of the art form.

Beyond ‘images in deliberate sequence’ (McCloud:1993:20) it is possible to

think of comics in terms of simultaneous images and texts, or web comics

that feature hyperlinked content that takes readers in different directions, or

as a series of moments not bound by sequential panels and linear time con-

straints as in Alan Moore’s Promethea and Ray Fawkes’ multi-linear comic,

McCloud’s definition of comics is valuable in that it encompasses content that ONE SOUL . In contrast to McCloud’s sequentiality, understanding comics is both narrative and non-narrative, linear and non-linear. Despite this through a model of segmentivity enables text and images to be read in any

Scott McCloud. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. Harper Perennial. 1993, p 74. 35 direction or multiple directions as profitable new associations between non- use no panels or gutters at all. With digital comics continuing to evolve, these sequential components are examined. ‘hypertextual’ reading paths will cultivate even more non-linear opportunities

McCloud also suggests that by moving through the physical space for the form. of each gutter, audiences also move through time. In Reinventing Comics To develop a mode of analysis that is applicable to both linear and non-

(2000) he distils this idea in the equation ‘space=time’. While this equation linear, narrative and non-narrative comics, the core components of the form comprehends the most common panel constructions, it is not the only pos- must first be assessed. Prior to images being placed in sequence, they must sibility for creating and reading comics. Like Cohn, I argue that no ‘time’ first be ‘segmented’ into panels. Visual and verbal components are accumu- actually passes in McCloud’s examples of ‘aspect to aspect’ and ‘non-sequitur’ lated and arranged with multiple spaces between. Not all of these components transitions. Instead these panels reveal potentially simultaneous moments are inherently narrative, especially in the case of comics poetry and abstract within a larger moment. This simultaneity is evidenced in comics by Koch, comics. Accordingly, it can be argued that segmentation, not sequence, is the

Craghead, Hankiewicz and Farrell, where words and images often repeated primary characteristic of comics. Sequence is a secondary element with narra- to create a sense of poetic rhythm or presented as equal rather than sequen- tive following behind. Narrative disclosure is dependent on cognition and the tial. These multi-linear structures reveal how time can be ‘hypertextualised’, negotiation of gutters by the audience. McCloud terms this navigation pro- moving diagonally or across several pages, in any direction imaginable. Exist- cess, ‘closure’, where readers fill in gaps between panels, unifying visible and ence of such possibilities outruns the straight lines of sequential definitions. invisible moments to create ‘meaning’. In opposition, Cohn claims ‘closure’ is

Experimental comics, like those by Moore and Franklin, also demonstrate a cloudy term incapable of describing the complex cognitive how linear panel structures can be replaced by spirals, or page structures that processes of making ‘meaning’. He questions 36 If closure occurs ‘in the gaps between panels’ Using McCloud’s primary example (1993:68), Cohn suggests ‘closure’ is then how does it work if a reader cannot make nothing more than a coercive rhetorical trick. He argues ‘the ambiguous such a connection until the second panel is reached? That is, the gap cannot be ﬁlled unless “reader-created outcome” of the event cannot be attributed to the gutter, but to it has already been passed over, making closure the indexical quality of the second panel’s scream’, concluding ‘…the an additive inference that occurs at panels, not between them (Cohn: 2010: 135). gutter does not provide any meaning – the content of the panels and their union does’ (2010:136). It is not the blank space that gives us meaning but the

completion of the scene, action or idea that can only be experienced via the

information that is presented, not what is invisible. Sequence coerces cogni-

tive ‘meaning’ but this is still governed by individual processes of interpreta-

tion. A sequential model is also largely informed by printing processes, the

linear construct of conventional books, rather than the possibilities of new

technologies and imagination. Most mainstream comics in English have been

confined to a formula that focuses on placing images side by side rather than

exploring the potential spectrum of spatial arrangements. Consequently,

comics without panels, or those experimenting with simultaneous reading

paths, abstract and non-narrative comics or the collage techniques of Japanese

Manga have been largely ignored in Western criticism. In contrast, a model of

Scott McCloud. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. Harper Perennial. 1993, p 68. 37 segmentivity can be applied to visual and verbal components in both and image to harmonize’, I argue comics have successfully employed verbal sequential and non-sequential comics, regardless of cultural context. tools to climb the literary ladder from the depths of the cultural ghetto. As

Recently, McCloud has also conceded a shift towards a non-linear Kunzle and later Beronä illustrate, the wordless woodcut novels of Masereel model for comics, questioning ‘[w]hat would happen if we let the story drop and Milt Gross have undoubtedly played a role in the reinvention of adult panels and compositions onto the page and then let them stand, rather than comics, but it’s graphic novels like Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis or Blankets by fiddle with them after the fact in pursuit of balance that only serves that Craig Thompson that demonstrate the value of visual-verbal synthesis. These page…’ (process notes: 23.3.2009). If the full potential of comics is to be rec- works chart complex political situations and emotional depths that images ognised both sequential and non-sequential modes must be incorporated into alone are less able to convey. comics construction and criticism. ‘Iconic solidarity’ is also the indispensible feature of comics for critic

Voicing visual concerns Thierry Groensteen (trans. 2007). In his study, The System of Comics (2007),

Still in the camp of visual supremacy, David Kunzle makes a case for silent Groensteen uses a semiologic approach to introduce a ‘spatio-topical’ system strips, citing ‘the stubborn intractability of captions to measure up to the for analysis of the ‘ninth art’. This spatio-topical model is applied to promise of the drawing’ (2001:3). Kunzle’s essay ‘The Voice of Silence’ was demonstrate that meaning in comics is constructed via the arrangement of published in 2001, at a time when graphic novels had been gaining critical panels on the page. He suggests ‘comics is not only an art of fragments, of acclaim, with Art Spiegleman’s Maus winning a Pulitzer Prize and Joe Sacco’s scattering distribution; it is also an art of conjunction, of repetition, of

Safe Area Gorazde collecting an Eisner Award for Best Original Graphic linking together’ (2007:22). By focusing on page layout and the aesthetic ef-

Novel. In contrast to Kunzle’s essentialist assessment of ‘the failure of word fects of panels, frames and gutters, Groensteen overlooks the possibility for

38 spatial arrangements in comics to break free of panels and pages altogether, Without Words’, Beronä acknowledges that even in Milt Gross’s as happens in some abstract and alternative comics as well as comics poetry. self-proclaimed wordless works, ‘textual accompaniment flows through his

Groensteen’s system does, however, recognise that the arrangement of panels narrative’ (2001:27). Indeed, in the example Beronä cites, the billboard filled can be both linear, which he refers to as ‘restricted arthrology’, or trans-linear with text operates as the fatalistic punch-line.

‘general arthrology’ (2007:22). Contradictory to comics critics who argue Critic Douglas Wolk focuses on the reader’s experience of comics and images in sequence are primary vehicles of narrative, Groensteen suggests the possible ways to read particular artists’ works. He avoids defining the

form but reveals his sequential bias by stating ‘[i]f you want to evaluate comics … elementary relations, of the linear type, compose what we will call the restricted as a critic, or enjoy them fully as a reader, you have to be attentive to both their arthrology. Governed by the operation of narrative substance and their style – and cartoonists’ visual style is mani- breaking down (decoupage), they put in place the sequential syntagms, which are most often fested in every image they draw on every page of every comics book’ (Wolk: subordinated to the narrative ends. It is at 2007:24). This statement again frames comics as inherently narrative. this level that the writing takes priority, as a Interestingly, Wolk also dedicates a large portion of his analysis to works by complementary function of narration (2007:22 original emphasis). comics writers like Alan Moore and Grant Morrison whose work is visually

interpreted by other comics artists. He sets comics apart from film and

illustrated novels, but notes that the physical experience of comics remains David Beronä counters this by arguing the growing vocabulary of comics closest to reading prose books. Wolk divides comics into categories of main- icons provides ‘a pictorial language that seems as capable as words of stream comics and art comics, devoting his commentary to the latter. Employ- communicating ideas’ (2001:19). In his essay, ‘Pictures Speak In Comics 39 ing several examples from Moore’s Promethea to Chris Ware’s ACME Novelty of a larger sequence. In both narrative and non-narrative comics, the visual-

Library, Wolk maps new techniques employed by comics creators, some of verbal surface of the page is broken into segments which are then interpreted which ‘hurl conventional plot dynamics out the window’ (2007:367). by the audience.

Like Wolk, Charles Hatfield also charts the ‘emerging literature’ of Without synthesis of word and image, Hatfield suggests achieving alternative comics. His study concentrates on narrative comics and graphic McCloud’s concept of ‘closure’ can be difficult, especially in comics that novels that he argues are responsible for revolutionising perceptions of, and present critical approaches to, comics. For Hatfield though, alternative comics have a series of disconnected panels with recurrent outgrown essentialist arguments and traditional definitions on multiple character types and situations but no levels, from packaging to conventional narrative form. He begins to address narrative per se…without a linear rationale; motiﬁc repetition suggests at best a vague these tensions via examples of atemporal, single-image comics, identifying connection between otherwise disjunct panels McCloud’s sequential bias and neglect of visual/verbal interplay as a (2005:43). contributing factor to the tension between word and image interpretations and audience ‘closure’. Hatfield argues, ‘[t]here is a tension between the He cites examples of synthesised word/image works by Ware and Spiegelman concept of “breaking down” a story into constituent images and the concept in which verbal narration ‘serves to structure an otherwise non-linear barrage of laying out those images together on an unbroken surface’ (2005:48). The of non-sequiturs, visual gags, and stylistic swipes (Hatfield:2005:44). Here, pacing of the comic is therefore dependent on the reader’s perspective and word-image combinations, not gutters, are vital to the act of ‘closure’. potential to isolate the panel as a single moment or view it within the context

40 Although identifying several non-linear case studies, Hatfield ‘stops short to contain words to be comics… But words are of trying to construct a universal critical scheme’ that could overcome the clearly an integral part of what we think of when we think of comics. Words as well as images visual-verbal rivalries and neglect of non-sequential comics (2005:67). Instead (2001: 75). he focuses on narrative in alternative comics, again overlooking the literary potential of non-sequential comics and comics poetry. For Harvey, the ‘“blending” of verbal and visual content’ is essential to

comics functionality, just as sequence is for McCloud (2001:75). Many Examination of the other camp of comics critics begins with R.C.Harvey, critics, including McCloud, have linked comics to the sequential images of comics creator and author of The Art of the Funnies: An Aesthetic History film, but across all forms of comics the key component is segmentivity of (1994) and several other critical reviews of the field. In his article ‘Comedy at images and words into scenes. This occurs mostly, but not always, through the Juncture of Word and Image’ (2001), Harvey contests the widespread the use of panels and the containment of dialogue in speech balloons. The acceptance that images in sequence automatically denote comics: semiotic code of captions, drunken curlicues and thought bubbles is virtually [i]n our stampede to elevate Scott McCloud’s deﬁnition of comics to the status of holy universally recognised. There is a visual-verbal vocabulary unique to comics writ, we may have overlooked the most that has been largely overlooked in criticism. conspicuous shortcoming of his concoction. In opposition to McCloud and Kunzel, Harvey sits at the other end of While “juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence” can include verbiage the essentialist scale. He argues (those “other images” can be written words), McCloud maintains that comics do not have …the essential characteristics of “comics: – the 41 thing that distinguishes it from other kinds of it presents only one way of reading an inﬁnitely pictorial narratives – is the incorporation of complex landscape, thereby suppressing other verbal content. I even go so far as to say that in possible readings (2001:6). the best examples of the art form, words and pictures blend to achieve meaning that neither conveys alone without the other (2001:75). By examining the origins of spoken word, which arguably predate pictograms,

Horrocks contradicts McCloud’s ‘creation myth, in which pictures give birth

Through the history of gag cartoons, Harvey demonstrates the evolution of to writing’ (2001:6). Rather than privilege word or image, Horrocks draws visual-verbal interdependence in comics. upon his own process in creating comics to dismiss McCloud’s arbitrary

Like Harvey, New Zealand-based comics creator and critic Dylan boundaries, stating ‘I see my job as putting things on paper (or, if Scott has

Horrocks condemns the assumption that ‘sequential art’ is the definitive fea- his way, on computer screens). I feel no need to limit what shape those things ture of comics. In his essay ‘Inventing Comics’, Horrocks takes issue with the can take’ (2001:6). essentialist boundaries that McCloud’s ‘map’ of comics preserves, arguing Frank Cioffi’s essay ‘Disturbing Comics: The Disjunction of Word’ that Understanding Comics is (2001), also acknowledges ‘…there is an interdependence between word and

image in the comics, and while this interdependence varies from work to work a work of polemic, which seeks to build a comics nation (on particular terms)… I believe there is (and to an extent, from reader to reader), the violation of its terms can a danger that in adopting it as a manifesto, we generate powerful, long-lasting emotional responses in readers’ (2001:97). will forget that for all the exciting new territory Cioffi assesses the synthesis of word and image in works by Andrzej Mleczko, it opens up, it is still only one map. Like any map, 42 Ben Katchor, Robert Crumb and Art Spiegelman, illustrating the difficulty of ignores is the tradition of subcontracting writing, illustration, colouring and conveying subtle emotion, or thought, through image alone. lettering within comics studios. This is especially evident in long-running

Critic Marion D. Perret also highlights the synergy between the series such as Batman, Superman and Spiderman , in which narrative

‘interaction of word and mind’s eye as much as from image’ in comics concepts are constantly segmented, passed between authors while characters

(2001:144). Using an illustrated example of Hamlet Perret suggests that in are drawn and coloured by multiple hands. Since Bob Kane first invented comics, word and image fuse to increase the intensity of the reading Batman, over thirteen writers and as many artists have interpreted his experience. identity and origins. This example evidences the co-existence of multiple and

Jan Baetens is another scholar to investigate the visual-verbal shifting narratives. Each episode and series operates intertextually within interaction within comics. Through examination of the semiotic comics study a larger comics universe, supporting the argument for an interconnected

Traces en cases (1993) by Philippe Marion, Baetens argues for a synthesised semiotic model that is more relevant to contemporary practise than essential- model of comics analysis. Marion’s model of ‘mediagenius’ encompasses ist divisions. Baeten’s article, ‘Abstraction in Comics’ (2011), also supports the distinct elements of comics – images, captions and marks on the page – as case for an alternative model to sequential narrative analysis of comics. The

‘communicative’ rather than stylistic and argues that ‘the three notions of implications of this article will be detailed presently in chapter three. style, storytelling and medium are inevitably and necessarily intertwined and Catherine Khordoc’s essay ‘The Comic Book’s Soundtrack’ (2001) mutually dependent’ (2001:145-146). This model also envelopes processes of investigates the visual-verbal code of speech balloons. She asserts ‘[w]hile enunciation that produce ‘dialogue between narrator and narratee’ (Baetens: we can see that comics is composed of images and text, the issue of whether

2001:145). According to Baetens, the issue Marion’s ‘complete author’ model these components create a true hybrid, in the sense that they cannot be

43 separated, lies in the balloon’ (2001: 156). For Khordoc also, the audio-visual collecting essays from both poles of comics criticism, Varnum and Gibbons emblem of the speech balloon is unique to comics; the ‘innocuous black oval lay the foundations for a broader approach to comics theory and is simultaneously the separation between the panel’s illustration and its understanding of visual-verbal culture. accompanying text, and the link between them’ (2001:156-157). By studying the visual-verbal intersection within speech balloons, Khordoc concludes that This is by no means an exhaustive account of comics criticism, rather a survey text and image work symbiotically in comics. of selected perspectives that expose the gaps and possibilities scholarship has

Kannenberg Jr. similarly dismisses binary comics debates, arguing presented to date. It’s these perspectives, many at opposite ends of the visual-

Chris Ware’s comics demonstrate ‘words and images are conjoined in such verbal spectrum, that a model of segmentivity aims to unite. The mosaic a way that it is not possible to discuss one without considering the other’ approach of segmentivity encompasses all comics camps through its focus

(2001:177). Again grounded in semiotic theory, Kannenberg Jr. analyses on the fundamental segments of visual and verbal language employed in all comics via ‘a closed system in which the various [visual-verbal] elements sequential and non-sequential, figurative and abstract, comics forms. both act in their traditional representative fashions and, through their spatial juxtaposition, participate in creating larger units of meaning’ (2001:177).

Dissecting Ware’s page layouts, Kannenberg Jr. reveals how design can subdivide a larger sequential narrative into non-linear segments. This segmentivity enables multiple perspectives to be shown in a single spread, moving comics beyond the linear limitations of panel to panel sequences. By

44 To address developments in comics, particularly in the field of comics poetry,

Chapter III this study proposes an alternative model for analysing comics via Segmentivity vs segmentivity. By focusing on the fundamental visual and verbal segments comics comprise, this approach disentangles comics from sequential sequentiality definitions and the narrative need for ‘closure’. Segmentivity is not only

focused on individual visual-verbal components of language but how these

function to inform complex communication systems and complete works. A

model of segmentivity enables analysis of all forms of comics (narrative and

non-narrative, linear and non-linear, mainstream, experimental and comics

poetry). By exposing where, how and why poetic devices are used in comics,

segmentivity frees comics creation and critical analysis from limitations of

linear sequence and narrative interpretation. This non-sequential model is

derived from DuPlessis’ concept of poetic ‘segmentivity’ and builds upon

scholarship by Jan Baetens, Lyn Hejinian and Brian McHale.

Concepts of comics as ‘sequential art’ or static films have been

criticised by creators as increasingly irrelevant and limiting to the potential of

the art form, while at the same time there has been a surge in the recognition

45 and deployment of poetic tools within comics. Awareness of the possibilities historically active political power relations and of utilising poetic devices within comics has grown, as has the occurrence of their representation) results in lopsided readings (RBD interview:2011). comics devices in poetry. Examples include V’s iambic speech in Moore’s V for Vendetta, Ware’s word-image ‘lexias’, Craghead’s visual-verbal caesurae in

HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE and Stone’s prolific ‘poetry comics’ episodes. Similarly, comics scholarship has often ignored formal analysis in favour of

Poetry, like comics, has suffered from inadequate modes of formal ‘aspects of narrative that translate relatively effortlessly from novel to comic: analysis, cultural bias, ill-conceived definitions and content assumptions the representation of time, narrative frames, the narratee, genre’ (Gardner: based on clichés. According to DuPlessis, 2011: 53-54). Yet these narrative impulses often overlook the mosaic of seg-

Cultural studies readings often resist purely ments that inform the creation of ‘meaning’ be it narrative or anti-narrative. aesthetic strategies of formal analysis, yet to Both comics and poetry make use of formal constraints, verbal-visual address the text successfully, readings evoking metaphors, meter, juxtaposition, enjambment, countermeasure and line cultural studies methods need to assimilate formalist reading dialectically, making sure that breaks amongst other devices. The components of graphemes, words, lines, the poem gets treated as an art object saturated stanzas and page breaks are categorised as segments or ‘bounded units’ with aesthetic choices (even banal ones) […] To ignore the formal issues in a poem, to ignore the within DuPlessis’ model of ‘segmentivity’. She employs the term segmentivity signiﬁer (the material, textual, poetic matter), to describe the fundamental practice of poetry. Her approach is somewhat like to limit “cultural studies” to opinions, situations, that of a particle physicist: ‘taking away all the various things that couldn’t and rhetorics in the signiﬁed (content, semantic meaning, extractable ideas, ideologemes, possibly be an adequate definition (“musical sound”, “imagery”, “beauty”), 46 what fundamentally distinguishes poetry as a practice’ and asking ‘[w]hat was everything, is a state of sameness. It is eventless. UIFJSSFEVDJCMFFMFNFOUJOBQPFUJDUFYU 5IVTTFHNFOUJWJUZ 3#%JOUFSWJFX It’s swirling doesn’t happen. It is only by virtue of differences, that anything can occur at all (Jacket 2011). This empirical approach counters objections that DuPlessis’ definition # 14: July 2001). ‘does not satisfactorily identify the distinguishing feature of poetry because it says nothing about poetry’s content or purposes’ (Phelan in McHale:2009). It is only then, via interpretation and identification of segments within this Disentangling the components of poetry from subjective themes and ‘chaos’, that one of many possible meanings can be made. All visual and metrical assumptions is the precise point of segmentivity. Similarly, in verbal components are ‘meaningless’ until cognition occurs and we invest comics, it is not superhero themes or panel spreads that make ‘meaning’, ‘sense’. Segments are the materials from which poetic ‘essence’ is distilled, instead it is the visual and verbal components, how they interact and are derived equally from linear and non-linear, narrative and non-narrative forms. interpreted, that distinguishes comics as a form.

Structurally, each segment, regardless of theme or content, is identi- Most narrative structures arrange segments in specific syntactical sequence fied via its difference from another segment. This position is reiterated by to engender ‘meaning’ or move towards disclosure. Narrative tendencies Hejinian in her essay ‘Continuing Against Closure’ dominate cultural analysis but ‘meaning’ is capable of existing outside of such

It is only when differences emerge, making frames. A similar hegemony has subsumed comics scholarship, as attested differentiation possible, that perception, observation, and making sense can occur. by Baetens article ‘Abstraction in Comics’ (2011) in which he argues ‘[t]his a A world in the state of chaos is one that remains priori approach to narrative in comics as a mere instantiation of narrative in closed to us. Chaos, the state of undifferentiated 47 general is now under pressure (2011: 94). According to Baetens, the ratives can be shaped from ‘meaningless’ components, Baetens contends ‘it is

‘phenomenon of abstraction in comics’ is cause for critical rethinking of no less possible to gradually “downgrade” the narrative strength of apparently narrative assumptions and more formal, medium specific approaches, very narrative panels, pages, or sequences by becoming sensitive to the power especially in analysis of non-narrative comics (2011). He suggests of abstractive mechanisms’ (2011:106). By re-focusing attention on individual

segments, abstraction can be apprehended. A model of segmentivity doesn’t [a]bstraction seems to be what resists narrativization, and conversely narrativization discount narrative possibilities, rather it enables visual and verbal components seems to be what dissolves abstraction. Abstract to be understood as pieces of a work that can contain both narrative and non- comics melt in the air when narrative walks in—and vice versa. That said, the imposition of narrative elements depending on cognitive inclinations. Baetens deciphers narrative, as Wolk calls it, is far from being a sequential and narrative impulses through analysis of abstract comics, namely simple or self-evident affair: much of the material Martin Vaughn-James’s The Cage (1973) and Olivier Deprez’s Lenin Kino gathered under the ﬂag of abstract comics does resist in a very active way any attempt at (2009), concluding immediate recognition and narrative translation (Baetens: 2011: 95-96). In all these cases, it is not narrative that is desirable, but something completely different, and the study of abstraction, the prototypical

Despite the narrative resistance of abstract comics, narrative ‘upgrades’ are mechanism of all that in narrative contexts resists narrative “normalization,” can help us continually imposed by sequential modes of analysis (Baetens:2011:106). explore this tension between story and anti- While cognitive experiments like Groensteen’s have attempted to prove nar- story. What abstraction can teach us is twofold.

48 First of all, it demonstrates that narrative and powerful one, with almost ideological force; nevertheless, it is demonstrably anti-narrative are not so much different forms as untrue’ (2009:23). Not only are there identifiable gaps between words, lines different strategies of reading and looking, and that the dominance of narrative norms should and chapters, segmentation also occurs through seriality, especially evident in not prevent us from seeing the perhaps more comic series, where strips and episodes are released over months or years and covert role of non-narrative aspects. Second, characters passed from one creator to another. and more importantly, what abstraction ﬁnally shows is also the possible frailty of narrative. Shape-shifting segments

Even when it is present in apparently hegemonic Pattern seeking is a natural part of the human condition. As McCloud notes, ways, narrative can always collapse in order to give way to something totally else…(2011:110). two dots become eyes, a line makes a mouth and a circle encompassing them soon represents a face, the face tells a story. We are trained to make associa-

tions, to fashion sets of eyes from two circles and make connections when one Examining non-narrative elements within narrative works is precisely what a segment is placed beside another. As with physical objects, there is continual model of segmentivity encourages by presenting creators and critics with quest to shape temporal signs into a story with a beginning, middle and end. opportunities to develop works that challenge narrative hegemony. Sequential This is supported by Hejinian’s assertion that ‘[lo]gic inserts itself everywhere quests for an absolute start and finish pervades narrative modes of analysis, and narrative follows as fast as it can though often it can’t keep up with events whereas poetic segmentivity acknowledges the potential of ‘gaps’, line breaks since they advance in leaps that leave logicians behind’ (2001). For the most and deliberate syntactical ‘disjunction’ to incite ‘meaning’. McHale also part, studies of both comics and poetry have focused on how visual and verbal observes ‘the illusion that prose is a continuous medium, unsegmented, is a elements accrue meaning via the line or linear accumulation of components, 49 but the absolute and ‘closed’ nature of narrative sequence can’t be applied to are not organized by narrative disclosure, single all comics or poetry. Despite emerging from the ‘open’ possibilities of telos, cause and effect that can be naturalized in some way, ending as explanation or solution. comics gutters, McCloud’s concept of ‘closure’ perpetuates the obsession with They are organized by leaps, associative logic or sequencing segments into a sense of correct narrative order. Through juxtaposition, vectors of concerns (rather than sequentiality, we are trained to search for sameness, one sequitur into mono-directional argument). A vectored text with several directions and gaps is an alternative another. We are not taught to appreciate the pauses and possibilities they to sequential narrative (DuPlessis:2011). present, nor the spaces and juxtpositions of word and image. The potential for comics beyond linear panel grids has been limited by notions of narra- Seriality, as a mechanism of segmentivity, has the potential to apprehend both tive dominance and McCloud’s argument that in non-sequential comics ‘BY linear and non-linear, narrative and non-narrative comics. The aim of DEFINITION, NOTHING ‘“HAPPENS” AT ALL!’ He suggests non-sequential seriality is not narrative, nor anti-narrative. It opens possibilities of forms are incapable of conveying meaning to the same extent as sequenced simultaneity, for multiple visual and verbal segments, instead of single and forms, stating they are ‘UNCONCERNED WITH EVENTS OR ANY straight lines. Segmented seriality offers an alternative model for understand- NARRATIVE PURPOSES OF ANY SORT’ (1993:77). Opposing narrative ing comics, in particular comics poetry. Not all segments must exist in visual heirachy, DuPlessis states ‘I think of seriality as the ALTERNATIVE to and verbal sequences or straight lines to be valued. The collage, montage, sequential narrative…’ (2011: DuPlessis emphasis). Expanding on earlier cut-up and fragmented comics and poetry of Ashbery, Koch, Craghead and explanations, she outlines an alternative to narrative sequencing:

Seriality is based on smaller units of material DuPlessis attest to this. Segments (words, images, lines, stanzas,sweeps and (individual sections of poems, for instance) which 50 spaces) can be recombined and repeated in various ways to achieve a away from certainty, in form and in content, into the free verse of modernism,

‘meaning’ that differs with each context. Via segmentivity, visual-verbal into abstract lyricism, to the extremes of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Poetry and its components can be viewed and arranged in any direction, as equal or disjunc- offshoots and effects in today’s postmodernism’ (2011:50). tive elements, as well as in linear narrative order. In light of this subjectivism, the existence of simultaneity and chaos,

The quanta of literature notions of complete ‘closure’ seem increasingly artificial or as Hejinian

Visual and verbal segments are subject to interpretation, each affected by the claims uncertainty of personal, cultural, spatial and temporal perpectives. As such, a ﬁction […] If closure is problematic ethically they are not tethered to fixed meaning or purely narrative pursuits. Instead, it is untenable semantically, since nothing segments operate in both narrative and non-narrative contexts (much like the can restrain meaning, nothing can contain all the implications, ramiﬁcations, nuances, and dual properties of a photon exhibiting as both wave and particle). Poetry and connotations that cascade and proliferate from comics have similar properties when apprehended in individual any and every point in any and every instance of what is or is thought to be. And nothing can segments or accumulated within a ‘certain’ syntactical structure. In his essay arrest the ever-changing terrain of ubiquitous ‘The Universe of Quanta: Intention and Unintention in Contemporary Lyric contexts perpetually affecting these. This alone

Impulse’, Grant Caldwell suggests ‘[t]he nature of contemporary lyric poetry must keep one in a condition that is the very contrary of closed’ (2001). in Western culture may simply be a part of the quantum shift to the certainty of uncertainty in the post modern world’ (2011:53). Mapping this ‘quantum shift’ Caldwell asserts ‘poetry and poetics seems to have followed this curve Since each segment is without enforced order or narrative imperative, it leaves

51 the text ‘open’ to interaction. There is no need of an absolute beginning or measure can operate as a ‘synonym for the interplay of elements or segements end, no closure, no artifice. The process and practice of poetic segmentivity on several scales’ (2011). Where Duplessis and Shoptaw differ is in their enables simultaneity, an understanding of the chaotic components of space dealing with the scale and size of segments. While Shoptaw concentrates on and time that comprise the text and our relative interpretation of it. As stated, measure and countermeasure, searching for the ‘smallest unit of resistance segmentivity is therefore a means to examining the quanta of literature to meaning’, DuPlessis focuses on spatial arrangement. Quoting DuPlessis,

(quanta being the fundamental element of interaction). Segmented ‘matter’ McHale suggests of poetry is identifiable in prose, drama, history, verse, and equally, within At every level, however, the crucial factor in comics. It is not the content, nor is it the meter that makes it poetry, but the poetry’s construction of meaning is spacing: lived process of accumulating verbal and visual segments to make meaning. Line terminations may be rounded off by rhyme, or by specific punctuation marks, but they Narrative and performance can also be said to segment and sequence are basically defined by white space…These events, however, it is the constant and conscious spatial arrangement of segmented units can be organized into the larger page-shapes of fixed stanza, or into other page segments and subsequent negotiation of gaps (line break, stanza, page space) space thought units with their termini of various that distinguishes poetry from prose according to DuPlessis (2006:199). To kinds…All the meanings poetry makes are supplement DuPlessis’ definition of segmentivity, McHale, in his article constructed by segmented units of a variety of sizes (DuPlessis in McHale: 2009). ‘Beginning to Think about Narrative in Poetry’, borrows John Shoptaw’s definition of ‘a poem’s measure as “its smallest unit of resistance to meaning”’ (Shoptaw in McHale: 2009:16). According to DuPlessis, counter-

52 Accordingly, the concept of segmentivity can be applied to other forms, like or digital, that contextualises and conveys information (2006:198). Spatial comics, for it is useful in understanding the selection and deployment of constructions are both actual and metaphorical and can be identified in the panels, frames, speech balloon, thought bubbles, captions and gutters. segments of both comics and poetry. This study is most interested in the

Shoptaw’s concentration on countermeasure and the conflict between lines, hypertextual and the multiple spaces between word and image; not just sections, words and or images is less applicable than an encompassing model within lines or panels but rather the cuts and clicks where ‘poetry’ occurs, of segmentivity because segmentivity does not rely on resistance, although it opening cognitive possibilities as much as producing disclosure. The dimen- doesn’t reject it. Resistance, rhyme and repetition occur in poetry and in com- sion in which meaning is made or imagined isn’t a flat one, it can’t always be ics, but these techniques are not fundamental in the same way segments are. neatly sequenced into lines.

Segmentivity doesn’t necessitate friction between elements in the way Both comics and poetry, and indeed comics poetry, comprise hybrid countermeasure does. verbal-visual segments that are not always linear or sequential. It can be

argued that neither comics nor poetry are merely read up and down or side to

My approach diverges from DuPlessis, Shoptaw and McHale’s concentration side, instead they are sieved through relative interpretations of space, time and on the ‘line’ in favour of a mosaic approach to ‘reading’ segments that individual contexts that cannot be wholly contained or conveyed by the page or accommodates the interaction of word and image within comics and poetry. screen. Poetry and comics accrue meaning simultaneously via segmentivity,

DuPlessis focuses on the mechanism of the line, arguing ‘we have to acknowl- through the interaction of multiple components. Through sematic structures edge “line” as a crucial communicative means of poetry itself’, whereas I we code and remix significance into symbols, letters, ellipses, the edges of suggest it is the arrangement of segments, be it linear or non-linear, physical panels, fragments, frames, borders and gutters. These seemingly sequential

53 structures are reliant on cognitive interaction, interpretation and iteration of disparate segments as in ‘subject to subject’, ‘scene to scene’, ‘aspect to aspect’ or ‘non-sequitur’ comics. Segments are spatially and temporally arranged for the page or screen or performance though they needn’t be boxed into narrative sequences or linear forms to be valued. By removing the sequential, linear and narrative imperatives, comics panels, captions and images can flow into one another. Without the narrative need for ‘closure’, non-linear and abstract texts can remain ‘open’, constantly interacting, without absolute beginning or end, without artifice. ‘Sequential art’ is but one of many ways to understand comics as will be demonstrated in the following examples of comics poetry.

54 The previous chapter revealed how the segmented matter and mechanisms

Chapter IV of poetry are found in comics and vice versa. This cross-pollination can be Contextualising linked to the common origins of visual poetry, concrete poetry, artists’ books as well as examples within mainstream and alternative comics. Comics poetry comics poetry combines visual-verbal elements from fields of comics and poetry. The

following lineage of comics poetry is comprised of flexible boundaries that are

open to inclusion of other influences and new developments in the field. As

with any study, there are disputed inclusions and omissions. While sweeping

inclusions like Egyptian hieroglyphs, Mayan codices, the Bayeux Tapestry, are

often refuted by comics critics, my research charts a similarly ancient

trajectory, tracing the development of comics poetry through traditions of

stone art and hieroglyphics, poetic traditions of illuminated books, the

political nature of early strips and later spatial experiments by avant-garde and

concrete poets.

A thorough account of the evolution of visual-verbal art forms is

detailed in Karl Kempton’s essay Visual Poetry: A Brief History of Ancestral

Roots and Modern Traditions (2005). Relative to the transformation of

55 symbols into alphabetical code, Kempton defines a visual poem ‘as a poem Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem ‘Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Aborlira Le Hasard’ composed or designed to be consciously seen’ that can comprise ‘word, text, (1896) is often referred to as the precursor of modern visual poetry. By note, code, petroglyph, letter, phonic character, type, cipher, symbol, understanding the page and all marks upon it as the matter of poetic pictograph, sentence, number, hieroglyph, rhythm, iconograph, grammar, meaning, Mallarmé introduced multiple, ‘open’, non-linear reading paths. His cluster, stroke, ideogram, density, pattern, diagram, logogram, accent, line, symbolist techniques as well as spatial and typographical experimentation are color, measure, etc.’ (2005). Kempton also identifies two English definitions credited for giving rise to the visual poetry of Guillaume Apollinaire and E.E for the term poem: ‘poem itself the long standard accepted usage; rune is Cummings, along with various other aesthetically influenced avant-garde rarely used. Poem is derived ‘from the Greek root to make via Latin’ while the movements. According to Kempton, the list of sources for visual poetry since

‘older rune is of Keltic origin and means poem, part of poem, magic poem, 1900 should include spell, charm, amulet, and song’ (2005). He suggests that the concept of Favism, Cubism, Collage, Italian Futurism, images has also evolved, from stone art to abstract symbols in other mediums Russian Futurism, Imagism, Orphism, Vorticism, that informed ‘proto-writing’ prior to the invention of alphabetical systems. Constructivism, Dada, De Stijl, Surrealism, Bauhaus, various Japanese avant-garde Kempton also cites sources of Chinese calligraphy and later illuminated books movements of the 1920s, Lettrism, Kinetic, such as William Blake’s The Book of Thel (1789) and The Marriage of Heaven Concrete Poetry, Fluxus, Pop, Op, Visual Poetry, Correspondence/Mail Art, Russian Transfurism, and Hell (1790). Minimalism, Conceptualism, and Book Art. Also Spatial experiments woven into this discussion should be the impact

Spatial arrangement of segments in visual poetry is vital to the form. of photography, motion pictures, print media,

56 the internet and the rapid development of an evident in Apollinaire’s Calligrammes: Poems of war and peace 1913-1916 international culture (2005). (1918) in which the works operate as poem and painting. Apollinaire’s influence helped spawn Concrete Poetry movements that spread through

Brazil, Europe, Japan and later in other English speaking countries. As with visual poetry, modern comics have been influenced by Futurist

Mary Ellen Solt’s Concrete Poetry: A world View (1968) presents a attempts to depict motion in static forms and the Cubist pursuit of simulta-

comprehensive account of the early developments in this field and the neous perspectives. In The Aesthetics of Visual Poetry, 1914-1928 (1986), Wil-

emergence of the term ‘poesia concreta’ or concrete poetry following an lard Bohn also notes the cross-pollination between forms, suggesting that ‘[i]

exhibition of works by the Brazilian collective ‘Noigandres’ comprising poets, n order to facilitate simultaneous perception as well as simultaneous concep-

Haroldo de Campos, Augusto de Campos and Decio Pignatari. First tion, artists and writers began to experiment with simultaneity in their works’

published in 1956, their concrete manifesto asserts (1986:51). These experiments commonly consisted of collage, juxtaposed visual-verbal elements and hypertextual possibilities that reflected fragment- …the concrete poet sees the word in itself – a ed experiences of war and rapid advances in technology. magnetic ﬁeld of possibilities – like a dynamic The ‘chief priest’ of simultanism is arguably Apollinaire whose essay object, a live cell […] the poetic nucleus is no longer placed in evidence by the successive ‘Simultanisme-Librettisme’ laid foundations for the ‘ideographic poetry’ he and linear chaining of verses, but by a system later called calligrams (Bohn:1986:56). These visual works arranged poetry of relationships and equilibriums between into representational shapes, flames, rain, horses and the Eiffel Tower, which all parts of the poem[…]graphic-phonetic functions-relations (“factors of proximity and encouraged simultaneous viewing of verbal and visual components. This is likeness”) and the substantive use of space 57 as an element of composition maintain a the occurrence of comics devices in poetry. In addition to shared visual-verbal simultneous dialectic of eye and voice, which, structures (symbolism, size of stanzas and panels, page layout, rhythm, allied with the ideogrammic synthesis of meaning, creates a sentient “verbivocovisual” typographical experimentation) comics and poetry have an established, totality. In this way words and experience are though often neglected, history of exchange, collaboration and inter-textual juxtaposed in a tight phenomenological unit referencing. With shared visual-verbal foundations, it follows that comics and impossible before (de Campos trans.Tolman). poetry inevitably intersect.

Interaction between modern forms of poetry and comics can be Concrete poetry recognised the potential of graphemes, gaps and hypertext, seen in New York School examples such as John Ashbery’s sestina ‘Farm arguing that ‘open’ spaces, be they verbal or visual, enable active engagement Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape’ featuring Popeye, as well as Joe within the poem. Combined with Apollinaire’s concept of simultaneity, these Brainard’s Nancy texts (1963-1978). Ashbery and Brainard’s collaborative synthesised visual-verbal approaches later gave rise to collections of efforts in The Vermont Notebook (1975) can also be considered in a list of experimental visual poems and what this study terms, comics poetry. precursory comics poetry. Kenneth Koch’s passion for comics is well Comics poetry is a field influenced by, though distinct from, visual documented, as is the injection of comics characters and subject matter into poetry, illuminated books, concrete poetry and illustrated prose. The term his poetry. After a failed attempt to collaborate with comics creator Stan Lee, comics poetry can be applied in two ways: as a label for works that specifically Koch eventually created his own collection of comics poetry titled The Art Of experiment with combinations of segmentivity, countermeasure, metaphor etc The Possible: Comics Mainly Without Pictures (2004) demonstrating some of and the visual-verbal comics vocabulary of panels, speech balloons, captions, the potential interactions for comics and poetry. etc; and as a method for analysing the use of poetic techniques in comics and 58 In Europe, a leading example of comics poetry is Dino Buzatti’s Poem grid, brushstrokes or penstrokes, and sometimes colours’ (Molotiu 2009:12).

Strip (1969). Early practitioners of the art form in Australia include Jas. H. As Baetens argues, non-narrative approaches to comics are not about dismiss-

Duke and Ken Bolton. Duke’s Destiny Wood (1978) placed poetry inside ing narrativity, instead they allow readers to notice ‘certain aspects of (anti) speech balloons while Bolton’s Magic Sam series employed comics structures OBSSBUJWFUIBUGBMMPVUTJEF PSBSFUIFZSBUIFSCVSJFEEFFQXJUIJO UIFVTVBM to segment the page and text. reading grid’ (2011: 111).

Andrei Molotiu’s Abstract Comics: The Anthology also includes Additional evidence of comics poetry can also be found within the comics by Hankiewicz, Jason Overby, Billy Mavreas and Greg Shaw which series of Kramers Ergot anthologies edited by Sammy Harkham. These experiment with poetic techniques of repetition, rhythm and symbolism. collections of alternative comics feature works by creators such as Souther

Molotiu notes that ‘[d]evelopments in the direction of abstract comics have Salazar, Daniel Clowes, Seth and Ware who experiment with poetic also taken place in other media, most importantly in visual poetry’ citing techniques of repetition, rhythm and non-linear structure. Seth, the Canadian works by George Smith and Cristina Filicia dos Santos (2009:12). Despite cartoonist and creator of Palookaville , has explicitly compared the form of acknowledging most abstract comics are ‘found outside the narrowly defined comics to poetry, stating medium of comics’, the lack of alternative non-narrative models sees Molotiu, I have felt for some time, a connection between like many critics, apply sequential narratives to the page rather than encour- comics and poetry. It’s an obvious connection to aging readers to interpret non-sequential patterns and hypertextual possibili- anyone who has ever sat down and tried to write a comic strip. I think the idea ﬁrst occurred to ties (2009:12). This conflicts directly with his call to strip away comics me way back in the late 80s when I was studying assumptions and focus on ‘the medium’s most basic elements – the panel Charles Schulz’s Peanut strips. It seemed so

59 clear that his four-panel setup was just like This perceived ‘complexity’ of language is but one feature of comics poetry. reading a haiku; it has a speciﬁc rhythm to how Comics poetry challenges conventional formulations as it comprises works he set up the panels and the dialogue (2006: 17). that do not strictly operate as ‘sequential art’. These works are segmented,

often non-linear and experiment with simultaneity, spatial word and image

Rhythm in comics, like poetry, refers to the systematic arrangement of assembly, metaphor, countermeasure, repetition and rhythm as a means of segments that produce a sense of meter. The potential for ‘Comics-As-Poetry’ exploring the possibilities of textual-visual language in comics forms within has also been noted by critic Rob Clough. He focuses on poetic rhythm and panels, gutters, captions, speech and thought balloons. Comics poetry is not meter in reviews of comics by John Hankiewicz, Tom Neely, Aaron Cockle, intended to be a constrictive formula, rather, it is a platform for

Malcy Duff and L. Nichols. For Clough, these comics function as poetry by understanding, exposing and encouraging the development of practices and employing critical investigations that unite comics and poetry.

…compact, frequently cryptic imagery in order to force the reader to engage it outside of the Comics Poets framework of an expected narrative, it also The practice of comics creators and critics like Garry Sullivan, Matt Madden, adds an additional layer of complexity when the reader is […] asked to grapple with the tension Tom Hart, Derik Badman, Seth, Warren Craghead, Bianca Stone and between word and image’ (The Comics Journal # Alexander Rothman is also informed by poetry. Comics poets emphasise the

301: 2009) difference between illustrating poetry and creating works that explore the

visual-verbal vocabulary of both comics and poetry. Their works engage with

60 poetic techniques to broaden the visual-verbal vocabulary of comics.

As this chapter outlines, segmentivity can be found in all forms of literature, not only poetry. The following case studies concentrate on narrative and non-narrative comics and comics poetry by Moore, Buzzati,

Ware, Craghead, Madden, Hahn, Hankiewicz, Stone, Rothman, Farrell, and

Franklin among others. These examples are not intended to be absolute, complete, canonical or unbiased. This is not a history of all comics or comics poetry. Rather, these works have been selected to exemplify the diversity of comics poetry practices and expose possibilities for experimentation within forms of comics and comics poetry. Examination of these works illuminates the phenomenon of cross-pollination between comics and poetry. By demonstrating how segmentivity operates within each case study, this investigation reveals the potential for segmentivity to be applied as an encompassing model for comics analysis. Analysing and expanding comics poetry has significant implications for enhancing creative and critical approaches to comics, poetry and visual culture as a whole.

61 A comprehensive comics theory must be relevant to the works of the most

Alan Moore recognised creators as well as the spectrum of experimental comics. To fully Poetic parallels realise the potential for a model of segmentivity, this study examines how segments and poetic devices are employed across all forms of comics,

narrative, non-narrative, linear and non-linear.

Enter one of the most notorious comics minds, creator and occultist

Alan Moore. For many, English born Moore is the godfather of modern

comics. This honour has been granted for his works V for Vendetta (1982),

Watchmen (1986), From Hell (1991), Big Numbers (1990), The League of

Extraordinary Gentlemen (1999), Promethea (1999) and Lost Girls (2006)

among numerous others. Since commencing his comics career in the late

1970s, Moore’s works have achieved cult status and are highly regarded for

their thematic complexity and mythic depth. He is often credited with

developing the form of ‘graphic novels’ and is an outspoken critic of the

commercial tactics of the comics industry and the many adaptations of his

comics into film. Moore has also noted the inadequacy of comparisons

between comics and film in relation to Eisner’s studies;

62 ensuing restricted zones across London. Defying the restrictions, sixteen-year- As much as I admire Eisner, I think maintaining that approach in recent history has done more old Evey Hammond sets out to meet someone when she’s set upon by under- harm than good. If you approach comics as a poor relation to ﬁlm, you are left with a movie cover police. Evey is rescued by “V”, an anarchist and revolutionary antihero, that does not move, has no soundtrack and lacks who wears a Guy Fawkes mask. He takes Evey to his home, ‘THE SHADOW the beneﬁt of having a recognizable movie star in GALLERY’, where his plans to overthrow the government are slowly revealed the lead role (quoted in Boucher:2008). through a series of poetic speeches.

The following analysis concentrates on the poetic axis and symbolism of

Moore’s work, offering an alternative to filmic comparisons.

V for Vendetta

V for Vendetta is a narrative comic woven through the use of poetic devices, alliteration, rhyme, rhythm, repetition, meter and direct quotations from Figure has been removed due to Copyright restrictions. poems by Goethe, Yeats and Blake. This work is the result of a collaboration between Moore and visual artist David Lloyd. Initially published as a black and white series, and later collected and coloured as an extended DC edition, the comic is part socio-political commentary, part post-apocalyptic revolution plot. Dense with metaphor and symbolism, V for Vendetta begins with ‘THE VOICE OF FATE’ broadcasting details of the latest police raids and

Alan Moore and David Lloyd V For Vendetta. New York: DC Comics, 1990, p.31. 63 V uses simile and theatrical metaphors to deliver his message,

THEY’VE FORGOTTEN THE DRAMA OF IT ALL, YOU SEE. THEY ABANDONED THEIR SCRIPTS WHEN THE WORLD WITHERED IN THE GLARE OF THE NUCLEAR FLOODLIGHTS.

I’M GOING TO REMIND THEM ABOUT MELODRAMA. ABOUT THE TUPPENNY RUSH AND THE PENNY DREADFUL. YOU SEE Figure has been removed due to Copyright restrictions. EVEY, ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE AND EVERY THING ELSE…

IS VAUDEVILLE (1990:31).

The segments of V’s speech are spatially arranged like stanzas, the balloon

and panel size determining the enjambment of lines. According to Wolk,

‘[w]henever he or one of his characters has something meaningful to say, the

language Moore uses shifts into an iambic gallop’ (2007: 235). This iambic

meter is evident in V’s speech on page 201.

Alan Moore and David Lloyd. V For Vendetta. New York: DC Comics, 1990, p.201. 64 …YOU SEE, MY THE GUNPOWDER TREASON SHOULD EVER BE FORGOT’ (1990:14). RIVAL, THOUGH INCLINED TO ROAM, These poetic devices and riddles are woven into V’s dialogue, his referencing POSSESSED AT HOME Goethe’s Faust , The Bible and even Billy Holiday. At first the puzzles A WIFE THAT HE ADORED. confound Evey but slowly poetic clues reveal V’s method as he introduces her

HE’LL RUE HIS to a cabaret of cultural references and shelves of books including Shakespeare PROMISCUITY, THE ROGUE WHO STOLE MY ONLY LOVE, and Dante’s Divine Comedy. V saves cultural relics otherwise crushed by state WHEN HE’S INFORMED HOW MANY YEARS IT IS… control inside his home, ‘THE SHADOW GALLERY’. The Shadow Gallery

is a metaphor for the unseen and forgotten histories that inform the present SINCE FIRST I state of control. It is through V’s citation of William Blake’s poem ‘AND DID BEDDED HIS (1990: 201). THOSE FEET IN ANCIENT TIME’ that his crusade becomes clearer.

These lines demonstrate Moore’s deliberate and symbolic use of rhyme and Beginning with the line ‘BRING ME MY BOW,’ the poem is meter to stress V’s message. Overt allusions to Shakespeare are also apparent segmented across several panels showing V picking Violet Carson roses, as V confronts Evey’s attackers while quoting Macbeth, ‘THE MULTIPLYING another symbol of the working class. Verbal segmentation responds to visual

VILLAINIES OF NATURE DO SWARM UPON HIM…’ (1990: 11). V uses elements in each panel, the garden imbued with irony in context of England’s rhyme to hint at his anarchistic plan through the Guy Fawkes verse: nuclear wasteland, ‘I WILL NOT CEASE FROM MENTAL FIGHT…NOR

‘REMEMBER, REMEMBER THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER, THE SHALL MY SWORD SLEEP IN MY HAND…TILL WE HAVE BUILT

GUNPOWDER TREASON AND PLOT. I KNOW OF NO REASON WHY JERUSALEM…IN ENGLAND’S GREEN AND PLEASANT LAND’ (1990:48). 65 These poetic quotations are themselves examples of segmentivity: not only are

they extracted from original texts but they’re bound again inside speech

balloons. Balloons often segment speech in response to images and to

accommodate the size of each panel. The resulting line breaks are akin to

caesura in poetry and transform the rhythm of the original poem.

Segmentation of word and image is an important structural and

aesthetic device in V for Vendetta, enabling multiple poetic messages to be

coded into the text. By selecting and segmenting literary allusions, Moore

Figure has been removed due to Copyright restrictions. and Lloyd layer hidden symbols that operate outside of V’s central narrative.

An example of this is the illustrated music score created as the prelude to

Book II. This ‘VICIOUS CABARET’ tells of ‘THRILLS, CHILLS AND GIRLS

GALORE’ that veil a sinister curtain call for Evey as she is cast out into the

world without the guidance of V. This cabaret is a façade, a metaphor for the

theatre of cruelty that is fascist control, a sideshow where anyone can see ‘SEX

AND DEATH AND HUMAN GRIME IN MONOCHROME FOR ONE THIN

DIME…’(1990: 89). Through the rhythm of bounded units, audiences piece

together the roles that are played in the cabaret.

Alan Moore and David Lloyd. V For Vendetta. New York: DC Comics, 1990, p.48. 66 Figure has been removed due to Copyright restrictions.

Alan Moore and David Lloyd. V For Vendetta. New York: DC Comics, 1990, p.48 67 Moore’s intertextual referencing creates a metapoem acknowledging the film adaptations of his comics. His works often juxtapose symbols to develop sources and literary concepts with which comics engage. Visual and verbal a visual-verbal metaphor, as in Rorschach’s opening journal entry segmentation encourages the audience to make symbolic, intertextual and DOG CARCASS IN ALLEY multi-linear leaps across captions, panels, spaces, pages and chapter sections THIS MORNING, TIRE TREAD ON BURST STOMACH. THIS to achieve deeper understanding. Interpretation of Moore’s metapoem is CITY IS AFRAID OF ME ‘open’, varying in accordance with the reader’s referential spectrum. A I HAVE SEEN ITS TRUE FACE. similarly interpretive process is required to negotiate non-linear constructions THE STREETS ARE EXTENDED in poetry, the ellipsis of time and condensed imagery. GUTTERS AND THE GUTTERS ARE FULL OF BLOOD AND Who watches the Watchmen? WHEN THE DRAINS FINALLY Moore’s construction of WATCHMEN , in collaboration with artist Dave SCAB OVER, ALL THE VERMIN WILL Gibbons, can also be comprehended via a model of segmentivity. Originally DROWN (1987:1). issued in twelve parts, Moore explains that in the comic series ‘[t]he world that was presented didn’t really hang together in terms of a linear cause and effect These entries are segmented into six and seven line stanzas arranged across but was instead seen as some massively complex simultaneous event with the top of the first six panels. Gibbons artwork doesn’t just visually translate connection made of coincidence and synchronicity’ (The Mindscape of Alan the dog carcass or the whores and politicians, instead it depicts the icon of a

Moore: 2003). The unique synthesis of word and image within comics allows smiley yellow-face splattered with blood. The poetic juxtaposition of visual for simultaneity, something Moore has exploited in an attempt to discourage and verbal segments transcends narrative expectations of explanatory

68 captions. The blood-stained smiley face features throughout WATCHMEN, dull gems; semi-precious stones scarcely worth recurring like a poetic motif. According to Groensteen, the symbol collecting (Moore: 1987). produces ‘rhyme and remarkable configurations’ that appeal to cyclical readings of the work (2009). Within Moore’s comics, poetry is consistently used as a tool for

The ‘graphic novel’ edition of WATCHMEN also includes fictional transformation, a lens for seeing the world differently and remembering the articles from Daniel Dreiberg (a.k.a Nite Owl). These asides segment magic that society has forgotten. Poetry again features in the final issue of chapters and are threaded with poetic questioning, as evidenced in the the WATCHMEN series as Shelly’s poem ‘Ozymandias’ (1818) serves as the following excerpt: epigraph.

The poetic curse of Promethea Is it possible, I wonder, to study a bird so close- ly, to observe and catalogue its peculiarities in Moore’s passion for poetry, myth and magic symbolism is ever apparent in such minute detail, that they become invisible? Promethea. The thirty-two issues of Promethea, also collected in five books, Is it possible that while fastidiously calibrating the span of its wings or the length of its tarsus, are drawn by J.H Williams III, Mick Gray and Charles Vess. Moore’s intro- we somehow lose sight of its poetry?[…]This duction to Book I opens with a stanza from Charlton Sennet’s epic poem ‘A is not to say that we should cease to establish Faerie Romance’ in which Promethea is described as a handmaiden ‘“with facts and to verify our information, but merely to suggest that unless those facts can be imbued skin like polished betel-wood”’ (2000: 3). He traces the incarnations of the with the ﬂash of poetic insight then they remain mysterious Promethea through comics strips, from Margaret Taylor Case’s

Little Margie in Misty Magic Land in the early 1900s to William Woolcott’s 69 series later taken on by Steven Shelly, and describes Promethea as ‘a genuine piece of American Folklore in action, of poetry in motion’ (2007:4).

Promethea begins with Moore reimagining an ancient story set in

Alexandria in 411 A.D. The daughter of a hermetic scholar must flee as Coptic

Orthodox Christians threaten her father’s life. Following his death, Promethea is entrusted to the gods Thoth and Hermes who take her to their world,

‘THE IMMATERIA’, where she is transformed into a myth as a form of immortal protection. Flash-forward to an alternative New York 1999 A.D and student Sophie Bangs invokes Promethea by writing poems about her; ‘I am Figure has been removed due to Copyright restrictions. the words made flesh, the flesh made words. I am Promethea’ (2000:31). The poem uses a handwritten font that differentiates it from the capitalised captions. Through invocation of Promethea, various adventures unfold until in Book II, chapter four, Bangs encounters a magician who teaches her about the symbolism of Sumerian and tantric disciplines. As the episode progresses, traditional comics panels are replaced by fluid segments that are read around the page rather than left to right. These circular page constructs reflect esoteric themes of time-dilation and reincarnation.

Moore, Williams, and Gray Promethea Book I. New York: DC Comics, 1999. 70 This episode also marks a shift away from conventionally structured panels and page layouts. In chapter five the panels are arranged in a landscape format that requires the book to be turned sideways for reading, while chapter six is completely void of traditional panels. The episode is appropriately titled ‘Metaphore’ with Moore employing the Tarot’s Major

Arcana cards as metaphorical tools to navigate allegorical roots of humanity and the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

In keeping with Promethea’s poetic origins, Moore communicates the comic’s central messages through rhyming couplets, coiling and connecting Figure has been removed due to Copyright restrictions. her story to the eternity of the Immateria. Glowing snakes on Promethea’s caduceus illuminate the scenes and each serpent’s stanza is contained in neon-rimmed speech balloons. As Promethea progresses, the comic relies less on traditional devices of sequential panels as Moore and his team of artists instead employ multi-layered imagery. These layers link visual-verbal segments to create a continuous strand rather than sequenced frames. The resulting ‘spacetime’ is dilated across pages and in the thirty-two pages of

Book IV a cyclical monologue replaces narrative sequence (Wolk: 2007: 250).

Moore, Williams, and Gray. Promethea Book II New York: DC Comics, 2001. 71 In Book V of Promethea the final chapter is designed as a fold-out poster

which entwines all paths of the Tarot and Sepherot to heighten the sense of

simultaneity. Simulating psychedelic states, word and image are overlaid in

multiple colours. The convergence of colours, historical figures, alchemic

practice, scientific fact and visual-verbal language symbolise the unification of

consciousness or ‘humanity’s evolving soul’ (Moore: 2005.) Promethea, in all

her manifestations, demonstrates the relevance of poetry to comics creation

and analysis.

Figure has been removed due to Copyright restrictions.

Moore, Williams, and Gray. Promethea Book V. New York: DC Comics, 2005. 72 Closing the gap between conventional comics and poetic possibilities is Chris

Chris Ware Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth and ACME Novelty Labyrinths and lexias Library. Since its publication in 1993, this series has appeared in a variety of formats with variable casts of characters including Jimmy Corrigan, Quimby

the Mouse, Rusty Brown and Chalky White. Ware’s work routinely features

tiny fonts, cut-outs, paper-fold projects, facsimiles, code-like diagrams and

full-page spreads that aren’t confined to conventional comics devices. Within

the ACME Novelty Library sentences often unfurl across several pages and

non-sequential scenes. Ware’s non-linear techniques challenge traditional

definitions of comics as he works to derail narrative conventions and

audience expectation via elaborate architectural and maze-like presentations

of panels. He punctuates the predominantly two-dimensional form of comics

with three-dimensional scenes that suggest multiple reading paths. Of this

process, Ware states

It’s as though we’re trying to write a powerful, deeply engaging, richly detailed epic with a series of limericks. I’ve just tried to expand the possibilities for the [comics] form, just to get 73 in a little more sense of a real experience (in …Ware’s diagram seems to be arguing for a Kannenberg, Jr, 2001: 174). sense of the comics medium that is much nearer to language and linguistic concerns than McCloud’s…This revised deﬁnition might also allow for more variety in the nature of visual Ware’s acknowledgement of the similarities between comics and poetry juxtaposition than mere narrative sequence, has been echoed by fellow comics creators such as Seth, who likens Charles since several of the series of panels in this

Schulz’s Peanuts strips to haiku. Although recurring characters and narrative diagram aren’t sequential: often they present arrays or ranges of possibilities, from which a elements still exist in Ware’s works, critics like Kannenberg Jr., Issac Cates single example is selected (Cates in Ball and and Martha B. Kuhlman have focused on the ways in which his structural, Kuhlman: 2010: 91). spatial, temporal and typographic experiments have reengineered word-image interactions within comics and visual theory. According to Kannenberg Jr. Ware’s intricate diagrams seem to externalise the internal mechanics of his ‘[t]ext reads as an image in Ware’s comics, conflating the two sign systems in characters, mapping the inarticulate and coded corridors of childhood memo- ways which question the binary text/image opposition’ (2001:174). Ware’s non- ry and relationships. Complex characters like Jimmy Corrigan aren’t confined sequential segmentation of panels undermines Eisner and McCloud’s claims to an absolute path, a single dimension or linear narrative. There is no single that single panels are not comics. Several pages within the ACME Novelty starting point or finish line for Ware’s ‘comics poetics’ but this dense syntax Library feature single panels and coded diagrams that operate outside the of symbols and multi-layered metaphors demonstrate the possibility for narrative sequence. Of these external segments, Cates comments comics to be understood via poetic devices (Cates: 2010:97). This process of

74 subdivision can be compared to visual poems that segment a word or line the non-linear chronology and repetition in Ware’s comics to the fragmented outside the ‘frame’ of the stanza. Ware’s single panels emphasise the stilling narration of the French nouveau roman’ (Ball and Kuhlman:2010: 18). While of narrative time and an awareness of the simultaneity of the comics form Kuhlman’s article ‘In the Comics Workshop: Chris Ware and the Oubapo’ where words and images are designed to be seen and read. In Thomas also compares his work to the French literary tradition, ‘specifically, Oulipo

Bredehoft’s essay, ‘Comics Architecture, Multidimensionality, and Time: (L’Ouvroir de Littéature Potentielle) and Oubapo (L’Ouvroir de Bande

Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth’, he suggests Dessinée Potentielle)’ (2010). She assesses how the generative experiments

Ware’s multi-dimensional treatment of the page ‘allow[s] a single group of these two schools inform Ware’s disruption of sequentiality through use of panels to be read simultaneously in more than one linear sequence’ of multi-linear page spreads and ‘acrostic’ strips (Groensteen in Kuhlman:

(2006:869-90). 2010). Ware’s linking and layering of word and image emphasise the need for

Complex word and image arrangements within the ACME Novelty poetic interpretation in deciphering diagrams that edge each episode closer to

Library aren’t limited to conventional square panels, speech balloons, single the ‘real experience’ he’s attempting to invoke. This is evidenced in his page spreads or sequential structures. Ware’s covers also warn the contents metaphoric series ‘Building Stories’. are ‘a bold experiment in reader tolerance’. Inside, his multi-linear layouts, In the first episode of ‘Building Stories’ Ware introduces the self- circular panels and spiralling text segments heighten the sense of simultane- reflective character of a three-story building, personified and brought to life, ous reading strands, at once revealing and concealing the characters’ inter- in part, by the lived experiences and memories of its inhabitants. Through textual library of memories. A ‘poly-sequential’ approach to reading Ware’s humanisation of the Humboldt Park row house, spatial concerns are given work is also suggested by the critic Jan Baetens. Baeten’s analysis ‘compares a voice. Critic Matt Godbey argues that Ware uses this voice to condemn the

75 gentrification and ‘erasure of much of the physical and cultural history of

U.S cities in the name of progress’ (2010:124). Space is not only an aesthetic concern, it’s a social one. Through three-dimensional cross-sections of the building, Ware exposes the inner workings of the apartments, its memories and secrets collected via the lives of the building’s ‘301 tenants’. This history is overlaid upon the three-dimensional diagram, detailing the ‘3 births’;

‘2 deaths’; ‘106,323 breakfasts’; ‘231 drain clogs’; ‘61 broken dinner plates’;

’13,246 light bulbs’; ‘21,779 toenail clippings’; ‘617 dead plants’; ’32,931 lies’ and ‘29 broken hearts’ the building has experienced, amongst other things.

This listing develops a poetic rhythm, each memory positioned in space, and accumulated over time. As its landlady ages, and properties are demolished across the city, the building’s anxiety about the future increases:

Here’s where my concerns begin. Now, the long- burning lamp of my long-yearning landlady seems to fray, falter, and ﬁzzle […] So then, what? The thought of such utter vacancy ﬁlls me with dread unlike any other’ (quoted in Godbey: 2010:127).

Chris Ware. ‘Building Stories: Part 3’: New York Magazine: October 2, 2005. 76 The final episode of ‘Building Stories’ suggests these fears have been realised. you have all the tools of visual art at your Flashing forward five years, the building has been silenced by the presence of disposal, then why put words in a box (Ware in Kannenberg: 2001: 10). Starbucks and a sign that states it will soon be bordered by new condos. This silence is a metaphor for the disappearance of diverse communities as capitalism ‘cleans’ up the city. Works within Quimby the Mouse (2003) and the ACME Novelty Library

Further in-depth analysis of Ware’s multi-linear works has been series address this neglect by experimenting with the creation of ‘lexias’ or undertaken by Ball and Kuhlman in The Comics of Chris Ware (2010). panels of co-dependent word and image arrangements, which emphasise the

Situating Ware within an interdisciplinary framework, they suggest ‘his work simultaneous and complementary act of viewing words and reading images exposes and manipulates the language of comics in ways that demand a great (Kannenberg: 2001:180). Ware states deal of the reader and test the representational possibilities of the medium’ I’ve done strips where I’ve tried to make the (2010:10). Ware’s manipulation of visual and verbal language operates at a words the structure on which the pictures are molecular level, with careful attention paid to the interaction and placement hung as opposed to the other way around, which is the way comics are usually thought of – a of word and image on the page. In an interview for the Comics Journal, Ware series of pictures with the words plopped down observes on top (quoted in Kannenberg 2001).

[t]he way text is used visually in comics seems to me to be so incredibly limited. It’s the one avenue in comics that seems to have more Evidence of this can be seen in the multi-linear layouts and ‘lexias’ presented or less been completely untouched […]when in the Quimby episode, ‘I HATE YOU’ (2003:59). This episode depicts a 77 desperate Quimby painting billboard-sized text ‘I HATE YOU AND I’M SURE

OF IT THIS TIME.’ Quimby interacts with the letters, using the A as a ladder and firing bullets into his dysfunctional sidekick, Sparky the Cat, between the words ‘REALLY’, ‘I JUST DECIDED’ and ‘I THOUGHT YOU’D LIKE

TO KNOW’(2003:59). Ware’s spatial arrangements deliberately challenge linear narrative approaches to both viewing and reading. Not only does the experimental typography lead in multiple directions, it also cuts across panels and in the final grid of the page words replace two of the image panels.

Shrinking font size is suggestive of Quimby’s regret as he walks through the final panels alone, almost, until the ghost of Sparky the Cat returns.

Ware’s other lexical devices include his use of fake newspaper spreads interspersed with advertisements for invented products such as

‘SUCCESS BRAND SNORT – ALWAYS AT LEAST 78% PURE… ’ (2005).

These advertising panels are often filled with descriptions that function as asides to the narrative:

Chris Ware. ‘I HATE YOU’ in Quimby the Mouse. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2003, p.59. 78 The advertisement is strategically placed within the context of the article ‘IT

TAKES HEALTHY NERVES…TO FLY THE MAIL AT NIGHT’. These

segments are simultaneously verbal and visual, carefully constructed to

simulate the typography and style of advertising.

Ware’s complex spatio-temporal lexias demonstrate what is possible

when approaches to comics are propelled beyond sequential boundaries

towards simultaneity and poetic possibilities.

Chris Ware. The ACME Novelty Library Final Report to Shareholders.New York: Pantheon, 2005. 79 Having established the existence of comics poetry within these more well

Dino Buzzati known examples of comics, the next studies expose developments in works of Seeding the dedicated comics poetry. Perhaps the first self-proclaimed work of comics poetry is Dino

Poem Strip Buzzati’s Poem Strip (1969). Poem Strip , often described as a graphic novel, is

the graphic re-interpretation of the myth of Orpheus and his descent into the

underworld to rescue his love, Eurydice. At the time of publication, the avant-

garde Italian writer and artist received negative reviews for his re-imagining

of the myth through the popular form of the comic strip. Buzzati’s hybrid-

ised Poem Strip challenged accepted literary boundaries by merging classi-

cal Greek mythology and poetry with the ostensibly ‘low’ artform of comics.

He acknowledged a number of poetic and artistic influences from Dante to

Bosch, Fellini and Dali, but it was the potential combination of comics and

poetry that captured his attention. His adaptation sexualised both the verbal

and visual content of the myth, continually juxtaposing panels of classical

composition with erotic pop-art. Despite the controversy, Poem Strip won the

Paese Sera Best Comics of the Year Award in 1970 and broadened perceptions

80 of poetic forms and the culturally limited language of comics. This repetion bends time, emphasising poetic rhythm over narrative speed.

Buzzati’s poetic explanation of the afterlife is captioned in speech Spatial arrangement of the stranger’s face morphs while Orfi’s expression and balloons and panels and combined with his own original artworks. His question remain unchanged, accentuating the potential to still the temporal adaptation of ‘Orfi’s’ story begins in the secret street of Saterna where Orfi realm while representing movement within static images. stares down on this street and sees his beloved ‘Eura’ walk into a mysterious When the stranger finally answers, Orfi learns Eura is dead. In wall and ‘THROUGH THE LITTLE DOOR LIKE A SPIRIT’ (trans 2009: 31- despair and disbelief, he takes his guitar to the door and begins to sing his

33). In the following panels, Orfi asks the same question three times. plea to be allowed to descend into the realm of the dead to rescue Eura. His

plea is answered with another poetic explanation of the millions of doors that

open upon death

THEY OPEN WHEN Figure has been removed due to Copyright restrictions. THE OWL SINGS THEY OPEN IN THE NIGHT OF THE DYING MAN WHEN THE WINTRY FOG CLIMBS UP DECREPIT STAIRWAYS WHEN HOSPITAL WALLS TREMBLE AS THE MERCY WAGON APPROACHES WHEN DARKNESS, WEARINESS, AND THE VOID RISE UP FROM YOUR SOUL! (trans 2009: 45).

Dino Buzzati. Poem Strip. Trans. Marina Harss. New York: New York Review Books, 2009. p.37. 81 These lines are enjambed to fit half of the panel, a giant owl towering above and questioning throughout his quest. the city on the other side. Buzzati’s caesuras are not only visual, they suspend the metaphor of opening death’s doors ‘ALL AROUND THE

WORLD’, drawing the lines down the page into ‘DARKNESS, WEARINESS,

AND THE VOID’ (trans 2009: 45). Rhyme is another technique used within the song Orfi sings as he travels to the underworld, ‘THAT COME DAY OR

NIGHT FROM THE BEYOND THERE’S NO FLIGHT’ (trans 2009: 49).

Once inside, after spiralling through stairways of naked women, Orfi is greeted by a floating jacket or ‘GUARDIAN DEMON’ who explains the

living death on the other side of the wall. Figure has been removed due to Copyright restrictions.

…EACH MAN TAKES HIS OWN WORLD WITH HIM. I IMAGINE THAT’S ENOUGH FOR HIM. ESPECIALLY SINCE HERE TIME STANDS STILL THE CLOCKS GO ON TICKING BUT TIME STANDS STILL THE RIVERS FLOW BUT TIME STANDS STILL IT’S ALWAYS THE SAME DAY (Buzzati: trans 2009:68).

Repetition of the word ‘STILL’ emphasises poetic meter rather than sequenced narrative time. Buzzati also uses repetition to create rhythm in Orfi’s song

Dino Buzzati. Poem Strip. Trans. Marina Harss. New York: New York Review Books, 2009. p.88. 82 Repetition is again used to emphasise the materiality of the written word, them sufficiently, he’s granted a place on the train to Eternity and twenty-four- typography consuming Orfi’s body as he continues to uncover the secrets of hours to find Eura before he must leave the underworld. Unlike the original the underworld. myth, Orfi must search for Eura, and despite his appeals, she is reluctant to

After confronting the ‘GUARDIAN DEMON’ Orfi is offered a deal. In leave the underworld. Buzzati references the original myth through Eura’s order to reach Eura, he must sing about ‘THE BELOVED MYSTERIES’ of the objections living world to reawaken the senses of the dead (Buzzati: trans 2009:100). His DARLING, I TOLD YOU. IT’S POINTLESS. I CAN’T performance evokes nightmares that enchant the crowd, FOLLOW YOU UP THERE. IT’S JUST A SAD OLD MYTH, THE MYTH OF ORPHEUS. EVEN IF YOU DON’T TURN AROUND, IT WILL STILL BE REMEMBER TRAINLOADS OF DEVILS POINTLESS. SLOW DOWN, ORFI, PLEASE, I’M DROPPING OUT OF THE CLOUDS TIRED. WE’RE ALL TIRED HERE (trans 2009:201). AT SIX O’CLOCK +645-*,&5)"5 THE DEVILS CAME DOWN THE LITTLE DEVILS CAME DOWN Eura’s fate is no longer in the hands of the gods, instead it is in her own. ON YOUR HEAD. YOU WERE HAPPY. This shift towards self-determination is reflective of Buzzati’s attempts to WHEN SCATTERED re-imagine mythology via the new medium of comics. When Orfi returns to BY THE WIND THE LEAVES MAKE the world, death’s doorman tells him the devils and demons, the dead and the STRANGE GHOSTS IN THE SKY (Buzzati: trans 2009:110-111). watchman were all dreams. In his hand he hold’s Eura’s ring as evidence but

the doorman disappears and the final lines of Poem Strip transport the reader

Through vivid metaphor, Orfi shakes the senses of the dead. Having moved to ‘the peaks of the Gran Fermeda’. 83 The final line of Poem Strip plays with indentation, reflecting the movement of clouds across the green sky, the symbolic cycling of seasons echoing. By combining classical myth and poetry with the comic strip, Buzzati challenged conventional expectations of form and introduced the possibilities of comics poetry to convey complex mythologies. In her review of Poem Strip, Valentina

Zanca claims Buzzati pushed ‘the language of comics well beyond its established conventions…[paving] the way for the works of Alan Moore, Art

Spiegelman, Marjane Satrapi, and Joe Sacco, among others…’ (2010). Zanca’s assessment supports the argument that comics poetry underpins the shift towards more avant-garde and experimental forms.

84 Comics and poetry again collide in Duke’s Destiny Wood. A cult personal-

Jas Heriot Duke ity of Australian performance poetry, Duke’s work was influenced by his Destiny Wood discovery of Expressionism, Dada and the collages of Raoul Hausmann and Kurt Schwitters. These avant-garde movements lead him to visual and sound

poetry, which Duke combined to create his own form of anarchistic, lyrical

and satirical poetry. Visual poet, and one of Duke’s Collective Effort Press

comrades, thalia [sic] recalls ‘[s]ometimes he would tear out a page of poetry

and eat it while reciting a poem, or, sometimes he would scream out D A D A!

in various intensities.’ Duke continued to perform poetry after returning from

the UK to Australia and began to chronicle his travels in the form of concrete

poems, surreal scripts and satirical poetry. These visual episodes, along with

translations of German poetry, fill the fifty poetic chapters of Destiny Wood.

In 1978, when Duke published Destiny Wood, it was unlike most

poetry in print and even less like the comics in circulation; large format,

bright yellow and limited to an edition of 250 copies. The introductory pages

list a comical cast of characters featured throughout the collection, including

Fred Swift ‘A COMPANION OF AN IDLE HOUR’, Benjamin de Broglie ‘A

85 RED HERRING’ and Suzy Park ‘A MOVIESTAR OF THE UNDERMIND’. appears to have several narrators rather than the single narrator implied by

There’s even ‘A RIDER OF A LOP-EARED MULE, HOPING FOR REVENGE the use of square captions. Despite the written recurrence of Sam Park as a

AND REPRISAL’ and the daughter of S. Rosa ‘AN EATER OF HEARTS’. The central protagonist, he is never shown. The poem, instead, takes many twisted glossary of over one-hundred characters becomes a poem, as visual narrative detours to achieve Duke’s concept of ‘COMIC-STRIP MONTAGE’. in its spatial arrangement as the falling typography of the concrete poems The first speech balloon of the poem (below) establishes a comparison that follow. Duke’s printed poetry is characterised by simultaneous visual and of Duke’s experimental form to underground film. verbal elements. This is further evidenced by his slicing of lines into skull- shaped stanzas and the hand-sketched comics poem ‘CHAPTER 31: THE

PARK EXPERIENCE’.

‘CHAPTER 31’ sees Duke splice lines of poetry as if they were reels of film. What identifies the work as comics poetry is the segmentation and enjambment of poetic lines within a speech balloon, the tails pointing to juxtaposed black and white images of a veritable cast of characters, from the cape-wearing dinosaur to the one-eyed Christ. In Duke’s comics poems, speech balloons operate as stanzas. Narrative captions and linear panel grids have given way to create what Duke calls a ‘COMIC-STRIP MONTAGE’. By directing the tail of each speech balloon to a different character, the poem

Jas H Duke. ‘CHAPTER 31’ from Destiny Wood. Melbourne: Whole Australian Catalogue Publications PTY, 1978. 86 This is clearly no ordinary or linear film, rather a tour through Park’s avant-

garde production process and the resulting night of ‘EXPANDED CINEMA’

in which Park has different characters perform live in front of a screen. The

spliced lines of poems do not follow a linear progression, they digress and

flashback to ‘THE NIGHT IN QUESTION …THE KIND OF NIGHT WHERE

NOBODY WOULD MIND IF YOU GOT UP AND LEFT, WHICH SEVERAL

PEOPLE DID’ (1978). The chaos of ‘COMIC-STRIP MONTAGE’ is further

developed via the parataxis of text and image. Illustrations are not sequenced

within panels and lines do not end but instead splice into the next speech

balloon,

...THE ASCENT OF A TOY KING KONG TO THE APEX OF THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING, THE JUXTAPOSITION OF BELLA LUGOSI, MARIA MONTEZ AND SABU THE ELEPHANT BOY, THE MELTING OF A PLASTIC DOLL

# LIKE OTHERS WHO TAKE THE ANTI-ART LINE PARK IS A SPIRITUAL DESCENDENT OF THE DADAISTS (Duke: 1978).

Jas H Duke. ‘CHAPTER 31’ from Destiny Wood. Melbourne: Whole Australian Catalogue Publications PTY, 1978. 87 Speech balloons encapsulate each text fragment, their shape informing line breaks and emphasising a meter that is simultaneously visual and verbal.

Countermeasure of textual syntax and visual segments also heightens the montage rhythm, encouraging new connections through contrasting imagery.

By removing images from linear grid structures, Duke experiments with the spatial and temporal realm of the montage. The random assemblage of these segments also draws upon Dadaist aesthetic and challenges conventional comics constraints. Relative to Duke’s influences, his comics poetry requires a rejection of conventional expectations as each poem works to confound the logical progression toward an inevitable end. Juxtaposition of collaged page segments and the visual-verbal imagery within them suggests a mult-linear viewing of comics and poetry. Like Poem Strip ,

Destiny Wood laid the foundation for poets to experiment with the vocabulary of comics and vice versa. Interactions between comics and poetry have since been expanded, as the following analysis of Kenneth Koch’s The Art of The

Possible: Comics Mainly Without Pictures will reveal.

88 Kenneth Koch’s The Art Of The Possible: Comics Mainly Without Pictures is

Kenneth Koch described as a collection of poetry comics, written, illustrated and lettered by THE ART OF THE Koch. In the book’s introduction, David Lehman states that for Koch the comic book, no less than the Elizabethan POSSIBLE sonnet or the Romantic ode, has its place in the world of seriousness and can provide the fodder or the structure, the spirit or the form of a poem. The comic book panel was like the line in poetry, a unit of composition, suggesting “new ways of talking about things and dividing them up” (2004:5).

Koch was primarily known for his work as a poet of the New York School.

Like his contemporaries, John Ashbery and Frank O’Hara, Koch often

ekphrastically referenced art works and popular culture in his poetry. This

also extended to referencing comic book characters as Ashbery had done in

his Popeye sestina. Koch continued exploring possibilities for comics poetry

combinations believing ‘that the canon of modern American poetry 89 desperately needed to be broadened and that it was just as legitimate to turn ‘BRER COMICS’ encourages the poem to be read in multiple directions. The to comic books as to French and Italian poetry, or to modern painting, for panels can be viewed left to right, up, down, diagonally or as equal compo- inspiration’ (Lehman: 2004:4). Another example of Koch’s experimentation nents. For Lehman, this gives the poems a sense of jumping around ‘from with comics techniques was the assignments he set for his students where one plot to another’ (2004: 8). The comic doesn’t contain conventional they had to purchase a comic book and paste over the balloons with paper and images of characters in sequence, rather the panels contain words that refer- then fill in their own dialogue without having read the original captions. He ence the shared semiotic space of text and image. Poems continue to chronicle also collaborated with artists Joe Brainard on comic strips, as well as Larry Brer Fox as he journeys to Disneyland where he meets ‘BEAUTIFUL ELLA’.

Rivers, Nell Blaine Red Grooms and painter Alex Katz, although The Art Of This encounter is depicted as a poker machine ‘J*A*C*K*P*O*T’ through

The Possible is the work that sparked significant recognition for the field of Koch’s use of the comics grid formation. The panels feature rough sketches of comics poetry. bananas, grapes, oranges and the repeated line ‘J*A*C*K*P*O*T’ that unites

By 1992 Koch’s comics experiments came to fruition. No longer only ‘BEAUTIFUL ELLA’ and ‘BRER FOX’ (2004:68). borrowing thematic content from comics, he started to shape a new form of Again, in ‘STAINED GLASS COMICS’, also featuring Brer Fox, this poetry based on formal devices like panels, frames, typography and speech sense of simultaneity is heightened by the circular structure of panels. The balloons. Koch’s use of comics segmentation and techniques of spatial poem can more easily begin and end anywhere than in prose. In comics, there simultaneity lead critics like Lehman to draw comparisons between his is no absolute starting point for image panels, there are suggested directions comics poetry and Apollinaire’s Calligrammes. On page 66 of this collection, for reading but the creator can never accurately predict how the audience simultaneity replaces linear narrative hierarchy as the hand-drawn grid of will interact with the images, syntax is not fixed in the spatial realm.

90 In poetry too, stanzas can be disentangled from the context of a larger The eight fragmented segments of the poem come together as ‘BRER FOX

collection. In a similar way, a panel can be removed from the page, or the TELLS US THE STORY OF HIS LIFE’ (Koch:2004:72).

page from a whole comic and we can still comprehend it without the narrative

infrastructure of sequential art.

Kenneth Koch. The Art Of The Possible: Comics Mainly Without Pictures. New York: Soft Skull Press, 2004. p.69- 74 91 Division and organisation of the poem across panels overturns

linear sequencing as each segment can again be read in multiple

directions. In this way, the poem fragments can be treated equally

as well as sequentially to gain meaning. Koch’s allusion to Minnie and Mickey

in the lower right corner prompts Lehman’s assessment that

a poem in its range of reference can include Leonardo’s Last Supper and Paolo Uccello’s magniﬁcent red horses. But poetry can also make room for Zoo Man, Daredevil, Julian and Maddalo, and John L. Lewis, not to mention Beowulf, Robert E Lee, Sir Barbarossa, and Baron Jeep–the historical, the ﬁctive, the fantastical, and the unreal–thrown together as they are in the poem “The Pleasures of Peace” (2004: 8).

In the suite of poems beginning with ‘MASKED HAND COMICS,’ Koch

plays with the symbolism of costumed comic book characters. He ironically

exposes the identity of a glove, ‘FIVE FINGERS REVEAL THE IDENTITY OF

Kenneth Koch. The Art Of The Possible: Comics Mainly Without Pictures. New York: Soft Skull Press, 2004. p.69- 74. 92 THE MASKED HAND’ (2004: 40). Koch continues to parody disguises in

‘THE MASKED FENCE COMICS’ where felled ‘ROSES REVEAL THE

IDENTITY OF THE MASKED FENCE’ (2004:41). This page features a

drawing of a fence and rose between two layers of stylised text. The third

poem ‘MASKED WIFE COMICS’ is presented inside a panel where a detective

is on the case to ‘REVEAL THE IDENTITY OF THE MASKED WIFE’

(2004: 42).

‘KENYA COMICS’ is a suite of poems written inside animal-shaped

panels. The fourth poem describes

WHEN THE ELEPHANTS WERE ASLEEP THEY ALL HAD AGITATED DREAMS. THEY DREAMED THEY WERE SWEARING TO TELL THE TRUTH AGAIN AND AGAIN (2004: 25).

The elephant is a symbol of the animal population and the tribes within it

that each speak their own language and consequently their own truths.

Kenneth Koch. The Art Of The Possible: Comics Mainly Without Pictures. New York: Soft Skull Press, 2004. p.69 93 In the final page of ‘KENYA COMICS’, the elephant awakes and says

‘I DREAMED OF OTHER ANIMALS, AS I, MYSELF AM THE DREAM OF

MAN’ (2004: 29). This dialogue is contained within speech balloons allowing the elephant to speak directly to the reader before the poem returns to captioned narration as ‘HE GOES FORTH TEARING UP TREES’ (2004: 29).

The narrative time and space of the comic poem is variable, determined by abstract dream states rather than evenly sequenced events.

The Art Of The Possible is precisely that, an exploration of possible combinations of poetry and comics. This work embodies Koch’s crusade against stale poetic forms. His poetry uses the content and form of comics to create a collection that simultaneously challenges limitations and expectations of both art forms.

94 Another poet experimenting with possibilities of the comics form is

Michael Farrell Melbourne-based Michael Farrell, whose collection of ‘graphic poems’ is BREAK ME OUCH BREAK ME OUCH (BMO) (2006). Farrell explains how he conceived of the collection: ‘I wanted to escape from the long, relatively complex poems on war

I was writing – and had long wanted to do something a bit more rocknroll

– punk even, short, snappy; haiku didn’t seem the way to go’ (quoted in The

Material Poem:2007:63). Musical influences abound in BMO with the title

derived from a Franz Ferdinand song ‘Take Me Out’ and the graphic poems

borrowing various structures, symbols and rhythms from bands like The

White Stripes and Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Rhythm, imagery and personae

are the points of connection between comics and poetry according to Farrell,

…there is a rhythm to comics based on frames that I exploited in a kind of toy keyboard kind of way… Poems are said to ‘have’ imagery, to be made of images, a way of reading that denies language as such. In comics this is separated. The imagistic quality of comics language is both underplayed (i.e relatively redundant) and

95 diverted from; using explicit (i.e visual) imagery either a comics character, or a self/pronoun in a in BREAK ME OUCH, allowed me to parallel, poem (2011). depart and play with that aspect (2011).

Despite the recurring figure, there is no narrative thread connecting the In BMO, imagery is at once visible and invisible. Farrell’s metaphors extend poetic episodes. Each separately titled piece was created individually rather far beyond the page, though the majority of poems are pinned to the page, than within a narrative sequence and focuses on the ‘unfolding of a enacted by a handdrawn, iconised personae. This faceless circle with a conceptual or linguistic conceit, rather than a plot’ (Farrell: 2011). Instead of triangular black cloak is framed within panels, shaping each page into a narrating captions, the lines of the poem are placed within the same panel poetic strip or episode. These simple graphic elements contrast the complex, as the figure, sometimes even within the form of the personae itself, as in often obscure, word play within the poem. Like Koch, Farrell employs the poem ‘I USED TO SAY’ where the text ‘IRON ME’ is written across the capitalisation of letters and basic visual constructions that reference the iconic character’s otherwise blank face. In several poetic episodes the visual imagery forms found in comics. Rather than exploit the full visual vocabulary of responds to the verbal expression, the figure becoming a bicycle wheel in speech balloons, captions, thought bubbles etc, Farrell states the poem ‘UN JOGGER’ or growing roots in ‘CUP’. This couplet is arranged

across eight panels, the figure static except for the sprouting of roots in the in having a ﬁgure to accompany the text […] it meant there was a character to anchor the sixth frame. text, but not necessarily own it. The character becomes more explicitly a structural device than

96 Of all of the poems, ‘CUP’ is perhaps the most conventionally structured, segments. Accordingly, spatial arrangement and segmentation of the panels whereas the spatial arrangement, patterns and size of other poems are determine the rhythm of the poem. The large, black and white format of BMO determined randomly, often by dice. Farrell describes this process also influences the spatial arrangement of the poems that ‘colonise’ the page.

… I have adapted a compositional structure from my text only poems: using chance to determine size and numbers of boxes per strip, and word numbers per frame. So there is a considered prosodical or musical structure that is not just about the language used… By using chance I mean dice, so you can see a structure based on six possibilities (2011).

If ‘chance’ can be applied to the construction of panels and syntactical structures in comics poetry, it is conceivable to apply similar processes when reading such works. Even in a ‘conventionally’ structured couplet like ‘CUP’ segmentivity enables panels to be disentangled from linear structures and read vertically or in reverse. Gutters operate as visual and verbal caesuras, increasing the syntactical tension and opportunity to countermeasure

Michael Farrell. ‘CUP’ and ‘UN JOGGER’ from BREAK ME OUCH. Melbourne: 3 Deep Publishing, 2006. 97 In discussing spatial construction of graphic poems, Farrell quotes transformation of the protagonist’s head, fashioned from the O in

‘ONOMATOPOEIA’. Farrell’s notion of ‘visual equality’ can be extended in the poetry critic Marjorie Perloff [who] writes of that as being the major shift in 20th century poetry reading of the work, as the panels in the top line can be read as equal rather

– that the unit of composition became the page. than sequentially ordered. If segments can be arranged and understood in This is something that is still being realised … and perhaps it’s over now that the screen has made both linear and non-linear ways, the text remains open to multiple readings. the page inﬁnite. In comics there’s always that ‘ROMANTIC OPPORTUNITY’ may be paired with ‘TO BE MOVED IS ALL page consciousness. But comics tend to ﬁll the GONE’, or ‘TO CREATE’, ‘THE FORCE OF THE WORD REMAINS’. space – poets have often not known how to do this – but they have perhaps known how to leave Narrative readings also return ‘THE END’ to the title reference of those fallen gaps (2011). in war, a theme often connected to the ‘ROMANTIC OPPORTUNITY’ of

metamorphosis and alchemic transformation.

These spaces between each panel can also function as a pause, akin to a visual breath. Through the use of negative spaces, Farrell pushes the perception of the invisible, amplifying the sound of the silence until it surrounds the poem like static or white noise. Spatial experimentation combined with constant use of handwritten, capitalised typography moves comics poetry towards a kind of

‘visual equality’ not found in traditional print poetry (2011). This visual-verbal synthesis is also demonstrated in the poem ‘MORT GUERRE’ through the

Michael Farrell. ‘MORT GUERRE’ from BREAK ME OUCH. Melbourne: 3 Deep Publishing, 2006. 98 In the poem ‘QUEST’, eight panels segment the lines. Every panel, except

one, contains three words that establish the beat of the poem. Also situated in

the panels are graphic components that alternate between the personae and

‘A COLONIAL BEARD’ shaped like steel wool. These elements are sometimes

combined so that the persona wears the beard and in the ‘silent’ panel – the

figure becomes the colonial beard itself.

Similarly, ‘LADDER’ begins with a single elongated panel containing

the protagonist and the word ‘CLIMBING’. Below, two smaller panels feature

‘ALONG’ and ‘LOOKING’, followed by four frames lettered with ‘FOR’, ‘A’,

‘PINK’ and ‘DRAGON’. The effect of this segmentation and spacing slows the

pace of the poem and heightens the suspense of searching. In the final panel,

the appearance of the protagonist again changes, spikes suddenly

protruding from its black cloak. Not only does the figure find what it’s

searching for, it seemingly is the ‘DRAGON’. This motif of metamorphosis is

repeated throughout the collection as the personae’s head morphs to resemble

everything from Olympic rings to a castle, an elephant, crotchets, a TV and a

flaming postcard in ‘THE DEARS…’ These transformations are often

Michael Farrell. ‘QUEST’ from BREAK ME OUCH. Melbourne: 3 Deep Publishing, 2006. 99 positioned in wordless panels, a transition that becomes more frequent in the same sun that is fashioned from the figure’s head. These silent strips still play final section of the collection. Farrell recounts the evolution towards these with poetic construction, arranging panels to mimic enjambed lines. The last

‘silent’ poems stating four poems, ‘FALLING ON VADER’, ‘WOMACK & WOMACK’, ‘PIM PIN’’

and ‘FRANK + DONNA’ are wordless except for one incomplete line, ‘THE Initially, [the poem] was more word generated, from titles, punning on them etc., but in the pro- HARBOURMASTERS MELTING IN THE’, which fades to black in the final cess – over about two months – my attentiveness panels of the collection. Three silent, pitch-black segments invert expectations to new poem ideas became more visual – hence the ‘silent’ or wordless poems that enter (2011). of comics and poetry forms, mirroring mutation of the figure throughout the poetic episodes. Farrell’s visual and verbal transformations further establish

the need for comics scholarship to advance beyond sequential and narrative These wordless poems expose the potential for comics poetry to capture and boundaries if it is to remain relevant to developments within the field. convey the poetry of silence. Whereas captioned comics and poetry accrue meaning and imagery through syntactical accumulation over time, these

‘silent’ poems still time. In ‘BLOSSOMLESS’, the first three panels depict a static personae positioned to the left of the frame. The fourth and final panel shows branches springing from the figure’s head as it not only embodies the subject but becomes the poem itself. Again, in the strip ‘CLOUD’, the protagonist personifies metaphor, mutating into a bird that eclipses a sun, the

100 It’s a bird... It’s a plane... It’s Bianca Stone. The New York-based poet and

Bianca Stone visual artist explicitly employs comics forms and references to popular The evolution of culture within her ‘poetry comics’. Like Farrell and Koch, her poetry features characters such as Charlie Brown, Lois Lane and Superman. Her collections

Poetry Comics include Antigonick, a collaborative comics poetry translation of Antigone by

Anne Carson (2012), OUR BODIES, OURSELVES (2010), BOOK OF BEASTS

(2009), and THE SECRET INTIMACIES OF INSECTS (2009) as well as

other online ‘poetry comics’ publications such as From the Monsieur Poem,

the various works posted on her ‘Poetry Comics’ website (poetrycomics.com)

and ‘THE The Poetry’ (thethepoetry.com) where she is ‘poetry comics’ editor.

Stone’s chapbook, Someone Else’s Wedding Vows (2010), contains poems that

have previously appeared with visual counterparts in other collections. In an

interview I conducted with Stone, she discusses the difficulty of defining her

work: Sometimes I think I’m cheating in calling my work a comic, since they are anything but traditional comics. In many ways I’ve found the pursuit of poetry and comics an overwhelming one, because the two have not been widely 101 joined deliberately. It is not a mere coupling of old artwork that I never used for anything, all the scraps…’ which were then poetry with the image, rather the image needs placed with poems. The artworks were often developed independently of the to be distinguished from poetry as it pertains to the comic book form...It is a deliberate poem. Stone’s cut and paste process illustrates how non-sequential use of poetry and comics together (2010). segmentivity informs her creation of poetry comics and, in-turn, how seg-

mentivity can be critically applied to critique non-linear comics poetry.

Stone’s deliberate disjunction between word and image is a prime The simultaneous juxtaposition and synthesis of word and image example of segmentivity operating within comics poetry. In BOOK OF characterises Stone’s poetry comics, which are otherwise in a league of their BEASTS each poem is contained within a page border, alluding to comics own. Her experimentation with poetry and comics grew out of a class with frames or panels. Poems on the first four pages of the collection don’t appear Anne Carson on poetry and collaboration at NYU. During this time, she with visual counterparts, but ‘Watching Superman’ clearly references Stone’s began to draw images to accompany her poetry. This led to the creation of connection with comics. ‘Astronauts’ is another poem that directly references BOOK OF BEASTS: an illuminated anti-thesis or as Stone writes on the first comics, namely Charles Schulz series, Peanuts , in which Snoopy is sent to the page, ‘a collection of fragments and revisions of poems and drawings I had moon. ‘Astronauts’ begins with the line ‘When I first read about dogs shot since deserted…’(2009). The poems were written first and later lines were cut out into space/I felt somehow like a manager of their bad luck’ (Stone: 2009). up and arranged differently or placed in speech balloons, panels or captions to Although word and image are created independently of each other, positioned form a new dialogue with artworks. Stone explains how this practise evolved parallel to the text is an image of a girl hunched over on her desk as a cat ‘…I began ruthlessly cutting everything…Sometimes a three page poem would watches on. end up being three tiny lines. It was so liberating. I then went through all my 102 The placement of the poem’s protagonist beside the forlorn figure and silent illustrating the poem; instead the segmentivity of her process creates a new cat intensifies the amusement of despairing for dogs ‘circling the earth, in work entirely. She says of this practice: their/controlled environment coffins, barking’ (Stone: 2009). The artwork The poem was abstract, so it allowed my offers a shell for the poem to embody. No longer orbiting space, the images to go where they wanted. I was protagonist of the poem and image now share a semiotic field inside a single surprised at what I drew from the lines in the frame. Her deliberate matching, or mis-matching, of text and image is a poem…I became obsessed with the idea of poetry and comics, and ﬁnding poets who technique that defies the traditional sequential definition of comics. experimented in it. I loved the strangeness of In her re-working of a section from Shelly’s poem ‘Queen Mab’, Stone the image and the poem, when they seemed very separate, thematically, and yet created employs more conventional comics devices such as speech balloons. The another layer of complexity and beauty and balloon is drawn as if emerging from the open mouth of a wild figure, sometimes humor to the poem (Stone:2010). presumably the ‘Spirit’ of Shelly’s poem. The speech balloon creates a new segment, cutting the length of the original stanza in half and altering the line Stone’s complex visual-verbal layering is again evident in THE SECRET breaks. The sense of direct speech is stressed, alluding to the oral traditions INTIMACIES OF INSECTS and OUR BODIES OURSELVES . Each of these of poetry as well as forcing the text to be read in dialogue with the image. comics is informed by an individual poem that also appears as a text only Comics critics such as Sullivan argue that comics poetry is not a mere visual version in her chapbook. Rather than translate poems directly into captions, coupling of an existing poem as seen in ‘The Poem as Comic Strip’ she describes the comics as ‘slowing down and really concentrating on one experiments by the Poetry Foundation. Stone’s artwork is not simply poem speaking from certain images’ (Stone: 2010). 103 Bianca Stone. OUR BODIES OURSELVES. 2010. (digital edition) 104 The poem ‘OUR BODIES OURSELVES’ begins in the second panel of the bird. He grips her with his hands and their gaze remains locked as a single comic with the line ‘FRUIT IS HEALTHY. RUNNING IN ONE PLACE WITH line of the poem is uttered, ‘WHAT WE DID ALL THOSE YEARS…’ (2010)

A DROWNING LOOK–’ captioned above a hunched figure staring at her The positioning of the balloon tail implies that the woman is speaking reflection in a mirror (Stone: 2010). The first and last words ‘FRUIT’ and directly. In the text only versions of this poem, words have been rearranged

‘LOOK’ are embodied by the figure who studies her reflection, touching her- and the lower case lines are segmented differently, self as if to test for ripeness or transformation. Framing of the poem carries What we did all those years, swallowing each other over into the next panel where the final part of the line, ‘IS HEALTHY’, con- without chewing properly, lounging and weeping into one another VOUJMPVSCFMMJFTIVOHEPXOQBTUPVSLOFFT 4UPOF tinues. Below the caption another figure stands at an open door, signifying the change to come. Repetition of ‘HEALTHY’ emphasises a poetic rhythm whereas in the poetry comic, ‘SWALLOWING EACH OTHER WITHOUT furthered by the enjambment of lines within captions and speech balloons. CHEWING PROPERLY’ is captioned in a single line that comes after the Stone’s hand-written typography emphasises the materiality of the words. ‘LOUNGING AND WEEPING INTO ONE ANOTHER’ (2010). It’s through Page two of the comic features a single panel drawn in more detail. the combination of word and image that the ‘we’ is specified as birdman and In the lower right corner is a bookshelf filled with collections of poetry and woman. This unexpected coupling exposes the possibilities for visual-verbal comics, including Ashbery, Auden, Keats, Lewis Caroll and The Complete countermeasure as the comic becomes a kind of parallel reality. Combined Peanuts. To the left the protagonist reappears, her breasts are exposed and a with concrete visualisation, the meaning of the poem shifts entirely, revealing large pendant hangs from her neck. She is seated cross-legged on a chair and the birdman to be a morphed manifestation of the woman. The bookshelf and beside her is a suit-wearing figure with the body of a man and the head of a drooping flower on top of it also allude to an archive of things said and time 105 passed. Stone stresses the distinction between the original text and the poetry shirt but no pants. The birdman whistles, music notes hover about his beak as comic, he holds the woman while she bends backwards to touch the ground. This in-

timate yet awkward embrace of ‘WEEPING INTO ONE ANOTHER’ is both a Again, one important thing for me is that the visual and verbal metaphor for their transformation (2010). On page four, the image isn’t a translation of the text, I don’t want any image from the poem drawn literally, so my figure is shown with a mouthful of feathers, the bird’s head stuffed inside her choice is usually one of tone—I want the tone mouth. It reads as a literal translation of the caption ‘SWALLOWING EACH of the drawing to ﬁt the poem. It can create new meaning by giving new visual cues, such OTHER WITHOUT CHEWING PROPERLY…’ (2010). In the gutter as humor, sensuality, irony, etc., that perhaps between panel four and five, the birdman has been disembodied and returned wasn’t so explicit in the poem, or maybe wasn’t to a feathered form. Although the poem does not explicitly mention death, even there to begin with […] I always think of the poetry-comiced poem as its own thing, separate an obvious transformation occurs in the space between the poem and image. from the original text. They both exist as Mythically and metaphorically, bird-headed creatures symbolise resurrection different versions of one another (Stone: 2010). and ascension. The figure also appears to have transformed in physical

appearance wearing a suit that combines all of her previous outfits. She is

On the third page of the comic the ellipsed line continues ‘LOUNGING AND now whole, suggesting the former selves were ‘SOMETHING ELSE

WEEPING INTO ONE ANOTHER/ UNTIL OUR BELLIES HUNG DOWN/ ENTIRELY’ (2010). The final line is not enclosed in a caption as the figure sits

PAST OUR RED KNEES…’ (2010). Rather than direct speech, the poem is alone, perched on the edge of a wooden birdhouse. With the transformation segmented within a rectangular caption and the woman is now wearing a complete the bird flees.

106 Juxtaposition between word and image heighten Stone’s metaphors,

intensifying imagery of metamorphosis that the text version of the poem

only hints at. While the visual repetition of the protagonist implies a narra-

tive, Stone states ‘it’s certainly not a narrative you’d find in traditional comics’

(2010). Although a sense of narrative underpins her poetry comics she asserts

…there is much more attention to language, distilled down and precise. It allows for space and absence within the thread where the reader creates the poem. This is a perfect way to approach comics as well in terms of language, but also in regards to the image. The line of the poem is its own unit, almost its own poem, the space given around it creates new meaning, just as we make decisions in creating comics, what to suspend between panels, where to break the line (Stone:2010).

Bianca Stone. THE SECRET INTIMACIES OF INSECTS. 2009. 107 The poetry comic THE SECRET INTIMACIES OF INSECTS also originates sion as the protagonist grows used to the buzz of insects from a single poem, the three stanzas of original text now segmented across I came to know the sounds of the cricket, eleven pages. As with the previous example, the conjunction of word and UIFWFMWFUBCEPNFOPGBIPOFZCFF image dramatically alters the rhythm, breaks and pacing of the poem. Unlike The third page of the comic is separated into two panels, one above the other. OUR BODIES OURSELVES , here the line breaks remain mostly the same in An upper frame shows pairs of feet pressed against a bed-end below the lines both visual and verbal versions of the poem. Lower case fonts break with the tradition of capitalisation in mainstream comics and, like Farrell, Stone places As it was, we watched the Attenborough documentaries; uncaptioned lines within the same frame as the image. Her black and white artworks are consistently detailed, designed to transgress the poem to varying Again, the second stanza is segmented across three pages of the comic, while degrees. The first lines are captions in a cut and paste style, layered on top of a the third and final stanza is stretched over six pages and eight frames. In detailed illustration of a bedroom these panels the text is enclosed in speech balloons and thought bubbles that

dramatically alter the original line construction and spacing. When we first moved in the insects wanted in. As the poem becomes progressively abstract, Stone employs more

comics devices to increase the disjunction between word and image. Where The stilted praying mantis, the eye of the moth. the protagonist is most present in the text they appear fragmented in the

panels, rendered in a picture frame and accompanied by the lines A gutter between the first and second panel divides the original stanza and signifies a time shift more significant than the line breaks in the text only ver- 108 I secrete sweet coded smells. I mate in any conditions.

The final page of the comic presents three panels, each containing a poetic fragment as the last line is enjambed in separate captions.

the vast base of desire ravenous.

THE SECRET INTIMACIES OF INSECTS are shown to be infectious, with the ‘ravenous’ figure standing naked and dripping wet in the bathtub. Stone’s process and practice demonstrate segmentivity in action, elaborating a single word into an entire scene, or an image into a line. These lines, stanzas and images are selected, separated then synthesised, revealing the side of Stone’s

‘work that revels in randomness and fragments, which is, as it turns out, a very powerful thing when assembled in one place’ (2010). The poem is constructed, segment by segment, both the poet and audience active in the

‘open’ process of assembly, the web of intertextuality.

Bianca Stone. THE SECRET INTIMACIES OF INSECTS. 2009 109 Another New York-based comics poet is Alexander Rothman. His publications

Alexander Rothman and website, Versequential, are dedicated to poetry written with the visual Circulating Drafts language of comics. Although the term ‘versequential’ references Eisner and McCloud’s definitions of comics as ‘sequential art’, Rothman states that

narrative--at least in the sense of a sequence of events that drives a story--doesn’t interest me much these days. I much prefer associations, cycles, processes […] I’m most interested in uncertainties, liminal spaces. I like that the name Versequential, beyond the obvious references, draws from the Latin words for “turn” and “follow.” […]At the simplest level, you get to the end of the line and turn to the next one. Something has changed, but something is the same, the context remains. This is how I understand rhythm as well. So you have the sequence plodding along, but there’s something in there that wants to break free (Rothman:2011).

110 Attempts to ‘break free’ of conventional boundaries are evident in his collection Circulating Drafts (2011). Fracturing tradition, Rothman letters his comics poems in lower case and scatters image panels and words across the page according to a poetic rhythm rather than conventional rows or tiers.

These techniques heighten the sense of ‘uncertainty’ Rothman is interested in.

‘Gulf’, the first poem of Circulating Drafts, reveals Rothman’s exploration of ‘liminal space’ using extended gutters as a means of slowing the reading experience (2011). He explains how the work was inspired by images from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, ‘[t]he birds completely obscured in viscous oil, the bellowing underwater cloud. Those stuck with me and the rest of the poem developed as I tried to make some sense of the event and my relationship to it’ (Rothman:2011). Rothman’s use of ‘open’ spaces, voids that often occupy more of the page than image panels or captions, invite the audience to inhabit the poem as it is assembled. This vacuum is amplified through his use of the plural ‘we’, a direct address exampled in the following lines and panels:

Alexander Rothman. Circulating Drafts. 2011, p.2. 111 Alexander Rothman. Circulating Drafts. 2011, p.3-4. 112 The ‘recession’ is contrasted with fragmented images from a dinner table. search party flashes torches at rubbish and dead things in a field,

A panel in the centre of the page shows a fork entering a man’s mouth, the heightening the tension between the word and image, the ‘disappearance’ of external world internalised. Rothman also inverts the economic recession via people through public silence. Page five is completely ‘silent’, emptied of an escape into ‘our own wild insides’, a metaphor for rediscovering the captions, as a sea turtle appears washed up on a crab-infested shore. The internal power of creation. ‘Gulf’ comprises a single sentence that stretches verbal metaphor of ‘disappearance’ is made visual as crabs hollow out the over the five-page strip. Segmentation thus informs the enjambment and turtle’s eyes while the night tide ebbs. This ‘silent’ page, combined with rhythm of the poem. Only on the first and final pages are these words enjambment of word and image on page six, demonstrate Rothman’s use of contained in captions, the rest of the lines float in gutters between panels, poetic tactics to force the reader to wade out into space, into the water and a structure borrowed from poetry’s incorporation of ‘the empty space of the ultimately the visual metaphor. The poem must be viewed to be read. In the page’ (Rothman: 2011). Despite conceding the critical role of negative space, final full-page panel, a caption hangs in the sky, bright as the moon beside the current narrative imperative of comics models doesn’t encourage it, the final line carried over into the void. This visual-verbal juxtaposition is audiences to pause or linger in these gaps. Rothman’s considered placement not linear, though metaphoric association infers meaning from two disparate of word and image attempts to redress this but, as he acknowledges, ‘it’s elements. In comics poetry, narrative destination is often less important than hard to get the eye to land on that space’ as audiences are so used to rushing process of accumulation and the ‘open’ potential for multiple interpretations. through to connect dots (2011). In the final three pages of ‘Gulf’, Rothman’s Rothman is also vocal about the difference between comics poetry and use of negative space sucks the audience further away from verbal narrative illustrated poems, referencing the failure of the Poetry Foundation’s project and deeper into visual metaphor. In the lower right corner of page four, a ‘The Poem as Comic Strip’ to illicit anything other than ornamented pieces.

113 He states

that example from the Poetry Foundation kind of lodged in my mind as What Not to Do, so I have consciously tried to create pieces that would feel incomplete if you took away either the words or the images….I’ll feel that I’ve been successful when I can point to ways in which panels or drawings are doing lots of work at once. I don’t think I’ve quite yet (Rothman:2011).

For Rothman, the success of comics poetry is the integral combination of

word and image, arguing ‘illustrating poems that already exist seems to take

a very reductive view of comics’ (2011). Instead he suggests a comics poem is

‘something propelled by both verbal and visual rhythm, that needs all its parts

to work.’ This is exampled in the strip ‘magnolias: what spring has’. Here, the

comic poem’s verbal and visual segments work in synthesis and as individual

components to establish meaning. The symbolism of the two brush strokes in

the first panel are compounded by the caption ‘From memory’.

114 Alexander Rothman. Circulating Drafts. 2011, p.6. Alexander Rothman. Circulating Drafts. 2011, p.8-9. 115115 Through the accumulation of verbal segments, the meaning of the

brushstrokes is altered, they are no longer two lines but an attempt to capture

a memory. The intensity of the comic poem is juxtaposed with the expanse

of grey space that surrounds each panel and caption. On the final page, the

memory appears to be made tangible as a hand escapes the panel and holds

within it an unopened magnolia bud, the bud itself a metaphor for the

potential transformative power of word-image interactions within comics

poetry.

Alexander Rothman. Circulating Drafts. 2011, p.10. 116 Transitioning between comics derived poetry and poetry transformed into

Warren Craghead comics is Warren Craghead’s pioneering work HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE How to be (2007). This collection of comics poetry takes its name from Apollinaire’s concept of simultaneity ‘and his insistence on the importance of “simultaneity”

Everywhere as a way of representing the way we experience the world’ (Craghead:2007:5).

Craghead’s process notes explain this connection:

For years Apollinaire’s work has been a source for me. His poetry has a spark of life and conﬂuence of images that has been a rich vein to mine. Translating another artist’s work is never simple, and transforming work from word to pictures has it’s own pitfalls. At times I started with drawings and found passages that somehow ﬁt – other times I worked from lines of Apollinaire’s work and drew from and between them. With all the drawings in this collection I wanted to make things that didn’t merely illustrate the poetry, but worked with the words to make something new (2007:5).

117 Symbolism, segmentivity and simultaneity are at the core of Craghead’s

reworking of the manuscripts of Apollinaire into 50 new visual poems. Critic

Tom Spurgeon suggests that ‘[r]ather than cutting into Apollinaire’s poetry,

dissecting its meanings, Craghead climbs inside of its causes and

attending worldview so that in the course his interpretations explain, embody

and ultimately reinforce the ideas behind the originals’ (2007). Craghead

works to combine Apollinaire’s structural and syntactical experiments with

specific comics devices of speech balloons and captioning. This is seen on the

first page of the collection as the faceless figure of Apollinaire speaks to the

future. His words are contained in a speech balloon, a comics device repeated

throughout the collection. Apollinaire’s Calligrammes directly

influence Craghead’s typographic experimentation, reminding audiences of

the semiotic sphere and materiality that words and images share when

marking meaning via lines on paper.

There is no linear or sequential structure connecting the segments

of HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE. Instead, each page is a self-contained poem

often made of seemingly disconnected visual and verbal segments.

Warren Craghead III. ‘All Of Creation’ from HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE. 2007, p.6. 118 Craghead, like Apollinaire, found freedom in assembling a poem out of disparate parts (Geha: 2011). He describes the evolution of these assemblages,

At first each page was done separately. I would draw something, then find an appropriate piece of a poem to add into it, then draw some more, revise the text, and on and on. At times I started with the text, but usually it was the image first. The final composition was in ordering the pages...I was looking for a balance between the flow of images and text and some structure loosely based on [Apollinaire’s]life. The final few pages were really important to me – some of his final poems sum up his whole enterprise and I wanted to reflect that (Craghead in The Comics Reporter:2007).

Craghead’s approach to narrative is spontaneous, as he encodes

‘everyday life and the written word into discrete, pictographic, non-linear stories’ (www.wcraghead.com). The result is a series of vividly poetic vignettes exampled in the combination of visual and verbal segments of the poem

‘Harlequin’ (right).

Warren Craghead III. ‘Harlequin’ from HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE. 2007. 119 This spatial arrangement and typographic experimentation in ‘Harlequin’ [t]he layered shapes, and the references to evidences Craghead’s quest for simultaneity. Fragments of text and image Cubist and related Modernist artwork in general, comes from Apollinaire’s deep interest and are enjambed across the page, creating a countermeasured rhythm between enthusiasm for that work. It also comes from my visual and verbal segments. Lines between stanzas and images imply a thoughts about how the lessons of Cubism can slow-motion framework reminiscent of comics panels and gutters but not as be applied to comics and narrative storytelling (Craghead in The Comics Reporter:2007). strictly sequential or linear as conventional forms. Lines draw the eye across, down and around the page allowing for multiple, non-linear readings. The

‘hypertextual’ possibilities are reflective of line breaks used in the poetry Borrowing techniques from Apollinaire and the Cubists, Craghead creates of Apollinaire. Craghead’s erasure of panels and frames further emphasise diagrammatic pages that expose the multi-linear potential for both comics the sense of a poetic vignette as the words and images bleed into the gutters and poetry. Lines link words and images in multiple directions, destabilising rather than the sequence of the next page. linear connections and sequential narrative approaches to reading the page.

Craghead’s comics poetry addresses the symbolist argument that This process encourages audiences to connect several segments poetry is an aesthetic, material structure (Molotui: 2009:9). This is simultaneously in the process of seeing rather than searching for narrative demonstrated through his adaptation of the modernist technique of evocation, captions. fragmenting lines and half-finished images rather than completely captioned In the poem ‘MUSIC OF SHAPE’, lines between text and image lead scenes. In an interview with Tom Spurgeon, Craghead explains that to various dead-ends. There is no single or sequential path, instead a maze

that mimics the shape of music, the fall of notes into night air, a net of sound. 120 The visual-verbal metaphor of free-falling is magnified when attempting to map the lines on the page. Unlike conventional poetry, the ‘line’ is freed from linear sequence, intersected by image and connected to a constellation of other segments. Individual sketches of bottles and tools, scissors and pipes are placed all over the page like parts of a machine. These symbol-like sketches are juxtaposed with the verbal imagery of jugglers who raised ‘huge dumbells’ and ‘ juggled with weights at arm’s length’ (Craghead: 2007). The weights can be viewed as simultaneously flying and falling, strung across the page

‘at arm’s length’ or like weightlessly drifting clouds just out of reach.

Craghead’s comics poetry achieves simultaneity not only as the structure is apprehended all at once but as the typography is itself part of the image, falling down the page like rain, constantly caught in speech balloons or intersected with symbols. He describes the process for evoking these spontaneous scenes: ...It’s about creating mystery and confusion and bafﬂement, like the real world does. I want to make something that doesn’t only reﬂect the world, but competes with it (2007).

121 Warren Craghead III. ‘Music Of Shape’ from HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE. 2007. HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE shows non-sequiturs to be critical to the

development of simultaneity, sights and sounds occurring at once. Words and

images operate metaphorically within a chaotic, yet synthesised, whole. The

presence of one multiplies the meaning of another, making the notion of

representational rivalry further redundant. This can be seen in the hyper-

textual meanings amplified through the combination of hats and text in the

poem ‘Do you remember’ (left). Hats float like ghosts, representations of

those fallen in battle or left behind by war. These faceless forms, hands and

feet are manifestations of ‘the art of invisibility’ that has been pushed so ‘very

far in the war’ (2007). The pursuit of invisibility also resonates with the long

history of cloaked and caped comic heroes. In the final poem ‘I am the

invisible’, Apollinaire’s shadow achieves the ultimate goal of HOW TO BE

EVERYWHERE via his absence. All those who are absent achieve simultane-

ity as their memory (symbolised by shadow) is simultaneously everywhere

in the minds of those who remember. For this accomplishment, Craghead

bequeaths

122 Warren Craghead III. ‘Do you remember’ from HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE. 2007.. TO THE FUTURE THE STORY OF GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE

who was in the war and knew how to be every whe r e (2007).

Warren Craghead III. ‘I am the invisible’ from HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE. 2007.. 123 Perhaps the most formal comics experimentation with non-narrative

Matt Madden techniques and poetic constraints stems from the French-founded Oubapo Comics and movement, for which Matt Madden is the U.S ‘foreign correspondent’. Madden is a comics writer, teacher and creator of 99 Ways to Tell a Story: constraints Exercises in Style (2005), a conceptual remake of Raymond Queneau’s

Exercises in Style (1947). The textbook Drawing Words and Writing Pictures

is another of Madden’s productions with his wife, fellow comics creator, Jessi-

ca Abel. His experiments include comics palindromes, anagrams, calligrams,

pantoums as well as other poetic forms.

Amongst Madden’s poetic exercises is ‘The Six Treasures Of The

Spiral: A Comics Sestina’ (2004). He describes this comic as an attempt to

equate ‘lines of the poem with tiers. Each page, then, functions like a stanza

of a poem. Six panels feature a character from the crew about to set sail on a

treasure hunt. The end panel of every line is repeated, changing order as do

the final words in a six-line sestina stanza. In an interview I conducted with

Madden, he reveals how the sestina structure came to him:

124 …I also started thinking about whirlpools and that got me thinking about A Descent into the Maelstrom, the Edgar Allan Poe story… I was also thinking about this term of the envoi that they use for the last parting stanza ...someone going on a journey, an envoi sent to meet someone, or some people going to meet an envoi, so it became a quest narrative, they’re on their way to do something (2010).

The spiral of the sestina not only influences Madden’s structure but his

argument for ‘form as content, and substance inseparable from style’ (2005:1: original emphasis). His numbered repetitions also link to the naming of the characters and reflect their position in the comic:

I named the characters and I coded that to their numbers one, two, three, four, ﬁve, six. So this guy’s named Einiger, German for one or the only, and this guy’s called Two Penny…Teresa and Forsyth... (Madden:2010).

Matt Madden. ‘The Six Treasures of the Spiral: A Comics Sestina’ from A Fine Mess # 2. 2004, p. 1-4 (digital edition) 125 Not only does the sestina structure require lines to repeat, images occur in

patterns of six as well. Although the comic is clearly poetic in form, Madden

contends that it is still an unambiguous narrative due to the way images

illustrate action and propel the story. I argue that his technique of non-linear

segmentation and repetition of visual and verbal elements challenges the

traditional linear model of narrative sequence. Through spatial repetition of

panels and speech balloons, time within the comic becomes a loop symbolic

of the spiral they decend into.

Madden’s comics sestina also plays with the structure of six rebutants,

conceiving of each spread of panels as a unit of time,

a unit of six each time, the time between each scene, so from this scene to this scene six weeks passed, then six days had passed, then six hours, then six minutes so it gave me a time structure for the story that ﬁtted the formal element of the number six but also had a real acceleration built into it as you get closer and closer to the spiral, it also mimics the quickening of the spiral…They go down into it and the

Matt Madden. ‘The Six Treasures of the Spiral: A Comics Sestina’ from A Fine Mess # 2. 2004, p. 9-12 (digital edition) 126 hubris of the characters makes them think ‘Farm Pantoum’ to create a single page work titled ‘Maroon: A Comics they’re going to ﬁnd treasure there and it Pantoum’ (madinkbeard.com/comicimages/maroon032.gif). Through the use turns out that they’re the treasures (2010). of formal constraints, including the pantoum and sestina, Madden overturns

sequential narrative boundaries to expose what is possible in comics creation

This sense of spiralling is symbolised by curlicues of drunkenness, and criticism. confusion and swirling lines in the background. As the envoi draws closer, all six characters are sucked into a whirlpool of multiple meanings. Their final lines are the same as their first as they realise they are the sacrifice.

In ‘Farm Pantoum’ Madden transforms one of Tom Hart’s comics, equating the interlocking lines of quatrains with rows on every page of the comic (‘A Pantoum Comic’ February 24, 2008 mattmadden.blogspot.com).

Madden adapts Hart’s characters and, through repetition of dialogue via the pantoum structure, he emphasises the narrator’s disillusionment and sexual obsession with Sandra Brown. Repetition of panels again creates a sense of simultaneity as the characters seem to stutter between past and present events. Comics artist Derik Badman later borrowed Madden’s technique in

127 As with Madden, poetic devices of repetition, rhyme and rhythm also feature

John Hankiewicz strongly in John Hankiewicz’s collection of ten short comics, Asthma (2006). Rhyme and reason Initially, the structure of his comics appears conventional, adhering to modes of panels and gutters, but these frames don’t follow linear plot lines. In the

second strip, ‘AMATEUR COMICS’, repetition and juxtaposition are used to

create poetic rhythm, constructing a comic that operates outside of a

narrative frame. The comic runs horizontally along the page, requiring a

landscape reading of panels. Every page in ‘AMATEUR COMICS’ features

four larger panels and, within them, two smaller frames that operate like

countermeasured couplets. Densely cross-hatched images depict a man

interacting with a series of different chairs and domestic objects: pot plants,

picture frames and washing baskets. The protagonist is often present in the

first panel and disappears in the transition to second. This technique

challenges conventional narrative models of linear time and ‘closure’ as

Hankiewicz’s images are not so much sequenced as stuttered, flashing

forward into parallel futures, alternate pasts. The disjuncture of panel to panel

images operate like countermeasured segments in poetry or as critic

128 Rob Clough terms it ‘comics-as-poetry’ (The Comics Journal: 2009). 8)"5)"%:06#&55&3'&&- 8)"5%*%:06/&"3-:$0/$&"- Each page of ‘AMATEUR COMICS’ is titled to indicate a new episode, 8)"5806-%:06'635)&33&1&"- 8)"5%*%:06/03."--:4&"- as in ‘VACANT COMICS’, ‘CALLOW COMICS’, ‘FRAIL COMICS’, ‘FALSE 8)"5)"%:06#&55&3'&&- COMICS’, ‘SHELLED COMICS’ and ‘DUN COMICS’. Clough suggests )08%*%:06)"11&/504501 )08$06-%:0613&46.&503&(3061 )08$06-%:06'"*-50%&7&-01 [t]he fact that the word “comics” is in the title )08$06-%:063&'64&50%301 of this suite of strips is no accident; this is a )08%*%:06)"11&/504501 8):.645:06'03&7&3#05)&3 deliberate experiment on and with the form, and 8):806-%:0613&5&/%5046''&3 Hankiewicz demands that the reader keep up. 8):806-%:06%&*(/5010/%&3 At the same time, Hankiewicz never indulges in 8):806-%:06-*45-&44-:("5)&3 mere formalist trickery for its own sake; rather, 8):.645:06'03&7&3#05)&3 8)&/.*()5:06"$56"--:-&"3/ there is always an emotional content to even the 8)&/4)06-%:06'*5'6--::&"3/ most cryptic of his strips (The Comics Journal: 8)&/$06-%:064"'&-:563/ December, 2009). 8)&/%0:06)05-:"%+063/ 8)&/.*()5:06"$56"--:-&"3/

These captions are not narrative in a traditional sense, nor do they explain the

The panels of ‘AMATEUR COMICS’ are silent except for the questions that images, instead Hankiewicz states that he ‘rhymes’ each image with the one seemingly ‘caption’ each strip. Extracted from the panels, this list of ‘captions’ that precedes it. The questions are asked of both protagonist and reader, reveals a strict poetic rhythm within the comic; each five line segment replacing narrative reference points with a search for answers. Over the operating as a stanza. twenty pages of the strip, rhyme and repetition of the questions and images

129 John Hankiewicz. ‘HOW COULD YOU PRESUME TO REGROUP? : DUN COMICS’ from Asthma. 2006. 130130 131 John Hankiewicz. ‘WHEN MIGHT YOU ACTUALLY LEARN? : FRESH COMICS’ from Asthma. 2006. develop an intensely poetic rhythm. Emphasis is on sensory responses that each panel shows the bolt slicing into the chair but no narrative direction are triggered by visual clues rather than verbal ones, as in conventional is enforced. A non-narrative approach to reading this work is supported by

DPNJDT*OA8)"5)"%:06#&55&3'&&- UIFQSPUBHPOJTUBQQFBST Clough’s call to ‘stop trying to impose meaning on each page and instead trapped in a realm of boredom. The first visual couplet shows him seated and allow the meaning to reveal itself through careful study of what is actually on reading a letter, contrasted with a seat on which sits a bottle of body cream. the page’ (The Comics Journal:2009). By not imposing narrative, ‘meanings’

In the bottom left corner the protagonist ponders his hand, while in the panel are shown to be multiple. The comic can be read in a variety of directions to beside he has vanished and a broken table leg rests against the chair. In the suggest alternative dimensions, split realities, regret or second chances. last couplet he sits hands crossed, staring into space. This scene is countered *OUIFGJOBMDPNJDA8)&/.*()5:06"$56"--:-&"3/ UIF by the final frame of a completely empty chair, a power cord unplugged protagonist has completely disappeared, the only clues are a clothes basket, beneath it. The questioning continues as the audience is left to wonder what shoes, and in the right corner, the repeated symbol of the note that featured dimension he disappears to and how he manages to materialise again in the in the very first panel. This discovery places greater significance on the note, first panel of each couplet. too tiny to be read, asking can the answers to the strip’s questions be found

A)08%*%:06)"11&/504501 JOEJDBUFTBCSFBLJOUIFTUSJQT XJUIJOJU 0SJTUIJTDZDMJDBMDPNJDBOFMBCPSBUFNFUBQIPSFYQPTJOHUIF rhythm as lightning bolts shoot from a speaker that is now placed on the GVUJMJUZPGTFBSDIJOHGPSBOZBCTPMVUFBOTXFST )BOLJFXJD[TEFGJBODFPGOBS-

DIBJS*OUIFOFYUFQJTPEF A)08$06-%:0613&46.&503&(3061 rative ‘closure’ carries into his abstract strips collected in the Abstract Comics the lightning bolt signals impending danger as the protagonist flies from anthology, which also features works from the subject of the next case-study, his chair or hides behind it to avoid being impaled. The second frame of Richard Hahn.

132 Comparisons can be drawn between the themes of absence and invisibility

Richard Hahn in Hahn’s LUMAKICK comics and Hankiewicz’s Asthma. LUMAKICK #1 Liminal spaces in and LUMAKICK #2 depict various episodes in Professor Lee’s life, with intermittent comedic relief by two bar-dwelling friends, Clemenza and Tessio.

LUMAKICK LUMAKICK #1 starts with the strip, ‘Memoirs of an Amnesiac’, which

introduces the character of Professor Lee and his quest for the unattainable

‘she’. This odyssey takes place in the realms of Professor Lee’s semi-

consciousness. On the centre of the first page is ‘a sleepy eye’ which pulls the

audience deeper into this dream state, as if imbued with hypnotic

force. (2002:1) Professor Lee appears lost in the intricately lined pages and

oversized rooms, his tiny body recognisable only by his iconic bowler hat. He

RVFTUJPOTAy)08%*%*(&5)&3& BOEA8):%0&4*5"-8":4)"7&

50#&5)&(-*/50'".0/050/06453&& BTIFTMFFQXBMLTUISPVHI

pages (2002: 3). Both the themes and structure demonstrate segmentivity in

action, the lines enjambed by captions, spatially arranged in different corners

of the panels. It is precisely this kind of poetic fragmentation that requires a

model of segmentivity.

133 In addition to these formal properties, both the visual and verbal language of

LUMAKICK # 1 is woven metaphorically, exampled as Lee stands still, halted

‘…AT THE GRACEFUL CURVE IN HER VOICE’ and the hour that ‘HADN’T

KNOWN OR REMEMBERED HER VOICE.’ (2002: 5) When Lee speaks

of the invisible ‘SHE’, lines are written lyrically, in first person: ‘WHEN

I FIRST SAW HER, I THOUGHT SHE WAS MERELY OKAY’ and ‘HER

FAKE DEATH WAS A BLUR’ (2002:2). On the second page, this internal

perspective is shaken momentarily by the line ‘A BIG NOISE TURNED HIS

HEAD’. The following panels show different sized images, a paratactical

series of a tree sprouting from a cloud, a falling leaf, rain and the moon. Their

accompanying captions are juxtaposed and read ‘THAT WAS THE FINAL

KNUCKLE’, ‘A MEMORY OF CHILDHOOD FEAR’, ‘A FEELING BEYOND

THE ROOM’ and ‘COLD WINTER NIGHTS’. Words lace the page in no set

pattern: the arrangement of text thus becomes image and in turn the visual

is read as text. These panels of text and image are what McCloud refers to as

‘parallel combinations’ where ‘words and pictures seem to follow very differ-

ent courses without intersecting’ (1993:154). This technique not only defies

Richard Hahn. LUMAKICK # 1. Canada:Lumakick Studio. 2002, p.1. 134 narrative expectations but ruptures linear time and space, as the audience new possession to a page that reads ‘sentimentality is a failure of feeling’. A decides what image refers to the past and what words exist in the present or confused thought balloon again appears to hover above his head, though this vice-versa. The last two lines of these memoirs warn ‘NEVER SAY HELLO’, time his expression is hollow rather than hopeful. This episode also marks

‘THAT HURTS THE TREES AT THE END OF THE STREET’ (2002: 6). Hahn’s use of lower case lettering and more silent panels.

These words are juxtaposed with a full-page image of Professor Lee standing at a closed door hovering in space. Disparity between word and image extends McCloud’s concept of ‘closure’. Not only can ‘closure’ occur through accumulation of segments, it can also be generated by the poetic juxtaposition of word and image. In Hahn’s comics poetry, time-space is stilled and placed outside of narrative sequencing. A model of segmentivity enables each of these components, captions, panels and gutters to be understood functionally, individually and as a whole.

In the third strip ‘great poets steal’, Professor Lee ponders the T.S Eliot quote, ‘amateur poets imitate, great poets steal.’ The panels are completely silent except for Eliot’s name and the quote itself. Confounded, Professor

Lee visits a library to steal a book, a Wallace Stevens work. Arriving home, he seemingly walks through a maze of bookshelves and ‘LATER’ opens his

Richard Hahn. LUMAKICK # 1. Canada:Lumakick Studio. 2002, p.5. 135 In the strip ‘everyone says I love you’, ironically no-one says anything at all. captions are segmented across four panels whereas all other lines are con-

Hahn encloses Professor Lee in silence, depicting him overshadowed by a tained within a single caption. Hahn’s use of enjambment slows the pace of thought cloud that begins to rain on him. In the midst of this downpour, the poem, imitating the dream-state until, signified by the whistling wind the unattainable ‘she’ glides by, as if a ghost floating through him. These and completely silent black panel, Professor Lee finds the moon that was episodes culminate in the single strips ‘I have dreamed of you so much that missing from his night. you are no longer real’ and ‘the gentle stalker’ which chart Professor Lee’s Professor Lee’s final strip in LUMAKICK #1 returns to previous sleep inability to sleep after moving through dreams of the ‘she’, until realising he themes. ‘Inferno insomnia’ again uses repetition as Lee wills himself to has become the dream: ‘I AM A DREAM THAT CANNOT AWAKEN.’ ‘TURN OFF THE TV’ a total of 10 times. He lies awake counting sheep until

Both verbal and visual repetition are used to enhance poetic rhythm they become a bird in his eye. The quest for sleep is impossible, as elusive as in Hahn’s strip ‘IN MY NIGHT THERE IS NO MOON’. Repetition of Profes- his dream girl. As Professor Lee at last dozes in a diner, his dreams and the sor Lee’s actions is mirrored by repeated panels. This is exampled in three ‘SHE’ are revealed to be intrinsically linked. Outside, as snow begins to fall, identical frames that show Lee staring at a bricked-up window. Only one of his dream lover races past him, all trace of her vanishing the second he wakes these panels is captioned ‘SHE DIDN’T CALL.’ The silent or wordless and steps outside into the snow. Despite recurring characters and suggestions captions on either side of this line are used like line or stanza breaks. This is of images in sequence, Hahn’s structure and subject of amnesia do not adhere repeated on the second page of the strip where Professor Lee is perched in a to conventional narrative expectations. The disjunction between segments tree, a silent caption signalling the pause as ‘HE TRIED TO RETRIEVE/ THE encourages audiences to dig beneath the surface, to bury between word and

LOST THREAD/OF THE PREVIOUS NIGHT’S/DREAMING.’ These image, dusting off memory to expose possibility.

136 The poetic adventures of Professor Lee continue in LUMAKICK # 2. The first

episode, ‘active ingredients’, reveals his use of repetition to remove the sense

of conventional narrative sequence. Lowercase lines are contained within the

panel rather than a separate caption as in LUMAKICK #1 . The fourth line,

‘some sleight of hand’, is placed within the gutter between panels, breaking

the repetition and signifying a change in the rhythm of the poem. Poetic

repetition is again employed in the second strip ‘The Unspeakable Professor

Lee’ as Hahn lists Lee’s character traits

Professor Lee is in the corner of your eye. He’s in the back of your mind. He’s up in the middle of the night. He has no relevant biographical data. Professor Lee is a little under the weather. He’s standing on the beach. He always has to have the last word. He won’t listen to reason (2004: 4-5).

These segments are partnered with black panels punctured by tiny white dots

that could be both stars in space or snowfall at night. Professor Lee is absent,

except in two panels, his expression blank as he stares into the darkness.

Richard Hahn. LUMAKICK # 2. Canada:Lumakick Studio. 2004, p.2. 137 These non-sequiturs accumulate poetic rhythm and demonstrate the

metaphoric potential of a mode that McCloud relegates to ‘second class’

because they are seemingly ‘UNCONCERNED WITH EVENTS OR ANY

NARRATIVE PURPOSES OF ANY SORT’ (1993:77). If words were removed

from Hahn’s panels, this comic would be non-sequitur nonsense according

to McCloud. Yet fundamental to its conceptual experience is the combina-

tion of word and image as seen for example in the partnering of the line ‘He

has a philosophical bent’ and the image of Lee on a set of stairs. Or the panel

captioned ‘He’s wading through turgid prose’ with the image of Lee waist

deep in white space (2004:10). As the episode progresses he becomes ‘lost in

a long goodbye’, the panel shaded with hundreds of handdrawn lines. These

abstract non-sequiturs lead him into a series of unrelated scenes in which the

Professor epitomises simultaneity, both visible and vanished, abstract and

figurative. Lee is all of these possibilities and none. It’s this discovery of ‘anti-

destination’, not narrative disclosure that is of value within LUMAKICK . Each

of these captions are partnered with panels that become static black as Lee

plays solitaire or stands facing a giant wall ‘in the shadow of a doubt’ (2004).

Richard Hahn. LUMAKICK # 2. Canada:Lumakick Studio. 2004, p.13. 138 Professor Lee remains in the same static position while

He’s staring at the sun. [and] He’s dreaming of a room with a view (2004:12-16).

Existential possibilities multiply as Lee plays a game of sudden death through

which it is revealed

Professor Lee never dies. )PXDBOIF He doesn’t exist. If you want to find him, close your eyes and look left (2004:16).

Hahn is constantly attempting to make the invisible visible, the absent

present. In sequential comics, the imagining or ‘closure’ happens in the

gutters, while in comics poetry it often occurs in the juxtapositioning of

panels as well as the spaces between word and image.

Conventions of comics are further overturned in Hahn’s ‘notes toward

A COMIC’. Hahn exposes the fabric of visual-verbal fiction that comics rely

on as the drawn element of each panel is exposed.

139 Richard Hahn. LUMAKICK # 2. Canada:Lumakick Studio. 2004, p.14. Each panel, even those left blank, are captioned with the repeated line ‘this

is a drawing of...’ (2004). Repeated captions develop a rhythm, each verbal

segment creating an optical illusion, as seen in the transforming of a dot

into ‘a drawing of a speck of dust’. In the sixth panel the identical dot is now

captioned ‘this is a drawing of a planet spinning’ (2004). Hahn’s visual-verbal

illusions reveal the mastery of comics metaphors, a single line becomes ‘a

drawing of a thin man’, flipped horizontally, the same line is now ‘a drawing

of said man’s shadow’ (2004). Through repetition, Hahn exposes the semiotic

simultaneity of lines on the page. Each new caption, regardless of identical

‘drawn’ content, forces a new perspective of the panel.

The poetic episodes of LUMAKICK #1 and #2 are designed to

challenge perceptions of comics content and construction. Hahn’s use of

segmentivity and non-linear forms further develop the simultaneity and chaos

of memories, realities and dream-states that poets and comics creators (since

Apollinaire) have attempted to represent. Examples like LUMAKICK #1 and

#2 demonstrate the need for segmentivity and comics poetry to be recognised

by critical theory if the potential of comics is to be fully explored.

Richard Hahn. LUMAKICK # 2. Canada:Lumakick Studio. 2004, p.38. 140 ANOTHER GLORIOUS DAY AT THE NOTHING FACTORY(2009) is Eroyn

Eroyn Franklin Franklin’s semi-autobiographical comic about the disintegration of a ANOTHER marriage she never really wanted. The Seattle-based artist and author describes the Xeric-award winning work as ‘an elegiac depiction of

GLORIOUS DAY AT half-hearted love and its sad door prizes’ (Franklin:2009). Her work could be THE NOTHING likened to other alternative autobiographical comics like Craig Thompson’s Blankets (2003), Lynda Barry’s One! Hundred! Demons! (2002) FACTORY or Julie Doucet’s My New York Diary (1999), but Franklin focuses on poetic form and language more than linear narrative sequence.

ANOTHER GLORIOUS DAY AT THE NOTHING FACTORY begins

with Franklin composing a ‘NOT-LOVE LETTER’

A NOTICE OF INTENT TO VACATE THE APARTMENT I SHARE WITH THE HUSBAND I JUST BROKE UP WITH. APART- MENT, THE WORD ITSELF DESCRIBES HOME WITH SAD EXPECTATIONS (2009).

141 The explanation is not captioned or contained in speech balloons but is

instead measured into squares of white, handwritten text that float on an

otherwise empty black page. This formatting heightens the effect of a letter to

the audience or a diary entry. Franklin’s accompanying artwork is similarly

inverted, her papercut silhouette forms obscuring facial features and trans-

form her characters into iconic symbols.

Although the comic is semi-autobiographical, these symbols enable

readers to pour themselves into Franklin’s form, like ‘THE FAT SUIT’ that

gave their ‘UNION A FALSE WEIGHT.’ The faceless non-specificity of

iconic forms is furthered by Franklin’s choice not to mention ‘THE

HUSBAND’ by name. The exclusive use of black and white is also a satirical

interpretation of a situation that is every shade of grey.

Each typographic panel is a self-contained poetic episode that details

the slow demise of Franklin’s relationship. She employs metaphor, alliteration

and enjambment to construct this elegy, each fragment is less linear sequence

than a selection of fragmented memories. The spatial arrangement of words

within each episode is also significant as Franklin segments each line to fit

Eroyn Franklin. ‘Breath’ from ANOTHER GLORIOUS DAY AT THE NOTHING FACTORY,2009. 142 an invisible ‘frame’. These fragments are collected across eleven chapters

FAREWELL; THE SOUND; THE PLACE; APART FALLING; THE OTHERS;

THE EXPLANATION; BLUEPRINT FOR A BROKEN HOME; THE REVISIT;

GOODBYING, ALONING; THE DISTANCE BETWEEN ME; THE SIZE OF

IT ALL. There are no recognisable panel structures or sequential time frames as Franklin flips between past tense memories and present tense regrets.

There are also no conventional comics devices of gutters or frames to signify images in sequence, no text within captions and, where speech balloons are used, they too are silhouettes void of text. The left page always presents the poetic episode while the right is filled with Franklin’s silhouetted artwork, an abstract expression or dream-like imagining rather than an illustration of actual events. This is evidenced in the FAREWELL, which recounts Franklin’s initial decision to leave THE HUSBAND. It details her attempts to escape their sadness and the sorry state of a bed that is ‘A SOFT TUNDRA, BUT

LESS INVITING EVEN THAN PERMAFROST.’ The accompanying artwork depicts memories draining from Franklin’s ear, a metaphorical morphing that recurs throughout the collection.

Eroyn Franklin. ‘Tundra’ from ANOTHER GLORIOUS DAY AT THE NOTHING FACTORY,2009. 143 In ‘THE SOUND, THE PLACE’, Franklin retreats to the isolation of ‘THE BEEN WEAKISH – THROWING MY ROPES AT SHORES I COULDN’T HERMITAGE’. Here she reflects on the absence of her father and memories CARE LESS ABOUT. of escaping a house fire with her sister. Her separation is compounded by the The line break between COULDN’T and CARE undercuts the attempt to tie sound, or lack of it. Assonance and alliteration are employed to create a poetic her heart to anything. This admisson is accompanied by an image of Franklin rhythm resonant of the beat of her breaking heart. It is also through the snared by entangled lines and the silhouette forms of past loves in various metamorphosis of metaphors, both verbal and visual that she attempts to states of undress. Repetition of her misadventures develops momentum, a escape her surroundings and her emotional state. rhythm heightened by her everpresent alliteration, demonstrated in the

In the chapter ‘APART FALLING’, Franklin’s emotional disintegration example WHEN I’M ALONE I ROLL TOWARDS is physically manifest. She is depicted hunched and dressed in rags as she THE FISSURE OF THEIR FORGOTTEN FORMS. tries to fill the hole that was once a heart. These metaphors continually During ‘THE EXPLANATION’ Franklin returns to reasoning how she transform Franklin’s figure, mirroring the notion of a silhouette as an married, not for love but to join her boyfriend on a long nautical adventure. ‘EMPTY VESSEL’ to be filled. ‘THE OTHERS’ recounts the inadequacies of On board she barely leaves the cabin, instead stays ‘COCOONING IN A Franklin’s disposable lovers that came before THE HUSBAND. Featureless BLASÉ DEPRESSION.’ Again alliteration is used to stress the feeling of sink- forms literally ‘deform’, exaggerating the morphing of one memory into ing into a sea of black. The accompanying image shows sea-monsters with another as Franklin admits long tongues sucking at the dark below the ocean’s surface. ‘GOODBYING,

ALONING’ further exposes the pretence of her role-playing. Here Franklin MOST OF MY EXPERIENCES IN THIS HEART TETHERING HAVE uses rhyme to reveal the inner mechanics of her hollowed form. 144 Eroyn Franklin. ‘Gravel’ and ‘Shadow’ from ANOTHER GLORIOUS DAY AT THE NOTHING FACTORY,2009. 145 The black behind both text and image is the same flat black, drawing together

a collection of memories ordered anew. Each poem is a contained moment,

but exactly how much time passes is subjective more than strictly narrative.

‘BLUEPRINT FOR A BROKEN HOME’ presents their attempts to play roles in

the marriage like reenactors

– NOT QUITE CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS AND NOT QUITE THEMSELVES.

This episode features silhouettes of naked paper dolls, templates for paper

costumes beside them. In both of the previous examples, metaphor and

enjambment play critical roles in the accumulation of meaning and the

rhythm of the ‘MESSY TAUTOLOGY THAT TOOK HOURS TO MEND.’

These scenes juxtapose visual and verbal elements to produce a poetic distil-

lation of time and space. Franklin’s visual-verbal metaphors are deliberate

poetic devices used to digress from a linear narrative timeline. They slow time

and mirror the ‘VAST LANDSCAPE OF EMPTINESS’ that is her body.

Eroyn Franklin. ‘Reinactors’ from ANOTHER GLORIOUS DAY AT THE NOTHING FACTORY,2009. 146 Time is stilled until it is almost frozen in ‘THE DISTANCE BETWEEN ME’

where Franklin describes herself as

A NOTHING FACTORY – CHURNING OUT RECORD-BREAKING AMOUNTS OF NIL. I KEEP DOING WHATEVER IT IS I DO OUT OF HABIT, NOT RELEVANCE.

Finally, in ‘THE SIZE OF IT ALL’, after several attempts to ‘STRADDLE

BETWEEN [HER] TREPIDATION OF INTIMACY AND ISOLATION’,

Franklin realises her ‘attempts to metamorphose are confronted by

immutability’ (2009). As with Farrell, Stone and Craghead, Franklin used

poetic techniques to move beyond sequential narrative frames and address

themes of transformation.

This analysis of comics poetry is by no means exhaustive. Franklin’s work,

like all of these selected examples, exposes the myriad of ways poetic devices

inform understanding of, and experimentation with, the hybrid visual-verbal

Eroyn Franklin. ‘Straddle’ from ANOTHER GLORIOUS DAY AT THE NOTHING FACTORY,2009. 147 language of comics. Evidence of poetic devices (repetition, alliteration, rhyme, metaphor, measure and enjambment) within these examples demonstrates the relevance of a model of segmentivity to comics creation and analysis.

Likewise, these studies reveal the spectrum of comics devices that can be employed to fuel the content and structure of poetry.

Case studies from Moore to Franklin prove there is potential for both comics and poetry beyond a linear narrative frame. It is within this growing field of work that I also hope to position my own comics poetry collaboration, ANEKI.

148 Comics critics and creators are characterised by their closeness. As a result,

ANEKI my creative process is a combination of practice-led research and research-led Comics poetry and practice. For me, the poem is lived through processes of accumulation and transformation. An alchemic assembly of thought, myth and memory made collaborative process matter. This experience is not unique to poetry, rather, it’s at the root of all art

forms, comics no less. In the comics of Buzzatti, Moore and Gaiman, myth

and mutation are constant metaphors for the alchemy of transmutation. And

as Craghead and Koch also demonstrate, time is not a straight line but a cycle.

These allegorical themes and cyclical transformations, as well as the

experimental practices of comics creators, inform the collaborative

development of ANEKI.

Consciously and subconsciously, ANEKI draws from the myriad of

comics poetry combinations discussed throughout this study. Shared

foundations aside, the aim of ANEKI was to innovate a structure and style not

yet widely used in comics. I wanted to remove rectangular panels and grid

structures suggestive of linear narrative reading paths. The circle seemed the

antithesis of traditional panels and linear page constructs in comics.

149 ANEKI comic poetry collaboration. ‘The Chariot’ and ‘The Hermit’’, 2012. 150150 Of course circular panels feature in other comics, Promethea especially, but of art forms including live performance, paper cut, illustration, painting, when I embarked on this project I hadn’t yet discovered a comic that installation and street art. These visual and verbal pieces were exhibited in a consistently employed circular panels and captions. Circles symbolise unity, corresponding series of process shows; ‘Electric Dreaming’ (Project Gallery, an unbroken line, a cog, a Dharma wheel without beginning and end. As 2009); ‘Glovebox Girls’ (Kinokuniya Bookstore, 2010); ‘Fires I Have Lit’ (Gaffa such, it seemed a fitting motif for the cycles of collaboration. Gallery, 2010); ‘The Empire of Dead Intention’ (Flinders Lane Gallery, 2011);

My interest in connecting word and image initially lead me to ‘Paper Trail’ (Plump Gallery, 2011) as well as ‘Pop-Up’ shows and ekphrastic poetry and the New York School poets, still I craved something performances. Each of these exhibitions focused on a different character from that involved consistent exchanges between poet and artist. I began the comic and explored the potential for comics devices beyond the confines developing collaborative text-image projects like ‘The Seventeen Summers of of the page. This creative process exposed poetry and comics as multi-

Heidiko Jones’; a print series with Skye O’Shea; ‘The Heart Garden’ and ‘She dimensional, malleable forms, with potential for further experimentation.

Shanty’ with Jackie Cavallaro as well as ‘The Black Rabbit’ exhibition and Poetry from ANEKI was written onto windows, exhibited on walls, performance series with Tamara Elkins. As these collaborations evolved, so incorporated into performances and songs. Each piece demonstrated how the too did my concept for a collectively-webbed mode of creation. The emergent segments of poetry and comics (stanzas, captions, panels, speech field of comics poetry provided this platform. balloons etc.) could be utilised outside of the linear panel structures of many

ANEKI is the result of my collaboration with visual artists Skye conventional comics. Piece by piece the comics poems began taking shape.

O’Shea, Jackie Cavallaro, Guillermo Batiz, Tamara Elkins and Anastasia Mc- This practice-led process enabled me to assess the applications for a model of

Cloghry. The works within ANEKI were originally produced across an array segmentivity both creatively and critically.

151 Tamryn Bennett and Skye O’Shea. ANEKI ‘Fires I Have Lit’ Gaffa Gallery, 2010. 152152 Tamryn Bennett and Tamara Elkins. ANEKI ‘Paper Trail’, Plump Gallery, 2011. (left) 153 Tamryn Bennett, Tamara Elkins and Guillermo Batiz. ANEKI ‘Waking in the Dead Wood’ Pop-Up performance, 2011. (right) The outcomes of this research-led practice/practice-led research are evidenced Tarot and comics have also been developed in Alan Moore’s Promethea series in the use of circular panel constructions and spatial experimentation with and The Vertigo Tarot collaboration of Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean and Rachel visual and verbal segments within ANEKI. By arranging word and image Pollack which links several Sandman stories and other DC universe outside of conventional linear panel grids, ANEKI highlights the different characters to the Major Arcana cards. After researching the esoteric and degrees of segmentivity that operate in both narrative and non-narrative alchemic origins of the cards, I collected the visual-verbal elements from each works. of the ANEKI artists and began the synthesising process of collaging artworks

Drawing on the multi-linear structure of the Tarot, ANEKI further and poems into an edition of 78 comics poems, each representing a Tarot exposes uses for segmentivity within both narrative and non-narrative card. Within this hermetic system there are four suits – wands, swords, comics. As ANEKI progressed, there was the issue of connecting characters pentacles and cups. Each suit is aligned with an element, fire, air, earth and and symbols from fragmented works and individual collaborations. I started water respectively, as well as cardinal points, seasons, colours and specific to layer visual and verbal segments, and when collected, the symbolism and signs for decoding archetypal experience. This symbolic system is similarly metaphorical structure of the Tarot seemed to unite the elements we’d been applied in ANEKI where the characters are each ascribed a totem, a power, a working on. The twenty-two Major Arcana and fifty-six Minor Arcana cards of colour and a season. the Tarot provided a framework for producing comics poems. The final edition of ANEKI combines the visual and verbal vocabulary of both

Many histories of the Tarot suggest the cards were used to code esoter- comics and poetry as well as the Tarot. To choose a card is to enter the poem, ic information that could be deciphered through knowledge of specific visual to see a possible future inside the rusting city of Scarlet Hollow. symbols despite the Babylonian corruption of language. Parallels between the More information about the project is available at www.tamrynbennett.com

154 Jackie Cavallaro and Tamryn Bennett. ‘The Empress’ and ‘The Sun’ from ANEKI, 2012 155 As McCloud first asserted, ‘[t]oday the possibilities for comics are – as they

Afterword have always been – endless’ (1993:22). To posit a conclusion, or attempt Towards ‘closure’, seems to contradict the infinite possibilities of comics forms. What follows is less of a conclusion, and more of a call to creators and critics to comics poetry explore the possibilities for comics and poetry interactions and advance

comics beyond sequential boundaries.

Since embarking on this research in 2009, the field of comics poetry,

web comics and abstract work has expanded considerably. In speaking with

several comics poetry creators during this study it became apparent that the

works they wanted to produce were those combining visual and verbal

elements in ways that challenge linear and narrative definitions of comics.

Despite these attempts, the vocabulary of comics creation and scholarship is

still dominated by sequential definitions, narrative assumption and linear

modes of analysis.

This study has revealed a myriad of ways in which comics utilise

poetic devices and, in turn, how poetry can profitably borrow from the visual-

verbal vocabulary of comics. It proposes segmentivity as an alternative mode

156 for understanding the components and practices fundamental to comics and The works of creators already producing experimental, abstract and poetry. In addition to functioning as a working ‘definition’ for poetry, this multi-linear comics, (many of which are listed in chapter 1), warrant con- study demonstrates that a model of segmentivity can be used to empirically tinued and concentrated investigations. With comics poetry and non-linear identify segments (words, images, stanzas, symbols, spaces, etc.) that operate approaches to creation continuing to develop, it’s essential that criticism keep within poetry and comics. Once separated as individual components, semiotic pace or else risk obsolescence. and semantic functions can be decomposed to expose the fundamental Potential for poetic segmentivity to inform both the practice and composition of the artform. Through semantic dissection, segments can be critical examination of comics demonstrates its value as a new mode of disentangled from ingrained word-image hierarchies and essentialist analysis. This enables criticism to move beyond sequential boundaries and to conceptions of form. Segmentivity also functions cross-culturally and multi- simultaneously inform the creation of all forms of comics. Universal modally, regardless of style, structure, material, meter, rhyme and theme. As applications for segmentivity, and the concept of comics poetry have been re- a means of analysis, it enables understanding of visual and verbal segments vealed throughout this study. As a mode of analysis, it was first applied in the beyond sequential narrative boundaries. It functions in both figurative and examination of Moore’s V FOR VENDETTA, WATCHMEN and abstract contexts as a unifying mode capable of comprehending all forms of PROMETHEA , to illustrate the existence of poetic segmentivity in comics and poetry and comics. Greater understanding of how visual and verbal the potential for such devices to convey complex mythologies, chaos theories segments are employed in narrative, non-narrative, linear and non-linear and communicate beyond linear narrative structures. Likewise, Ware’s works, enables comics creators and critics to transcend narrative and innovative word-image ‘lexias’ demonstrate the potential for poetic spatial sequential limitations. arrangements in comics. Farrell’s minimalist strips employ similar

157 symbolist constraints to Madden, while in Craghead’s appropriation of daily, comics poetry and a model of segmentivity provide a rich platform for

Apollinaire, Stone’s comics collaborations and Hahn’s eternal mazes, the use hypertextual and digital experimentation. of poetic devices create synthesised and simultaneous visual-verbal metaphors This survey of comics poetry, albeit a snapshot of a rapidly expanding that operate outside of narrative confines. These examples, like each of the field, exposes a poetic revolution in comics that has long been overlooked by case studies analysed herein, expose the multi-linear potential for spatial conventional comics criticism. These developments irrevocably challenge the arrangements via comics poetry. Their usage of visual-verbal dominance of Eisner and McCloud’s sequential narrative definitions of synthesis and simultaneity are revolutionary and must be acknowledged if comics. By demonstrating the relevance of segmentivity to all forms of approaches to comics creation and criticism are to evolve. More than ever, comics, this thesis advances approaches to comics analysis and encourages the hypertextual modes are being enhanced by digitalisation. Technology is creation of works that encompass interdisciplinary possibilities of the form. demonstrating that comics, like all printed forms, no longer need to adhere to The future of comics lies not only in an expansion of comics poetry, but in linear sequence, ordered pages, set forms or printing constraints. the development and application of a model of segmentivity that encourages,

Digitalisation has enabled multi-directional scrolling, so creators are not and engages with, ongoing experimentation and technologies in creation and restricted to only vertical and horizontal reading paths. Comics creators are scholarship. Possibilities for poetry and comics are infinite. What comes next increasingly exploring multi-disciplinary and new media platforms that is dependent on the creators and critics who discover and develop comics scholarship is only just beginning to address. This research has consistently possibilities. shown that seeing is reading, and as such, creation and criticism can’t be limited to straight lines or linear frames. With more web comics appearing

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167 Appendix Rachel Blau Interviews DuPlessis on segmentivity

RBD: I think of myself as a pragmatic theorist in poetics, and as a poet, and it is from that point of view that I will write you. So a good way to begin might be to picture me sitting at an MLA meeting in circa 1994.

(I am dating this by the later appearance of this article “Manifests,” Diacrit- ics 26, 3 (Fall-Winter 1996): 31-53. Special issue: Poetry, Community, Move- ment, “Manifests” and by this –an invited Lecture at Cornell University, March 31-April 1, 1995; “Past, Present, Future Tense: A conference on Contemporary Poetry” which are the first times that the term “segmentivity” was enunciated in the ways that we are talking about. Later, when “Manifests” appeared in Blue Studios, I moved the “segmentivity” coda to another essay—the one on Oppen called “Uncannily in the Open”—and the material (perhaps harder to find than it should be!) appears on pp. 198-99 of Blue Studios.) (This is why Brian McHale cites “Manifests” in the Diacritics version.)

This question of “segmentivity” is what you note in your question 6, though I have moved all your questions around, cut the numbers{...] . You question; ‘why is segmentivity the key term for defining poetry; why do I speak of <<”arriving at segmentivity after ‘taking away all the various things that couldn’t possibly be 168 an adequate definition [to find] what fundamentally distinguished poetry as a disappearing into performativity, on the other hand. So I wanted a space where practice[…]the irreducible element in a poetic text…’,”>> poetry was not erased! Thus my attempt at a “-tivity” to distinguish poetry. I think distinguish is a better word than define. So I worked on it, and came up At that MLA, everyone was speaking about “narrativity” and about “performativ- with a suggestion: segmentivity. The reason I like segmentivity is that it works ity.” The terms were—however odd—taken as fundamental elements in art, tend- no matter what the general genre of poem is (song-ode-meditative-descriptive), ing, as is clear, toward understanding fictions (and perhaps films) with one term no matter what the historical era, and even no matter what the culture. It does and drama/films with the other term. (Actually, both these terms ring a little not depend on rules of meter to define segmentivity, though of course it hardly hollow with tautology—what does it mean to say a novel exhibits narrativity? One excludes these. I include the new sentence kind of writing. would have to modify that to see different ways that novel handled sequences of time and the development of characters and authorial voice, too, in that “time.”) 4P BT*TBZBCPWF *BDUVBMMZTUBSUFEUIJOLJOHXIBUXBTUIFoUJWJUZPGQPFUSZ Anyway, these terms of course overlapped (see the fact that “film” appears in 2 what was the irreducible element of the poetic text not depended on exclama- spots above), and I am not gong to sort that fact out here. But I felt that poetry tions around beauty, sincerity, personality/biography, image, “music,” and all and poetic practice was being sidelined. While both terms might be applicable to sorts of empty, or half-empty terms, making people feel good but being evoca- some poems, neither term covered poetry in general. And actually, both terms tive only (and therefore so ideological). In a funny way, I was repeating the played into the reduction of poetry to narrative poetry or dramatic monologue. USFLPG+BLPCTPOJOIJTi8IBUJT1PFUSZ wFTTBZBHBJOBTLJOHUIFRVFTUJPO The lack of a definitional term for poetry was actually, I see now, part of the XIBUEJTUJOHVJTIFTQPFUSZ)FHFUTUPUIFUFSNiQPFUJDJUZwQSPQPTJOHUIBU recent sidelining of poetry in general. (Some symptoms—the MLA article in the the word in poetry is used in a particular way, more for its materiality (result) “directions for criticism” volume—sort of state of the art—on cultural studies than its matter. (components) (Materiality. A sense of delivery, poets used to does not even mention cultural studies and poetry. Most courses on American be the shamans, delivering spells, magic words, giving meaning to life, say literature exclude poetry. (!) People taking Jena Osman’s senior seminar on poetry what they were seeing but couldn’t express. Pocohontas, stamp them. Bards. right now [2011, fall semester] at Temple University have basically not studied Maharbarata) I think this is a cop-out, actually. (It becomes a bit of a circular poetry ever before. These examples run the scale from profession-wide to local BSHVNFOUUIBUQPFNTBSFEJTUJOHVJTIFECZiQPFUJDJUZwPGMBOHVBHFVTF#VU and teeny, something I just heard about from Jena the other day.) But the force for it is still useful and right as a term.) But his arguments dismissing all the me that concerns holding poetry in view has been the experimental communities other definitions are quite wonderful. He just zaps them, like shooting fake and poets themselves, also poet-critics. OK—anyway, I saw a problem of defini- ducks with an air-rifle at the local fair! It is a wonderful and witty essay. tion and exclusion that was not solved by appeals to the term lyric. (I will give you So also working cross-culturally (thinking about oral delivery as well as writ- an addendum on that). Or really solved by any term that I knew. ten, the relationship to song): the question of line or segment came to the In a sense this necessity was also related to the fact of the hegemony of narra- GPSF.FBOJOHiMJOFwIPXBMJOFFOEJTEFGJOFE BOETFHNFOU BTJOTVOH tive poetry/mainstream poetry --so poetry disappears into narrativity, and the poetry, oral poetry). Poetry is that thing (that genre) given out in segments. necessity to think this through is related also to some current interest in poetry It is where the segment defines the genre. It is also, in a noticeable codicil 169 CFMPX UIBUUIJOHJOTFHNFOUTUIBUJT"-40DVMUVSBMMZEFGJOFEBTBQPFN" So I don’t really think either term (deixis or countermeasure) supersedes my little circular tautology there. suggestion of a term; both elaborate the possibilities within segmentivity. They don’t replace it as a definitional term. TB: Why is segmentivity a more applicable definition of the components of QPFUSZUIBODPVOUFSNFBTVSFPSEFJYJT TB: You mention arriving at segmentivity after ‘taking away all the various things that couldn’t possibly be an adequate definition [to find] what funda- RBD: *ONZWJFXCFDBVTFEFJYJTPQFSBUFTJOQPFUSZ CVUJUBMTPPQFSBUFTJO mentally distinguished poetry as a practice[…]the irreducible element in a prose. It does not distinguish poetry as a practice. Some poetic rhetorics (Lo! poetic text…’, Can you elaborate on this process and the relationship of behold! and other more modern ones) draw on deixis and its absolutist purity/ TFHNFOUJWJUZUPHSBQIFNFTBOEQIPOFNFT clarity. Deixis is, for some people, almost like a poetic ethics. However, deixis EPFTOPUFJUIFSEJTUJOHVJTIQPFUSZPSOPUEJTUJOHVJTIJUJUDBOIBQQFOJOBMM RBD: Logically my answer to the prior question could answer this, too. modes of writing. What I was looking for is a definition of what poetry is, not Phonemes would define a work as poetry if they were used as line-segments. what some of its rhetorics and figures are. Otherwise, they are simply part of the language material (and sonic material) being organized by the poem. “Countermeasure” is a term that Brian McHale takes from the work of John As for the visual moment: That’s maybe where the term countermeasure Shoptaw: what it is based on is small units (words, phrases, lines) which play works! Suppose you have the text of Pound’s cantos. A lot of very loose lines against each other variously. To me this is a variation of segmentivity. There BSFTFUJOQBHFTQBDFUIFZMPPLMJLFGSBHNFOUT TZOUBDUJDBMMZ BOEUIBUTXIBU is a push-pull among defined segments that are often VISUALLY represented: they often are). Then there is an ideogram inserted. This not only comes from the isolated word-as-line in a WCW poem is for me a “segment”; the phrases another language (and can be looked up in a special Pound dictionary if you of Dickinson set off by dashes is a visual way of marking (yes) countermeas- want to). More strikingly, it comes from a different signifying system: it is a ures within the line, a distinct sense of contradiction and tension in segmen- visual grapheme! Or a letter from our alphabet is just placed “on” the page. UJWJUZ5IJTJTBWFSZJOUFSFTUJOHUPQJDUIFTUSVHHMFPGQISBTFTXJUIJOUIF This reverberates as a segment, but also as a visual glyph. There is a push- same line (and shows the importance of thinking about caesura). And a line pull between visual and verbal. This does not undercut segmentivity, but is a is a line segment. One might have a tension between a single word line, and particular instance of it, demanding a triple reading system: verbal and visual MPOHFSMJOFT UIJTJTBQMBZXJUIJOUIFHFOFSBMDBUFHPSZPGMJOFTFHNFOUJUEPFT and then their dialogues. not supersede the definition of segmentivity as fundamental). Only interior punctuation (say ED’s dashes) really show something that needs further defi- TB: In our recent correspondence you mentioned ‘seriality as the OJUJPOTDBMFTPGTFHNFOUJWJUZXJUIJOUIFMBSHFSNPEF$PVOUFSNFBTVSFTPG ALTERNATIVE to sequential narrative.’ Could you please expand on that the segment. JEFB 170 RBD: Seriality is based on smaller units of material (individual sections of RBD: Well, first of all, this is your question, not mine. I am happy to try poems, for instance) which are not organized by narrative disclosure, single NZIBOEBUBOTXFSJOHJUJUTBQSPWPLJOHBOEJOUFSFTUJOHRVFTUJPO CVUUIJTJT telos, cause and effect that can be naturalized in some way, ending as explana- SFBMMZZPVSSFTFBSDIQSPKFDUJOBOVUTIFMM3FNFNCFSZPVLOPXNPSFBCPVU tion or solution. They are organized by leaps, associative logic or juxtaposition, comics than I do. A lot more. So here are my scattered thoughts: vectors of concerns (rather than mono-directional argument). A vectored text Comics work by framed materials, many small units, and inside any one with several directions and gaps is an alternative to sequential narrative. box is generally both a verbal and a visual cue, normally linked to other ele- NFOUTDIBSBDUFSTBOEBDUJPOTQFSGPSNFE*UJTIBSEUPTFQBSBUFUIFOBSSBUJWF thrust (characters/action) not to speak of the notable conventions of this genre TB: In an interview with Chris McCreary you explain how your poetry (drawing conventions, the nature of characters represented, the kind of action) employs ‘the visual art tactic of collage, taking disparate materials and setting and the varieties of specific genres within the mode “comic” (superhero com- them by juxtaposition in relation to each other.’ In what ways is this practice ics, romance comics, animal-joke melodramas or fables) from each other ad- TFSJBMBTPQQPTFEUPTFRVFOUJBMPSOPOTFRVFOUJBM equately. The wonderful thing about comics is how of a piece they are in our minds even though they draw on so many artistic elements (they are a kind of RBD: Yes, this practice is fundamentally serial. But there is often a se- “toy Gesamtkunstwerk”). (I think I will patent that phrase.) quence of disclosure or an emotional arc in my poems that is cumulative (or *OGBDU *DBOTFFNPSFBSHVNFOUTCZBOBMPHZIPXTPNFQPFNTBSFiMJLFw creates a cumulative effect), even a revelatory effect. The question of ending comics, but one mustn’t forget that analogy is a sweet basis and a gratifying is very acute in the serial work. It’s often a soft ending, not a “final” one-- POF CVUJUSFNBJOTJSSFEVDJCMZPOMZBOBSHVNFOUCZBOBMPHZ4PBQFSTPO with finality. Or if there is some “finality,” the work immediately opens out to could argue that a “box” or story unit (grapheme) is LIKE a stanza. Or even another work. MJLFBMJOFTFHNFOU JUIBTBOiJNBHFwJOJUPGDPVSTFUIJTiJNBHFwJTiQBJOU- I use “collage” metaphorically in the citation above as identifying how I put ed” with words, not with line, shape and color...you can see how the analogy materials together. Again the goal is non-narrative, but not anti-narrative. starts to play itself out, unfurling wildly.... and it has “words” offering verbal That is things (line groups) put next to each other in an art form unrolling in cues.) The gaps between the comic strip boxes frame each unit strikingly. time tend to be read as mutually involved, maybe even as an “effect” from the This is analogous to line break in a very general but suggestive way. prior “cause.” I think Jakobson said something like this: “contiguity implies But your question also asks about “traditions”; all I can say there, is that the TFRVFODFwTPNFUIJOHBMPOHUIFTFMJOFTJOUIFNFUBQIPSNFUPOZNZFTTBZ verbal-visual traditions of poetry are a vast topic so you might do better to :PVDBOQMBZXJUIUIJTFGGFDUJOXPSLMJLFNJOFBOE*EP MJNJUZPVSTFMGUFNQPSBMMZTBZUPNPEFSOJUZ5IJTIBTUIFBEWBOUBHFPGCFJOH approximately when comics took their current form. TB: What relationship do you see between the visual-verbal traditions of I think I need to send this to you. It has been interesting writing it. QPFUSZBOEDPNJDT Warm greetings, Rachel 171 TB: How did you begin combining poetry and comics and what’s your Bianca Stone NPUJWBUJPOPSGPDVTJODPOUJOVJOHUPNBLFUIFNQPFUSZDPNJDT

BS: I was taking a class with Anne Carson on poetry and collaboration at on the creation of NYU. In our groups we’re always trying to come up with new methods of collaboration, and once I decided to draw images to go along with a poem. poetry comics The poem was abstract, so it allowed my images to go where they wanted. I was surprised at what I drew from the lines in the poem. It was easy for me. I became obsessed with the idea of poetry and comics, and finding poets who experimented in it. I loved the strangeness of the image and the poem, when they seemed very separate, thematically, and yet created another layer of complexity and beauty and sometimes humor to the poem.

TB: 8IBUNBLFTEFGJOFTBQPFUSZDPNJD

BS: Sometimes I think I’m cheating in calling my work a comic, since they are anything but traditional comics. In many ways I’ve found the pursuit of poetry and comics an overwhelming one, because the two have not been widely joined deliberately. It is not a mere coupling of poetry with the image, rather the image needs to be distinguished from poetry as it pertains to the comic book form. It is sequential art and poetry I am primarily concerned XJUIFWFOJGJUJTNPSFTVCUMFUIBOB4VOEBZDPNJDTUSJQ*UJTBEFMJCFSBUFVTF of poetry and comics together.

TB: Book of Beasts: an illuminated anti-thesis collects fragments of your deserted work; can you describe your process for creating this poetry comic and some of your other works like The Secret Intimacies of Insects

172 BS: I was working on my thesis for my MFA program at NYU, and I was TB: What poetic devices do you employ when creating your poetry comics? Do so frustrated by the pressure for every poem to feel completed. I was looking you think you’ll experiment with more formal poetic devices? through all my failed poems I knew I never would want to save, and I began ruthlessly cutting everything. I knew that every poem had to have something in it BS: Not many. More experimental I suppose, in terms of line breaks. To do worth saving. Sometimes a three page poem would end up being three tiny lines. these pieces seems to go against all form for me, which is probably why I get such It was so liberating. I then went through all my old artwork that I never used for joy out of it. It’s a freedom from the usual rules in poetry, even my own personal anything, all the scraps. It felt so freeing because often in doing something like rules. Insects, I’m slowing down and really concentrating on one poem speaking from certain images. But there’s this other side to my work that revels in randomness TB: In ‘Frost Bitten’ there’s a layering of language, scenes and literary reference, and fragments, which is, as it turns out, a very powerful thing when assembled in a kind of exquisite corpse cut and conjure that’s also reflected in the aesthetic one place. of your comics. In ‘Watching Superman’ and ‘Poems for Walter’ there are also recurring cultural references; whose poetry, comics, art and theories have most TB: You mentioned that the poem and artwork are often created independently influenced your work? of each other, how do you decide which image will accompany what poem and how does this placement create a new meaning for the works? BS: Those poems are special to me because it harkens back to my childhood when those cultural references shaped who I was. I find them continually inspir- BS: For my Poetry Comics I always use a text I’ve already written. I usually ing and it’s so liberating to realize you can use them, that they aren’t off-limits. start drawing for that particular text, although sometimes I start the image first For example, every Christmas time I’m absorbed again with Charlie Brown, Gar- and then choose a text to add. I collage in other pieces of artwork already done. field, and Calvin and Hobbes, they make it into my work. And those old Super- Again, one important thing for me is that the image isn’t a translation of the text, man movies! I mean, they were amazing. The 80’s were a wonderful time for car- I don’t want any image from the poem drawn literally, so my choice is usually toons and superheroes and imagination because there wasn’t CGI and computers one of tone—I want the tone of the drawing to fit the poem. It can create new to suck the life out of everything. I still watch VHS movies with sappy nostalgia. meaning by giving new visual cues, such as humor, sensuality, irony, etc., that I was raised by a single mother, Abigail Stone, who is a novelist, so I spent a lot perhaps wasn’t so explicit in the poem, or maybe wasn’t even there to begin with. of time with writers. My mother has an amazing ease with which she creates I love how the images make the poem entirely new. I always think of the poetry- art and writing, it’s an incredible gift. This was due to her upbringing too. My comiced poem as its own thing, separate from the original text. They both exist biggest poetry influence to this day is my grandmother, Ruth Stone. She’s a well as different versions of one another. established American poet, and I spent a lot of time with her as a child, and in the poetry world. Some other influences/loves include: Sunday Comics, Max Ernst,

173 Edward Gory, Ralph Steadman, Egon Schiele, Marc Chagall, Ruth Stone, Sylvia TB: When you’re developing comics and reading/viewing them, do you focus Plath, John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara, Matthew Zapruder, Matthew Rohrer, Emily on image or text separately or as a symbiotic whole that conveys the message of Dickinson, Mark Strand, Anne Carson, Sharon Olds… the comic?

There’s relatively little critical work on comics, even less on poetry com- TB: BS: The moment I write the words into the panel the whole being of the work ics, and that which exists often focuses on narrative or borrows from film and art changes too massively. I think of image and text as two things, but existing side theory. What role does narrative play within your poetry comics? by side to create a third thing. Some of the poems I use in my comics are separate, they have a life of their own apart from the image. However, once I use them with BS: It’s an interesting question. I often feel a need for some sort of narrative the image they become something entirely new—and yes, together they convey thread in my poetry comics. I mean, poetry usually has some unifying thing something altogether different than they would each apart and alone. within it, but it’s certainly not a narrative you’d find in traditional comics. The role of narrative often falls on the image. There is always something that moves TB: In poetry comics, the placement or segmentivity of words, stanzas, line it along, even if it’s just a single recurring item in the panels, or a color I use in breaks are as visual as the artwork; how do you develop and understand the inter- every illustration. I think narrative is important for a “comic.” And for the sake of actions between text and image in you work and other comics? the poetry I leave that work to the images, and the rest of it I leave to the merit of the writer. BS: Line breaks are always important to a poet. For me, looking at the poem is very important. I don’t want it to be too tight, or dense; I want the line breaks to Film, theatre and art history underpin some of the ways comics are under- TB: teach me how to hear the poem. The break of a line is so amazing, actually. It can stood, how do you think poetic devices could inform analysis of comics? change the whole meaning of the sentence just with absence—with space, with timing. In comics we do something similar in breaking lines, switching from BS: Approaching poetry there is much more attention to language, distilled panel to panel, making decisions about what space to leave in the image, what down and precise. It allows for space and absence within the thread where the tone to set with space. reader creates the poem. This is a perfect way to approach comics as well in terms of language, but also in regards to the image. The line of the poem is its own unit, TB: In your creation as well as reading of comics do you focus on the smaller almost its own poem, the space given around it creates new meaning, just as we fractals or individual elements like the placement of each word or line or dis- make decisions in creating comics, what to suspend between panels, where to carded shoe, or are you more conscious of each panel and page existing within a break the line. Poetry teaches us to appreciate space and tone at language’s larger narrative or collection? deepest level, appreciating this can create lyrical, thoughtful comics, and teach us to be closer readers. 174 BS: Well, I think I appreciate the comics I read as a whole, because, frankly, the author’s are much better at the whole than I am. I appreciate the story and as a writer/artist I often pause over their techniques. In my own work I focus on the fragments, but also try often to create a whole experience to the piece, to leave traces and continuities to create a kind of “story” within the images, which seems to be happening behind the poem.

TB: How many of your poetry comics have involved collaboration and what did/does that process involve?

BS: A few times I have collaborated with people, but not too often with the poetry comics, since I feel that its somewhat important to what I’m doing for the images and words to be from the same source. However, I am currently working on a collaboration with the amazing poet and essayist, Anne Carson, on her translation of “Antigone.” I’m illustrating her translation in a very poetry-comics- way. Her translation is a play filled with elements of poetry and essay. Luckily, neither of us want to do a literal translation with the drawings. The text itself is liberal and contemporary and I want the images to mirror that.

TB: What’s the future of Bianca Stone’s poetry comics?

BS: Well, hopefully I can assemble all the comics into a book. I also want to continue pushing myself to do longer pieces (as a poet I’m into brevity), to see where that takes me. I’m working with a website designer for poetrycomics.com, which is going to be like my blog but bigger and better. www.poetrycomics.com

175 TB: One of the first questions is about your influences; Ramond Queneau Matt Madden sparked some of the ideas for your experimentations in style…

MM: Yeah, well the Exercises in Style book is a conceptual remake of his book on constraints and Exercises in Style, that book was 99 prose pieces that are of the same anecdote told over and over again and he tells it in different styles and different voices comics poetry and different genres. He’ll do an Alexandrian version and a haiku version and he also does a Pig Latin version and some nonsense version, he did the colours of the rainbow. He’s basically going through books of rhetoric and using different rhetorical strategies. He does a rainbow one, which I did in my book too, it’s the same thing, you get a red, orange, yellow and then all of the colours together of the rainbow at the end, which was actually hard to translate in all languages, because in some languages, Spanish even, you start with the violet and work backwards.

TB: So what else has influenced your comics, as far as creators or theorists go?

MM: I wouldn’t say any pure theorists have been direct influences. When I studied comparative literature in my undergrad, this is in the late 80s, so it was the height of post modern and post structuralist and de-construction stuff and it definitely affected me, I was always intrigued by it and I have been thinking about it recently and the ideas continue to be interesting to me but I think partly I was not as attentive a student as I should have been and partly I don’t think I had a teacher that was able to bring it all together in a way that it blossomed in my brain and I was like, ah now I see. Actually, I took a class in modernism with a really good teacher and we started with Proust and moved up through to the 1930s or something. We did Juna Barnes and she really made me understand what modernism was and the condition of alienation and her basic theory was

176 that’s really interesting and I think that’s over simplifying it but I do see what today. I like where the meeting point of these very, almost, abstract concepts and she’s saying. That was just one class where she was able to bring everything ideas and very self referential notions of art and art for arts sake on the one hand together into a coherent picture like that and most of the teachers I had didn’t and interaction of art with the rest of the world and more conventional narrative do that. It’s just a long way of saying that Derrida doesn’t inform my comics in a structure, where the two things meet. I’m not really satisfied with conventional direct way. Hollywood film structure or even mainstream fiction novel writing I find kind of I still feel this way about a lot of theory and the way thought develops, to a certain boring but at the same time I’ve never been a big fan of abstract painting or stuff extent there’s always someone coming up with a new theory to refute the other that’s completely lacking in structure. I like playing within those existing struc- one. I think in the 80s a lot of people made fun of it, there was so much decon- tures and trying to find new stuff, at the meeting point I guess. Like Borges for structing deconstruction and who could get that absurd and extremist, take it example, one of the reasons that I think he remains so popular is that he wrote the furthest. At a certain point you’ve shown that nothing makes any sense and these short stories that are all based on ideas from Edgar Allen Poe and Robert you can’t really construct meaning but when do you come back from that and say Louis Stevenson and based on these adventure tropes which he then twists and we have to keep going. I can’t go on and I must go on, there’s a sense of Samuel turns into these little puzzles that are endlessly compelling, you keep on coming Beckett. back to them. So that was the big motor for me in wanting to try to do that kind of stuff. In comics it doesn’t have to be self aware, avant-garde particularly, but its TB: You have to go back to the source at some point. Which leads to the next been there since the beginning; you go back to the earliest newspaper comics and question, how do you select your experiments? I guess you began to answer that you find very self referential jokes about people talking about the fact that they’re before with the story or the narrative sometime responding to the experiment inside of panels or popping their word balloons, that kind of playfulness or ex- itself but what is the initial process of selection? perimentation because it was a new medium they were inventing and we’re still only 100 years old in its modern complete form so there’s a lot of room, even in mainstream stuff. Alan Moore is an other example, he’s not a guy that’s claiming MM: I should get back to, just to finish up the influences, what I really got to be avant-garde, he works very much in the popular mode doing genre stories into was writers who were doing production stuff, like Borges, postmodern and but his stuff is really rich and thoughtful and finely rought. playful kind of fiction and Queneau’s like that too. Queneau is still not very well known in the English speaking world but his novels are often considered postmodern before the fact because they read as very light, almost adventure stories TB: So back to the selection of experiments… but they also have this level of playfulness and sense of some kind of deeper richness underlying it all but also prose calling attention to the fact that they are MM: My way into this is Exercised in Style because I read Queneau’s book and novels. They’re works that are about themselves and about that fact that they’re started to hear about Oulipo and got interested in the idea of it long before I ever fiction. Not in a sense that they’re abstract like the new novels. Alan Rochrea was read any other books and its only more recently in the last five years or so. I read also an influence and this kind of gets to the heart of what we’re talking about French quite well but its hard to find books around here, but I go to France 177 occasionally and load up on books of various sorts, comics and novel and books TB: Which pantoum was that? of poetry. I read Georges Perec’s A Void, the novel written without the letter e, which is a real cornerstone of constrained writing and it’s an amazing feat but its ... I think I might have put it on the blog post where I put the Farm also a wonderful novel and again structured like a mystery novel. It’s a real page MM: Post, her name is Shanna Comptom and she does a fair amount of pantoum and turner and that got me more and more into this idea of constraints, and reading sestina and she told me about this book Traditional Forms…which has all kinds about Oulipo and the notions of constraints, setting yourself a rule and of people doing villanelles, haiku and all kinds of stuff. She also told me about following it. Letting the content come out of that creative struggle became more this book, The New Book of Forms, which is used a lot here by American poetry and more appealing to me. It was something I did already without really know- professors which is a compendium of mostly obsolete old forms which are very ing I was doing it. There was a comic I posted on my blog recently that I drew 15 strict formally and it has little diagrams of the rhymes and rebutands and stanza years ago where I took the newspaper ad and I redrew it and I changed the text, structure, examples from different poets, stuff like that. The villanelle in here, so it was mens suits and ties in comics panels and I just changed the text a little treza rima and looking through this got me excited with ideas of things to do. bit so it read like a narrative, so it’s a little bit appropriation but its also formally The sestina was the first one I did, so it took me a while to get my head around taking an existing structure and trying to tweak it so it became a story and its the structure and how it would work as a comic because its got the 6 lines and the also that advertising copy became something more provocative. So once I was rebutands in each stanza. I mean the basic version of the process involves a lot of working on this and read about Oulipo, another book you should pick up, if you logistical and formal problem solving and then only gradually it starts to occur to haven’t already, is the Oulipo Compendium, this is a book that was published in me what kind of story to fit in there. the UK. Harry Matthews who’s the one American member of Oulipo and Alister So I spent a lot of time thinking about how to make it work as a comic. I didn’t Broshy who’s a Brit and has done a lot of books about the Surrealists, Alfred Jarry want to do six tiers of panels because I don’t really draw that small, someone like and stuff like it. So its basically an encyclopaedia of constraints and ideas so it’s a Chris Ware can do that but I prefer the classic nine-panel grid like this. So I hit great resource and looking through this has also been a big influence and I’ve also upon this idea of treating the page spread, which is one of the main units of a got friends who are poets, like when we were living in Mexico City and also here comic; you almost never look at just a page in a comic, unless it’s a stand alone in New York we know lots of different kinds of artists. You’ll find cartoonists, story like in Exercises in Style. That’s why the book is laid out with the title page any kinds of artists, you’ll find ones who only hang out with other people who do facing it, but basically you’re always looking at a two-page spread. So I thought the same thing and then the ones who hang out with a wide variety of people. I I’d use that as my stanza so you have the six lines spread out over two pages and always like having interaction with people who do different stuff, musicians, nov- you have the final panel in each tier be the six rebutands. That gave me the basic elists, filmmakers, DJs a lot of different people. So it was actually a friend of mine structure and gave me an idea of the page length because I knew it would be 13 that told me about the pantoum initially and she’d written a really wonderful one pages long, six repetitions and the envoi where I would try to use all six rebutands that I like a lot. in just one page, which only gave me three extra panels. And I found this website that had a really cool visual guide. I was trying to figure out how you did the 178 algorithm to get from one series to another and on this website they said that if wall. They’re saying things that can be interpreted differently, ‘give it up’, ‘going you have your six rebutands, six, one, five, two, four, three and the reason I can down’. So the ‘going down’ can be to get some supplies, oral sex, he’s threatening rattle that off is because you can draw a spiral to the six to the one to the five to someone ‘you’re going down’ so they’re all things that could be productive that the two, to the four, to the three and that gives you your next sequence and the way. Another key thing that helped a lot was that I named the characters and I you do that again and you do that each time and that gives you your new se- coded that to their numbers one, two, three, four, five, six. So this guy’s named quence. It’s a good pneumonic for remembering how to do it but it also started me Einiger, German for one or the only, and this guy’s called Two Penny. That’s a real thinking about the spiral and the image of it in comics. You use it for the upset or name, I try to find real names and not make things up which is funny because freaking out. They have the little curlicue coming out of their head to show anger he’s the millionaire character; Teresa and Forsyth and the Captain is named Cap- or surprise, alarm or insanity or drunkenness, a very specific curlicue which is tain Sink, which is French for five but spelt like the English sink. And his name is more deranged, dizzy or insane or drunk and I also started thinking about whirl- Sixto and I realised when I was wording this how much Tin Tin had influenced pools and that got me thinking about A Descent into the Maelstrom, the Edgar me because he’s kind of like a little Latin Tin Tin with the quaff and everything. Allan Poe story. So my first thought was maybe I could do a sestina comic retell- I can’t remember when the actual story locked into place because it’s always back ing of A Decent into the Maelstrom and quickly I realised that wouldn’t work out and forth. So I have my six characters now, I have my twelve pages, I know there’s because of the repetitions but it got me stuck in the idea of a maritime adventure a whirlpool, but when I get stuck I tend to go back to the formal aspect and try story stuck in the ocean and using some kind of whirlpool maelstrom as the to think what can I get out of the structure to guide me forward. One thing that central image. I was also thinking about this term of the envoi that they use for helped me, I had the spiral and the number six as things I kept coming back to, the last parting stanza and what an odd word that is in English and in the French so I conceived of each spread as being a unit of time, a unit of six each time, the envoi ….someone going on a journey, an envoi sent to meet someone, or some time between each scene, so from this scene to this scene 6 weeks passed, then six people going to meet an envoi, so it became a quest narrative, they’re on their way days had passed, then six hours, then six minutes; so it gave me a time structure to do something. I started to try to think of characters but the hardest part about for the story that fitted the formal element of the number six but also had a real getting started was figuring out what the repeating panels would be because I acceleration built into it as you get closer and closer to the spiral, it also mimics didn’t just have the words but also the images that needed to repeat each time and the quickening of the spiral. still flow smoothly. At some point I came up with this idea of the sacrifice. I guess that’s coming So that took a few rounds of sketches and laying stuff out ad seeing if it would back to the Poe idea of the Maelstrom, they go down into it and the hubris of the make sense in a different order. I had these end panels with a bunch of blank characters that they think they’re going to find treasure there and it turns out that panels and I tried to then go in and fill stuff in and see if it started to make sense they’re the treasures. And then there’s this thing where on each spread you find with the story. I did a whole version of the story that was just clearly not going to out that each of the characters is a virgin. So on the first spread you find out, or work out so I scrapped that and I came up with these new panels and they’re close the second one, and it goes from the most obvious, the girl’s a virgin, the boy’s ups so I can put them in different places. She’s just got a vague expression and a also a virgin and Forsyth is also a virgin because of his drunk celibacy, he’s too lot of these have swirly shapes behind them, they could be outside or against a devoted to his liquor and the captain’s also a virgin, too devoted to the sea. 179 Two Penny had an accident and was castrated riding a horse when he was young- TB: So it’s symbiotic? er and finally you find out that the father is also a virgin and that Teresa is actually adopted and that’s when they realise ‘we’re all virgins and we’re all headed to Exactly. So in this case I started with the form that lead me to the spiral this mysterious whirlpool, we’re sacrificial virgins’. And that’s an example of the MM: which led me to Poe which lead me to maritime adventure stories which lead me back and forth, the idea of sacrifice gave me the idea of virgins but revealing these into the story I ended up having and playing around with the form itself. things in the narrative came back to the formal organisation of the pages and the narrative. The virgins certainly weren’t my idea going into it, and my first thought was of TB: Would you say your reading of comics is similar to your own creation or the cliché of the young girl that gets thrown into the volcano and I wasn’t going to development process in that it is also a symbiotic reading or is there a focus on do that. So that wasn’t my initial solution, it was thinking about why would these the text first and then a reading of the image? people find themselves being sent into this whirlpool and the idea of virgins, but wait if I do that they all have to be virgins, so I had to come up with a story for MM: Well the way I read comics in certainly symbiotic in terms of text and each of them and so, in that sense, it ended up being very different to what I had image. It is very hard to slow down and realise how you actually read but I believe planned. that I read comics one panel at a time, while at the same time you’re always aware of the whole page and the spread. There are some people who read all of the dia- TB: So in summary of your process, in terms of style and form, would you say logue and then go back and match it with the pictures which I think is okay and the focus is the narrative then the development of the image? ultimately you do get the same meaning but I try to read holistically and I also read symbiotically in the same way that I create, in that I’m reading at multiple levels. I do read to see how the characters develop and how the plot develops but MM: It’s hard to separate those out. In the case of the sestina comic, as soon as I also always have an eye to the formal structure, I’m looking for any symmetry I had the idea of the decent into the maelstom it gave me a drawing style as well in the lay out, or any visual themes in there or unusual repetitions that catch my as the story content so that’s why there’s this kind of heavy pen work with a lot eye. I think that’s something that most people do even if they’re not aware of it, of cross hatching and the detailed, swoopy line work in the background that are reading at multiple levels. taken from this old guy Alex Raymond back in the 20s…who did Flash Gordon Alan Moore is a good example, cause when I read a typical adventure or superhe- comics. I wanted to make it look old fashioned and that’s one way in which I’m ro comic I basically try to get through it as quick as I can because I’m not a huge not a typical cartoonist in that I tend to draw everything in a different drawing fan of superhero comics. I’ll be aware that something might catch my eye but I’m style. This one verses the pantoum you saw me working on or this story I have in not overly expectant that its going to have some really cool underlying structure here that’s more brushy and even that where each page is a little bit different in but if I read an Alan Moore comic, I always know if I read a book of his that I this one and I’m always matching the style of the art to the form and the story so need to pay attention to everything, the composition of the panels, the grid, it is sort of all in tandem. 180 how many panels he has on each page, on one page versus two pages later. When language in general but I really tend to draw more from actually reading comics I read an author I’m familiar with I’ll be alert to the kind of stuff they have shown and novels and watching films than reading theoretical works. me in the past. To me, something you know so well, or has very fluent reading strands, it’s enjoyable but it doesn’t challenge, but with Alan Moore you have to TB: What you’re saying about montage relates to my ideas about comics poetry keep on your toes because you never know when he’s going to throw you a left which developed out of Rachel DuPlessis’s notion of segmentivity and that’s hook and I gravitate towards that kind of author over someone who is just inter- where I saw the applications of poetry to comics and the way you lay something ested in telling a really good story, that’s just my taste, just what excites me. out and how you read it diagonally or reading a panel in isolation even though you have an awareness of the page or the larger narrative or the series that may TB: So one of the other questions is about comics analysis. They often compare not even be in the same newspaper or book but you’re aware of a larger series that comics to film or analyse comics via art history or literary theory. What theory, the segment comes from it. And I guess poetry is as difficult as comics to define if any, do you use when you’re creating comics? Is any of that relevant to you, do as one absolute. you think of each page as a filmstrip, or does it play out in your mind first or is it the experiment that’s the focus? MM: I love that kind of stuff and I like to read about it but I’m not so invested that I align myself to one particular theory or school of thought. I pick and MM: It develops as I go. I showed you my thumbnails earlier where I work choose. drawing a page that gives me an idea of what the finished page is going to look like. At some point I also make a little dummy book so I get a sense of the spread TB: Your montage theory… and how its going to all fit together but I guess I don’t have any theoretical touch- stones that I work from directly but reading a lot about poetry in the last few MM: Yeah, my montage theory. years has been really interesting or often skimming all the articles about stuff like The Seven Types of Ambiguity that was big in the 30s. It might have just been an American thing, it’s tied in with the Chicago School of literature, its considered TB: How do you decide what will be shown and what will be told to us. In the very outdated but basically this guy defined the meaning of poetry by the ambi- sestina for example, you think about what will tell the story most importantly. guity it creates. He classifies seven types of ambiguity that are generated by jux- When you’re working, are there times when the expression of the face might say tapositions in poetry and whether it’s an all encompassing theory or not, I think more than what you could with the language? it’s a really interesting idea. The way you put two drawings together you create clarity or ambiguity so I think it’s more in that kind of tangential way, I’ll hear MM: That’s a tough question, that’s the nuts and bolts of cartooning, the kind an idea and in a general way that will inform an idea like reading about Einstein’s of panel to panel decisions that are rarely conscious. I tend to have a set of guide- montage theory in filmmaking. There’s a lot of applications for that in comics or lines in general and for specific comics I try not to have lots of dialogue in any 181 given panel. This sestina doesn’t have any narration at all, the same as in a short there’s not a lot of ambiguity in that sense. story, poetry too for that matter, you decide is there going to be a narrator, is it going to be a dialogue voice, is it going to be wordless so those are really decisions TB: There’s ‘Farm Pantoum’, the comics sestina and ‘Drawn Onwards’ is using a that start to determine where the weight is going to be in storytelling and creat- palindrome structure… ing meanings. So to stick with the sestina, I decided I didn’t want to have any narration even though that made it a little harder to follow, there’s no six months MM: That’s actually based on a musical form called a crab cannon that Bach later but I just wanted it to flow more naturally. It would have been easier for all invented; its basically a palindrome for two players. So if you have a melody line the rebutants to be silent because then I would just have the one thing to react to. that’s running a b c d e, Bach then flipped over on the score and there’s a second There is one actually, Captain Sink looking sort of concerned behind the wheel. I voice running this way. Its playing in one direction but essentially you have one could have with all of them, he looks serious, she looks angry and it is ambiguous melody going this way and the other melody going that way and they meet in enough and it might have been easier to match that reaction shot. By having a lit- the middle so that intrigued me. I had seen some comics palindromes; there’s a tle bit of dialogue in all but one it made it harder for me because I had to address French book called Nogegon that’s a fantasy book that’s a very impressive visual not just the expression on their faces but have whatever they were saying flow and palindrome where everything flips over in the middle and the page design is respond to the previous panel. So I guess I try to keep it in tandem. I certainly flipped upside down and backwards, the characters flip their emotions, so when don’t like to have the text overwhelm the imagery, I always like you to have to they were happy in the first half, they’re angry in the second half, the colour read the drawing for you to make some sense out of it. schemes– warm colours in the first half become cool colours in the second half so its really impressively done just at the formal level. I know of at least one other TB: And there’s poetry in that as well, the space between text and image or book-length palindrome done in comics. There’s something about the symmetry how they play against each other. and the fact that it’s a book and you can flip it back and forth makes it an appealing approach but I wanted to do it because what I’m doing is a little bit different. MM: In potential definitely. I wouldn’t argue that for this comic. This comic I’ve got these two characters that are moving through time in opposite directions is pretty airtight because it needs to be able to get the narrative across. I don’t and that’s not how I present it in the story; well I guess it is but it doesn’t have a think there’s a lot of types of ambiguity in there to be drawn out, except in the science fiction element but they are essentially moving in different directions in way that there is in any story; what does it all mean, what is this maelstrom that time but in a way that can only happen in a book because its all predicated on, I’m they’re headed into and literary resonances and things like that but I’m not sure going to spoil the story for you now, I’ve told more people about how this thing that there’s any points where there’s ambiguity or uncanny moment where there’s works than are ever going to read this story. I’m putting backgrounds in and cor- questions about how does this fit together. I mean, that’s a higher level of engage- rections and I’m hoping to get it published by early next year. I’m not even sure ment. I might have done other works, it is ironic because although it is based on who will publish it at this point because I don’t have a regular publisher. a poetic form, it is one of the more straightforward narrative comics I’ve done, 182 So its got a framing narrative, the whole thing is drawn by this woman char- ‘too late’ and then she slits her wrist and this comic is her suicide note. We’ll see acter, she’s the narrator, she’s the cartoonist, she also draws in two styles – this how it all works when it gets published and people read it and see how they make is her present day and then when she gets into the actual comics she’s doing an sense of it. autobiographical comic and telling you about this love affair. I’m hoping to fool readers, I’m not sure if you read this poem but each panel has the alphabet coded TB: Well, thanks for the preview…. into it and a lot of people and I’ve read this story and the sestina and people can read through it and not realise that there’s really rigid formal structures there MM: Again the question was how do I make a narrative out of this? And and that’s really gratifying to me that people can enjoy it as straight story and not instantly the star crossed lovers story came to mind, with a kiss in the middle and even be aware of that stuff and I think this will kind of be like that until you get death at either end and it was just a matter of trying to figuring out how to fit that to the end. So you’ve got this story, and she’s talking about his guy that started all into a narrative I needed this, I’m not sure if I needed it but I decided on this stalking her and he was really weird and she was freaked out, but gradually she framing story of her drawing this comic and telling you about it as a way to com- gets amused by him, and attracted and starts thinking about him a lot and finally ment on it I guess. becomes infatuated and goes into the subway looking for him, they meet and kiss and say they love each other then part ways. From then on her infatuation increases and he starts to pull away and gets a little sarcastic and then mean and TB: I was also wondering if you think there’s any other poetic devices that finally acting like he doesn’t even know who she is and leaves her alone on the could inform comics? subway platform and she knows he’s never going to come back and it ends with her saying that she drew this comic to try and make sense out of what happened MM: Sure. One I bought to show you is from Bon Disonae, again he’s one of but it made her even more confused than ever until she was looking through the the Oulipo guys from L’ Association…. pages backwards to just check for correction, which is what you do when you’re looking at a book, you look at it all different ways and you go back and you look TB: They did that fantastic collection of 2000 comics... at where she began and she says ‘I saw his story and what happened to him’. It works if you read it panel to panel and you see that the dialogue reads both ways MM: Yeah, TheComix 2000 book. So Oubapo, it’s a lot of the L’Association but its enough to flip and you see that it’s the same thing happening where he gets guys that started it, Jean-Christophe Menu and Shaun Hyme and some younger obsessed and then more and more infatuated. Then when you read the beginning guys, Killoffer who’s one of the original guys… and this bookBandes Dessinées. you realise that he’s jumped in front of the train there. At the beginning, you Bandes Dessinées is comics in French but its also sonnet strips, literally, and so realise there is a sense of general disorientation on the subway that day of our first this is a book of comic sonnets with different takes on the rhyme rules and femi- meeting and there was a screeching train and people screaming and there’s voices nine and masculine rhymes in French which become feminine and masculine in the background which you shouldn’t even notice that much, people asking characters. what happened, ‘Oh my god, there was a crazy man’, ‘there’s been an accident’ 183 repetition of the sestina, I think there’s some other forms based on rebutands TB: And these are all his originals? rather as opposed to rhyming because you can’t really rhyme all that well in comics or at least I haven’t thought of a good way to do it. I guess visual rhyme with Yeah, they are, these are drawn by him. MM: similar shapes is something you could do but its something that doesn’t interest me that much. Actually, I should take that back, it’s definitely something you TB: And the sonnet is written by him, he’s not appropriating someone else? could do.

MM: Yeah I think they’re all stuff that he wrote and they’re in the form of gag TB: Somebody quotes John Hankeiwicz as saying that he rhymes the panel strips. He’s a humorist above all else but they’re extremely clever. This is one using with the previous one but I wasn’t sure because appropriated art and it has a bit of a pantoum like repetition. The rhyme repeats in the panel and so his end rhymes repeat over the course of the comic and its like MM: Yeah, his stuff is all about repetition. an old Western comic and it turns into this weird homo-erotic absurdist comic. I’m hoping to translate one of these. Anyway, he and I have been talking, I met I was going to ask you if you thought it was possible to have a rhyme or him a couple of times; I was in France back in the fall, and he’s really excited TB: other poetic devices like alliteration… about trying to put a book together, one of these Opus books of the Oubapo collected stuff and get everyone to do comics based on poetry forms, the leading ones being the sonnet, the sestina and the pantoum. You could certainly do MM: Certainly, any poetic device along the lines of alliteration you can fit a type of haiku type of thing in comics and the villanelle, anything that has the in your writing anyway and I try to be aware of my writing like that anyway. So repeating lines. The things that I look for when I’m looking at these old poetry rhyming the actual text in a comic, there’s no reason you can’t do it but in poetry forms and trying to think what I can adapt to narrative comics is some form of if it’s too sing-songy it’s going to draw attention to itself. repetition that I can apply to comics. The pantoum is great because its a whole TB: An acrostic poem? line of verse that’s very easy to transpose to a tier of panels in comics and also that fact that is four lines like four tiers of a comic, that’s a pretty typical comics Atien does a lot of that stuff, comics acrostics where you can read the layout. The villanelle, in a similar sense, has got these repeating call and response MM: panels up or down and that’s definitely something you can do a lot with. Then lines that come at the beginning and end. A student of mine did a variation of the there’s a more free form stuff, that’s not really my game but what Warren does villanelle, in this book they call it a terza rima, and she did a sort of very free ad- is amazing, like his riffs on Apollinaire. That’s clearly comics language but you aptation of Alice In Wonderland and it worked great because it had all this repeti- wouldn’t call it a comic. I think it’s great, I like it a lot. We’re friends, I’ve known tion of Alice going down the hole, going down the hole again and one pill makes him for a long time, we have a mutual admiration society going on. her big, one makes her small. It’s a terzanelle, no that’s not it either...anyway. The

184 And then there’s this guy, Garry Sullivan, you should definitely look at him, MM: If you read the comments on his site. But comics people would get a kick he’s much more of a trickster poet and he’s got this thing that was on the Poetry out of it, they appreciate the medium and they like to see people trying different Foundation website. stuff, or at least be amused. It’s a funny comic. But the poetry readers didn’t take too kindly to it. In the American poetry scene right now there’s a debate going TB: Where they had the illustration of poems that was criticised? on between the Flarf guys and conceptualist writers, like Christian Bok. He has the highest profile of more experimental poetry and I think Eunoia is a fantastic MM: We’ll it’s neither, he just did a comic poem for them, although I take it book and he’s definitely been an influence on me. So there’s him and this guy implicitly as a criticism of that other series because I question the value of doing Kenneth Goldsmith who does the Ubuweb site and he’s a very weird, provocative that kind of project that the Poetry Foundation did – here’s a cartoonist, here’s a guy and he did a book where he tried to record everything his body did for a day poem, why don’t you illustrate it as a comic – at least that’s how most of the peo- and publish it as a book of poetry. He ended up getting drunk and passing out by ple took it. I found that most were just drawings that accompanied and showed mid afternoon. He does stuff like that or copying an entire page out of a newspa- you what was happening in the poem and that I don’t find to be very poetic at all, per, conceptual stuff, and I think its really cool that one of these guys who’s at the it’s just an illustration. Gabrielle Bell and Pete Johnstone did some that at least forefront of this movement is also trying to do comics and in that sense it really played a little more with visual metaphors. To me, in comics poetry the image is in the face of these other more staid, established poets and having established and text would rarely coincide or they would do it in a surprising way. indie cartoonists do very pretty, nice looking, illustrated comics very much based So Garry did a poem called ‘Am I Emo?’. Do you know about Flarf? Flarf is this on this response. movement that he and some friends started and it’s a half provocative joke but it is the basis of some of their poetry and all of their work comes from Google TB: We were talking to Larry Marder about that concept, and his panel at searches and so in ‘Am I Emo?’, the text comes from, I haven’t talked to him ComicCon was a discussion about his interest in the concept rather than the about it but I assume he Googled Emo and poetry and went into message boards, aesthetic of comics. that kind of stuff. Am I Emo? Is it legal to punch an Emo? Why do people get angry when I tell them their poems suck? All of these really banal questions off MM: Someone like Kenneth Goldsmith would take that to the extreme. I of the internet and he puts them in dialogue balloons and the images come from admire that stuff but I would never really want to do something like that. It’s too these pulpy Thai horror and crime comics. I don’t even know where he gets them. experimental for my own personal predilections and personality. I love that other They’re redrawn but the composition is based on these Thai pulp comics and it’s a people are doing it and very much approve of it but it’s an extreme. I’m definitely really strange experience to read it I think. in the middle ground but Garry is definitely someone you should talk to. He’s a poet first and then a cartoonist. TB: Do you think some people missed the point of what he was doing?

185 TB: That’s what I was looking for. Austin English is another name that came up, but in reading his work it seemed more narrative.

MM: Yeah, Tom Hart did something on his blog a year ago or something. He’s a really good friend and we teach together but I thought it was a little off base because he was talking about what does poetic mean in comics and he basically seemed to be talking about something that is evocative in a general way and not about the formal structures of poetry or even the way a poem is supposed to be, in a very general sense, evocative by giving you a sense of word images or associations that generate some reaction in your brain. He was even talking about that, more about romantic sensibility and that’s what I see a bit more of with Austin English. I like it but it’s provocative and romantic and kind of non-linear and in his case not always to his benefit. I agree, he’s basically narrative, he tells stories, memoir stuff, family memories.

**Our discussion continued long into the afternoon but this is the end of the transcript. Thank you to Matt and Jessica for allowing us to visit and steal some precious studio time.

186 TB: BREAK ME OUCH (BMO) is described as graphic poetry, what are some Michael Farrell on on of the features that characterise this form for you?

MF: Each separately titled sequence is a poem: has a poetic logic; also I have BREAK ME OUCH adapted a compositional structure from my text only poems: using chance to determine size and numbers of boxes per strip, and word numbers per frame. So there is a considered prosodical or musical structure that is not just about the language used.

TB: What’s the relationship between these two forms, poetry and comics?

MF: Two things (apart from the above – there is a rhythm to comics based on frames that I exploited in a kind of toy keyboard kind of way) come to mind: imagery and personae. Poems are said to ‘have’ imagery, to be made of images, a way of reading that denies language as such. In comics this is separated. The imagistic quality of comics language is both underplayed (i.e relatively redundant) and diverted from; using explicit (i.e visual) imagery in BREAK ME OUCH, allowed me to parallel, depart and play with that aspect. At times they might seem redundantly illustrative; but for me it was an exploration of the visual possibilities of the basic figure. Which brings me to personae: in having a figure to accompany the text – rather than speech bubbles – it meant there was a character to anchor the text, but not necessarily own it. The character becomes more explicitly a structural device than either a comics character, or a self/pronoun in a poem.

TB: Can you elaborate on the process of conceiving and constructing BMO? For example the interaction of word and image, do you focus on the verbal and visual separately, in juxtaposition or symbiosis? 187 this happens – for me the happening is related to an unfolding of a conceptual or MF: As above. Plus, because I had the basic figure already, however static, it linguistic conceit, rather than a plot. could just develop with the poem, kind of like improvised performance. Or as a form of punning. During the period I wrote BMO, I didn’t write other kinds of poems, so all my ideas went into graphic poems. Initially, this was more word TB: Are you conscious of poems like ‘THE SKY’ and ‘RADIO’ operating as generated, from titles, punning on them etc., but in the process – over about two individual pieces or as being read together in sequence like episodes of a larger months – my attentiveness to new poem ideas became more visual – hence the narrative poem? ‘silent’ or wordless poems that enter. MF: They were written as individual pieces. TB: In poetry comics by Bianca Stone and Warren Craghead the typography, placement and ‘segmentivity’ of the poem in stanzas and line breaks is as visual TB: BMO experiments with comics conventions like the placement of panels as the artwork; how do you develop the interactions between word and image in on the page, the size of panels, repetition of an iconic character; what other your work, the typography and spatial arrangement of the poem? comics devices could be used to shape poetry and vice versa? What other structural forms have you experimented with to create graphic poetry? MF: By using chance I mean dice, so you can see a structure based on six possibilities. It also interested me that I was using capital letters, which is a MF: Since BMO I have written comics that employ repetition – so frames are comics default, whereas I had mainly used lower case in poetry – it does give the repeated – but not necessarily (chance again) at the same scale; and my drawing word more visual equality I think – and since then I’ve used capitals a lot more in is not skilled so they would look somewhat differently anyway. But the composi- writing poetry. tional structure is the same. My comics frames are a bit like TV studio shots. Facing camera, no background. No perspective. I think this comes from TB: Comics scholarship often focuses on definitions of ‘sequential art’ like undergrad videomaking – perhaps? – just thought of this now. I have dropped the those formulated by Will Eisner and Scott McCloud. What role, if any, does practice of a consistent character and just used text; sometimes alternating with a sequence play in BMO and your graphic poetry? visual image, but not combining them in the same frame. I have one with robots that don’t apparently move or say anything, they just appear solo or in MF: In a way it’s like a holding action, as long as you haven’t spilled your whole combination and in different sizes. I also adapted the colonial poem ‘Where the poem in a frame, then you can take it to the next frame. I think it allows for a Dead Men Lie’, (by Barcroft Boake) which uses a lot of repetition anyway – I kind of visual or rhythmic balance that’s much more submerged in purely alpha- thought it might have appeal as a stand alone comic, being so morbid … (and out betic writing. Hand-drawing the frames allows for more conscious involvement of copyright). in the structure as well. Sequences imply narrative perhaps – this happens then 188 Ferdinand’s ‘Take Me Out’. TB: There are elements of your work that reminded me of Anders Nilson’sThe End and Kenneth Koch’s The Art of The Possible; whose poetry and comics have most influenced your work and who would you list as contemporaries in the field TB: In poems like ‘GULAGS’, ‘CLOUD’ and ‘FRUMP JUMP’ there are of graphic poetry, in Australia and internationally? wordless panels, what’s the relationship between breath, the role of silence in poetry, and absence of speech balloons in the graphic poems? MF: When I started BMO it was kind of accidental – I wasn’t reading contemporary comics at the time. So I see it as relating to the most basic comic MF: I’m not sure I have more to say here; but they do come from a sense of a of my childhood: Peanuts , the figure is kind of an emptied out Charlie Brown. poem as a constructed impulse, of a thought that’s not necessarily in words. It’s The other influence was a fantastic repetitive comic I read in a 90s New York interesting to perform these – particularly ‘CLOUD’, as it gives audiences and me poetry journal called SPIT. They were probably ahead of their time in publishing a breather, a break from the intensity of word language. poetry and comics together; now it seems to be common. Since then I read quite a bit; but my work has not been very consistent. So while I admire some people I TB: How do these absences or gaps operate in both your reading of other don’t see a direct connection. I don’t really see myself as having contemporaries. I comics and the creation of your own graphic poems? know little about international comics poetry, and I certainly don’t see myself in relation to the major comics artists like Chris Ware etc. I do like basically drawn MF: I think if I go on they will become more important. It comes from a comics – as long as they’re not too cutesy or the story – the affect – too wet – consideration of the page: poetry critic Marjorie Perloff writes of that as being which I find in some comics that follow ‘relationships’, for example. I like comics the major shift in 20th century poetry – that the unit of composition became the where nothing much happens. I like humour rather than drama. I like ‘white’ too, page. This is something that is still being realised … and perhaps it’s over now in the black and white sense. that the screen has made the page infinite. In comics there’s always that page consciousness. But comics tend to fill the space – poets have often not known how TB: The White Stripes along with other musicians have been referenced in to do this – but they have perhaps known how to leave gaps. So it’s about thinking relation to your poetry, and in the opening poem of BMO, a figure appears to this through a bit more … in terms of Olson’s open field, for example, but also in shout sorrows from the roof; what’s the relationship between the musicality and Australian terms: what does an empty page represent, how is it colonised etc? the aesthetic of the poems in BMO? How does the rhythm of the verbal poem interact with the visual and vice versa? TB: What’s the future of Michael Farrell’s graphic poetry?

I’ve written on rhythm above. A lot of my poems come from a word idea MF: MF: I don’t want to spill the beans on the idea I have to work on next. I would derived from a song – BREAK ME OUCH comes from punning on Franz like to do more with BREAK ME OUCH: make a non-animated film...or BREAK 189 ME OPERA!. But it depends on chance, time and opportunity – and my technological laziness. There is not a lot of poetry/comic crossover in Australia … but it appears to be growing slowly, with the rise in visual poetry. It’s become my habit to divert to the visual as an alternative to text-only poems, in the way some poets use translation; but I’m not sure exactly where this visual bent will go; and there’s always the sound/performance direction to go in also. In the last year however, I’ve written quite a few concrete poems: maybe next I can find a way to synthesise the concrete and the comic in some way.

190 TB: On your comics poetry site you state ‘the goal with Versequential is to Alexander Rothman write poetry in the visual language of comics’; what characterises the language of on ‘Versequential’ comics for you? What are the fundamental components of the form? AR: I’m pretty much borrowing Scott McCloud’s definition of comics, as you suggest further down, with a minor variation. He defines comics as pictorial images placed in sequence to tell a story. I’m not that interested in narrative, though, so for me it’s simply sequencing the images in order to approximate language. (I should point out that I don’t mean that in a technical, linguistic sense. Otto Neurath had some interesting ideas about creating a sort of pictographic language with its own syntax and vocabulary, but that’s definitely not what I’m trying to do.)

So painting with the broadest brush, I’d say I define comics as anything that uses a sequence of static, pictorial images to communicate. I guess the question becomes what do I think poetry is? The poet who has had the most profound impact on my written work is Gerard Manley Hopkins, who talked about poetry as heightened language. I see poetry as using kind of optimizing language to do the most work. Where prose is just trying to get at something, poetry employs all the different characteristics of language—the sound of the words, the rhythm of their order, the placement of breath, associations, and on and on. (I don’t draw a bright line between the two, though. I like prose poems and think plenty of prose is poetic.)

So I want to maximize the communicative power of the elements of the comics page. I’ve had these vague ideas about creating direct analogs to the poet’s tool- box—having each tier work as a line, and each panel as a foot, for instance. But I’ve never really gotten anywhere with those. (For that example, I quickly realized that you can’t really get enough panels on the page for that to come across and for 191 them to still look interesting. Unless maybe you’re Chris Ware.) Emmanuel Guibert and Joann Sfar, John Porcellino, lately Eddie Campbell. I’ll feel that I’ve been successful when I can point to ways in which panels or drawings are doing lots of work at once. I don’t think I’ve quite yet. In terms of comics-poetry, I’m cobbling together influences as I go along. Herriman remains up there. I initially drew encouragement from John Hankie- TB: How did you begin to combine comics and poetry? Who or what are some wicz’s Asthma, from Warren Craghead’s HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE, from of your influences within these two forms? Kenneth Koch’s weird The Art of the Possible, Kenneth Patchen’s stuff, Gary Sullivan’s Elsewhere, Dino Buzzati’s Poem Strip , some of Kevin Huizenga’s more experimental stuff. In a weird way from William Blake’s work. More recently it’s AR: I’m not sure when the idea first occurred to me. I have always loved com- been inspiring to learn about you, Bianca Stone, Derik Badman, and just a few ics, and I’ve always loved writing. I loved a few poets in high school—Pablo days ago Paul K. Tunis... it feels like the time for this hybrid form has truly ar- Neruda most of all—but I didn’t really fall hard for it until I attend this bizarre, rived. experimental college in the desert called Deep Springs, and took an independent study with a young poet named Katie Peterson. She’s a fantastic writer and a truly amazing teacher, and that class really threw the doors wide open for me. Deep TB: Can you elaborate on the process of constructing a comics poem like ‘gulf’ Springs is a two-year school, so pretty much everyone transfers to finish their de- or ‘notes on waking’; how do you develop the interactions between word and gree. Katie convinced me to apply to Harvard, where she was a grad student at the image in your work, do you always know what parts of the poem will be depicted time; I was fortunate enough to get in. The idea of combining the forms was with in images and what parts shown in panels? me by then, since I wanted to double-major in English and art so that I could write a thesis of comics-poems. But it was too difficult to navigate the AR: (I’m guessing you mean images vs. words? I think everything I sent you has requirements, so I stuck with English and had the amazing experience of writ- panel borders.) I’m trying very hard to do both parts at once. Words come more ing a creative thesis with Jorie Graham as an advisor. I did take as many art easily to me, but I don’t know if that just my nature or a long habit of writing classes as I could, and started experimenting with comics-poetry there—but poetry in words. Usually a phrase pops into my mind. I repeat it over and over quite haltingly. Since graduating, I’ve focused on building up my comics chops, again in my head, maybe building a little bit more each time. That’s how “Notes and have taken a lot of continuing-ed. classes here at the School of Visual Arts in on Waking” went. The words came into my head and stuck around and I tried to New York. I could go on for a long time about influences. Poetically I draw the develop images around them. most from Gerard Manley Hopkins, as I mentioned. Also Hart Crane, Robert So how would one do that with images? With “Gulf” I was really struck by those Hass, Forrest Gander, Lynn Hejinian, Yehuda Amichai, James Wright, Elizabeth amazing images that came out of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year. Bishop, Dickinson and Whitman, Derek Walcott, Wallace Stevens... The The birds completely obscured in viscous oil, the bellowing underwater cloud. cartoonists I love the most are Art Spiegelman, Alison Bechdel, George Those stuck with me and the rest of the poem developed as I tried to make some Herriman, Walt Kelly, Glenn Dakin, Tom Hart, French cartoonists like sense of the event and my relationship to it. 192 I think I mentioned that Hopkins was a revelation for me, in that you read his pieces successful, or at least acceptable. I have a lot to do before I can say poems aloud and it’s like you’re being carried through some ecstatic experience anything smarter than that. of divinity. So I think I try to write poems that way, like navigating the process of having an idea or feeling, and giving the reader the breadcrumbs to follow. That’s TB: The term ‘Versequential’ references Eisner and McCloud’s definitions of what I want to do with both the words and images. I’m trying to ask what comes comics as ‘sequential art’. What role does sequence play in your comics poetry alive better in the mind as an image, and what is best evoked through words. The and to what extent do you think sequence is inherently narrative or can it be non- process so far is completely intuitive. linear too?

TB: You’ve differentiated between illustrated poems and comics poetry, the AR: As I mentioned above, narrative--at least in the sense of a sequence of latter being ‘something propelled by both verbal and visual rhythm, that needs all events that drives a story--doesn’t interest me much these days. I much prefer its parts to work.’ Can you elaborate on how this synthesis operates within your associations, cycles, processes. It’s the feeling that narratives have to be these big work? chains of events that lose me. I love movies like Tarkovsky’s Solaris, where he’s just creating this world of images, and what actually happens feels secondary. AR: Well, I’m not sure I’m pulling it off in my work. When I first set out to look I do like linearity in that I like considering how things change. I’m most for other examples of comics poetry, I think my first discovery was a project from interested in uncertainties, liminal spaces. I like that the name Versequential, the Poetry Foundation, “The Poem as Comic Strip,” that had major cartoonists beyond the obvious references, draws from the Latin words for “turn” and illustrate their favorite poems. (In Googling that, I was just reminded that there’s “follow.” I like that tension. I had a wonderful professor who talked about how the a follow up that’s actually pretty cool.) The original project struck me as abso- idea of turning is central to poetry. At the simplest level, you get to the end of the lutely ridiculous—what can you do to Emily Dickinson’s words that isn’t going to line and turn to the next one. Something has changed, but something is the same, be mere ornamentation? I mean, remixing or reinterpreting them somehow, I’d the context remains. This is how I understand rhythm as well. So you have the be all for that. But just illustrating poems that already exist seems to take a very sequence plodding along, but there’s something in there that wants to break free. reductive view of comics. I don’t mean to be dogmatic about that. I bought a chapbook of Bianca Stone’s TB: In poems like ‘gulf’ and ‘imagine a light’ word and image are sometimes written work and gathered that she has made some poetry comics from juxtaposed, lines are counter-measured; what poetic devices are you conscious of previously written poems, and I think they’re great. But that example from the employing? To what extend do these techniques contrast with, or complement, Poetry Foundation kind of lodged in my mind as What Not to Do, so I have sequentially? consciously tried to create pieces that would feel incomplete if you took away either the words or the images. AR: Unfortunately, I don’t have too much to say about this. As I hinted earlier, All that said, I think I’m just at the point where I can consider some of these any attempts I’ve made to directly employ poetic technique have been 193 nonstarters. And honestly I have focused so much more on cartooning than AR: Probably as individual pieces that are connected—I don’t anticipate poetry over the last five years that my skills thinking about the latter have grown writing more of them. I do plan a long series of poems that are thematically rusty. Like, I remember the word “synecdoche,” but what the hell does that mean? linked poems about this track that I go running at, which is underneath a big (I’d look it up if it weren’t 3am here…) Part of it is that I never really liked writing bridge. But I might just get one or two or two pieces out of that before I exhaust formally, so I bristle a little at the thought of bringing that into this work. the material. I guess that’s not completely honest. I’m trying to bring things in at a very You know, as much as I have been dumping on the idea of narrative, one of my basic level—“Kojo No Tsuki” has the basic 3-tier format for each page. I studied favorite poems ever is Derek Walcott’s Omeros, not to mention The Odyssey some Old English in college and am trying to build the stuff I’m working on now itself… so maybe one day I’ll stop being such a curmudgeon. around the idea of stresses (which Hopkins loved, too, of course!) I like the idea of coming up with some arbitrary page structure and working within that In ‘notes on waking’ the poem is accumulated almost one word at a time; constraint, maybe a little like Marriane Moore. But really I’m just desperately TB: what’s the relationship between spacing and rhythm in your comics poetry? trying to find something I like, so formalism keeps getting thrown out.

Mostly this goes back to that idea of trying to slow the reader down. I love TB: How do you determine how to segment words and images, to place them in AR: how poetry incorporates the empty space of the page. I want these comics to do captions or have them float between panels? that too—but it’s hard to get the eye to land on that space.

AR: Again, it’s pretty intuitive. I think the words have greater weight if they’re What connections between comics and poetry do you hope to explore in kind of off on their own rather than attached to an image. One thing I’m very TB: future works? conscious of is the difficulty of getting a reader to slow down. You know, you pick up Craig Thompson’s book that he’s worked on for 7 years and read all 800 pages in an afternoon… I think I read that this is why Art Spiegelman chose such a AR: All of them: I want to take over the world. Just kidding. Sort of. sketchy style for Maus—because readers could just glide too easily through more polished images. So I am putting the words in places where I think they’ll slow the reader down or speed them up, or just hit the right beats in general. I’m not sure how well that’s working.

TB: ‘Magnolias’ is a poem in two parts, the sequence of stanzas punctuated by another comics poem. Did you conceive of these poems as individual pieces or as episodes of a larger narrative poem? 194 NDARIES NDARIES POE COMICS NDARIES POE COMICS NDARIES POE COMICS NDARIES POE COMICS OETRY BEYOND SEQU OETRY BEYOND SEQU OETRY BEYOND SEQU OETRY BEYOND SEQU OETRY BEYOND SEQU EQUENTIAL BOUNDAR EQUENTIAL BOUNDAR EQUENTIAL BOUNDAR EQUENTIAL BOUNDAR EQUENTIAL BOUNDAR

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