On Photopoetry
Like a diamond in its setting, a text found in a photograph is better placed to shine, charm. The physical world plays a supporting role and diminishes the starkness of the page.
Form is the straitjacket some don with relief. “Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room” (Wordsworth). Like eating an egg for dinner every day, or streamlining your clothing to a uniform, less choice means more choice, it means less deciding and more doing. Countless times, form has pushed our language—and with it, our thought—off trammelled paths to somewhere startling.
Poetry and photography are two ways of adumbrating the ineffable.
The photopoem diptych opposes the august poet and the lesser photographer, the esteemed photographer and the lesser poet, on facing pages. Such confections have the aftertaste of a commissioned work. No electricity sparks the inert parts to form a whole.
Rilke wrote: Du schnell vergehendes Daguerreotyp / in meinen langsamer vergehenden Händen. This daguerreotype the poet holds, of his father as a young man, is fading only a little faster than his own mortal hands. Poetry and photography apprehend peripheral feelings, instants that cannot be grasped head-on. So much of both dwells on loss.
Without the support of a photograph, the text scrap might feel too slight.
The best photographs conjure the feeling when the poem’s first fragments swim into sight.
The possibility of archival photographs: to add the layer of history. Another country.
Like a visual work, a poem is an accretion of disparate elements. Statements, sense impressions, and images lack connective tissue beyond their placement. The poem leaps across space, time, register to form a play of units. A photographer drawing on her archive can achieve leaps across places she has visited. The viewer’s eye makes a magnetism between the images.
Finally there is enough for the eye and mind to do.
Ian Hamilton Finlay spoke of the landscape as a syntax, joining disparate elements. What is the ground against which the photo sequence or collage joins to form a poem? It is the action of the eye, toggling between image and word, absorbing both.
Photographs sidestep language entirely. Poetry’s tools—negative space, rhythm, rhyme, image, a disavowal of syntax—pull away from the linearity of prose. Poems achieve a simultaneity not unlike what a photograph achieves in its use of visual rhythm and framing.
Photography and poetry are two sides of a coin and polar opposites.
Where does the imagery go in a photopoem? Does it stay in the photograph, leaving the poem to be pure language? Does the poem’s image clang against the image? Do the tones of color, warm or cool, act as the music of a poem—sibilant or harsh with stopped consonants?
In attempting to counterweigh a sonnet, a grid of fifty-odd photographs might be the truest counterpoint, reflecting the density of individual words in language, their range of associations, their etymologies, their aural and visual lives.
This is the excitement of collage and sequences. Not the native dualism of image and word: the word apple and the red-cheeked, gleaming apple. The work of forming connections is the viewer’s joy when the items are fertile enough, coruscate enough with meaning—and ambiguity.
In order for poem and photo to feel incomplete alone, each must be conceived with space for the other to nestle in.
The shape of a sonnet, like the shape of the viewfinder, is immensely stabilizing.
That hoary chestnut of fiction workshops: “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. But “the king died and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time-sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it. Here is neither sequentiality nor causality: the viewer’s gaze isn’t directed or told how to feel.
Now we stand before an infinity of sequences: the photographed poem; the sequenced poem-like photographs; the photographed poem transcribed or captioned or introduced with a prose poem and thus re-burdened by being anchored in the textual world.
The best photographs suspend a poem’s worth of emotions midair.
Can digital black be velvety? Tear a thick, soft sheet of black construction paper and feel the wavy softness of its edges.
The best poems phrase what our language lacks.
Is it down to the frame? Hold a rectangle to the world: how that shape ennobles it.
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•
Like a diamond in its setting, a text found in a photograph is better placed to shine, charm. The physical world plays a supporting role and diminishes the starkness of the page.
•
Form is the straitjacket some don with relief. “Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room” (Wordsworth). Like eating an egg for dinner every day, or streamlining your clothing to a uniform, less choice means more choice, it means less deciding and more doing. Countless times, form has pushed our language—and with it, our thought—off trammelled paths to somewhere startling.
•
Poetry and photography are two ways of adumbrating the ineffable.
•
The photopoem diptych opposes the august poet and the lesser photographer, the esteemed photographer and the lesser poet, on facing pages. Such confections have the aftertaste of a commissioned work. No electricity sparks the inert parts to form a whole.
•
Rilke wrote: Du schnell vergehendes Daguerreotyp / in meinen langsamer vergehenden Händen. This daguerreotype the poet holds, of his father as a young man, is fading only a little faster than his own mortal hands. Poetry and photography apprehend peripheral feelings, instants that cannot be grasped head-on. So much of both dwells on loss.
•
Without the support of a photograph, the text scrap might feel too slight.
•
The best photographs conjure the feeling when the poem’s first fragments swim into sight.
•
The possibility of archival photographs: to add the layer of history. Another country.
•
Like a visual work, a poem is an accretion of disparate elements. Statements, sense impressions, and images lack connective tissue beyond their placement. The poem leaps across space, time, register to form a play of units. A photographer drawing on her archive can achieve leaps across places she has visited. The viewer’s eye makes a magnetism between the images.
•
Finally there is enough for the eye and mind to do.
•
Ian Hamilton Finlay spoke of the landscape as a syntax, joining disparate elements. What is the ground against which the photo sequence or collage joins to form a poem? It is the action of the eye, toggling between image and word, absorbing both.
•
Photographs sidestep language entirely. Poetry’s tools—negative space, rhythm, rhyme, image, a disavowal of syntax—pull away from the linearity of prose. Poems achieve a simultaneity not unlike what a photograph achieves in its use of visual rhythm and framing.
•
Photography and poetry are two sides of a coin and polar opposites.
•
Where does the imagery go in a photopoem? Does it stay in the photograph, leaving the poem to be pure language? Does the poem’s image clang against the image? Do the tones of color, warm or cool, act as the music of a poem—sibilant or harsh with stopped consonants?
•
In attempting to counterweigh a sonnet, a grid of fifty-odd photographs might be the truest counterpoint, reflecting the density of individual words in language, their range of associations, their etymologies, their aural and visual lives.
•
This is the excitement of collage and sequences. Not the native dualism of image and word: the word apple and the red-cheeked, gleaming apple. The work of forming connections is the viewer’s joy when the items are fertile enough, coruscate enough with meaning—and ambiguity.
•
In order for poem and photo to feel incomplete alone, each must be conceived with space for the other to nestle in.
•
The shape of a sonnet, like the shape of the viewfinder, is immensely stabilizing.
•
That hoary chestnut of fiction workshops: “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. But “the king died and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time-sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it. Here is neither sequentiality nor causality: the viewer’s gaze isn’t directed or told how to feel.
•
Now we stand before an infinity of sequences: the photographed poem; the sequenced poem-like photographs; the photographed poem transcribed or captioned or introduced with a prose poem and thus re-burdened by being anchored in the textual world.
•
The best photographs suspend a poem’s worth of emotions midair.
•
Can digital black be velvety? Tear a thick, soft sheet of black construction paper and feel the wavy softness of its edges.
•
The best poems phrase what our language lacks.
•
Is it down to the frame? Hold a rectangle to the world: how that shape ennobles it.
