Maria Popova's
article over at Brain Pickings made me aware of the
Poetry on the Road literary festival which was held this past June in Bremen, Germany. As Popova points out, every year this international festival commissions visual artist Boris Müller to create a graphic representation of the festival's poetic theme. This project is known as
VisualPoetry, and has evolved significantly over the years. Here is this year's design; the thickness of the lines represents the frequency of certain words in the poems. Make sure you click the image on the main site for the full effect.
These examples of visualizing poet's words got me thinking about the long tradition of representing poetic verse in some form of visual art. Usually this takes the form of illustration, but some illustrations are so vivid that they can stand as art on their own merits.
Gustave Doré, the 18th century engraver, produced some of the most famous illustrations to poetry ever made. His subjects included Dante's
Divine Comedy, Milton's
Paradise Lost, Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner", Poe's "The Raven", and even the Bible. Even though they're in black and white, his engravings crackle with a life and energy that capture and extend his poetic subject. Perhaps my favorite of Doré's illustrations is his portrait of Milton's Satan in agony. The contrast of dark and light really captures the internal struggle of this moment in the epic:
Doré's prints are an early example of what Müller is doing in a [much more contemporary] way for the Poetry on the Road festival. Both artists have provided us with stunning new ways to think about poetry, and have, in the process, created legitimate, beautiful stand-alone art.
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