why aren’t more poets & postermakers in bed together?
wouldn't any of these posters look pretty with some poetry on it?
let’s start with a disclaimer: as previously stated, i am not a poet. their brains are wired in a way i don’t really understand, but nevertheless admire greatly. just last week i was reminded that some poets experience life in a fashion much more magnificently intense than i likely ever will. and given that, i’m wondering why poetry isn’t more integrated into contemporary life. it’s obviously no less vital an art form than fiction or memoirs, yet those latter forms of books seem to not only dominate space at the bookshop, but also our literary (and water cooler) discourse.
would it be radical to suggest that maybe books aren’t the most ideal avenue for putting poetry out into the world? i was certainly engaged by the animated poems highlighted on this blog previously, and i suspect those examples might only be the beginning. or at least i hope so—there are some tremendously gifted video/visual artists out there who could undoubtedly create even cooler stuff. (i’m lookin’ at you, michel and spike.)
but i don’t exactly see a groundswell of support (yet) in the poetry community for experimenting with new media. i mean, i think i get why fictionaut exists, but i’ve been unable to find similarly daring projects centered on poetry. maybe it’s because html formatting can be a little janky, and not always meet the needs of the poet. so perhaps the answer is something a little less internet-y.
it’s often warmed the cockles of my prose-obsessed heart to see verse pasted all over the insides of public transportation. london, seattle, chicago, and over a dozen other cities have various programs to put poetry in your face while you’re riding the bus. but not only is that almost more of a public service than a publishing alternative, it also it a very, very narrow channel of distribution.
so i’m thinking something a little more edgy than you are beautiful, but maybe a little more sublime than men in masks. and maybe even something that’ll put a little coin in the poet’s pocket. what i’m wondering is: why don’t poets embrace broadsides’ younger and way more bad ass cousin—the gig poster?
i never really understood what to do with a broadside anyway. it’s too big to fold up and carry around in your pocket/wallet/purse—even though it’s just a single poem. and it’s nowhere near pretty enough to be suitable for framing, or even casual hanging in the home. i googled “poetry broadsides,” and got this ugly thing—presumably from the time when hypertext language was just invented. so maybe poets are getting some bum, dated advice.
here’s my suggestion: poets—as a primer, you can start with american artifact to see what all the indie rock hipsters have known for years now. screenprinted posters are really fucking cool. there are huge numbers of these artists all over the country, some of whom are doing really amazing work (like jay ryan, rob jones, and ames bros). some of these artists will use any excuse to make a poster for their favorite band. imagine what they could do for some excellent verse. poetry is nothing if not inspiration, yeah? plus, their work for musicians is often only tangentially or abstractly related to the music itself, so no one would expect these posters to be the “definitive” interpretation of your poem. it’d just be, well, really fucking cool. poets and poster artists can both get paid, people have poetry in their homes or offices or wherever, and the medium is inexpensive enough that your average citizen can afford lots of them. everybody wins, right? right. so freaking do it already.
Actually, there are tons and tons of decent poetry broadsides out there. And lots of them are suitable for framing. It just depends on the artist and the poem. They both have to stand up on their own, of course.
There are many examples out there–and I’m not sure you looked at the right link on Pudding House’s page. That page you linked to basically summarizes what a broadside is and why folks make them. (To be sure, the art on their actual broadside page isn’t fantastic.
You can see it here: http://www.puddinghouse.com/pub-guide.htm)
As for your more general question. Broadsides also seem more conducive to poetry than gig posters, as broadsides are usually more spare (giving emphasis to the poem, not the illustration/art). Plus, broadsides are usually made via letterpress (we’re talking the good old days of movable type) and the paper is usually ultra-high quality. This makes things more expensive, but the actual page itself is a work of art.
I don’t think that gig posters would work for poems. They are made to attract your attention and transfer a few words–when/where a show is going to happen, all that. Unless one were writing really short poems, folks would probably walk right by it, or miss the poem altogether. If not, the illustration/art would take over. On almost all of the posters in the image, there are very few words and lots of color and design work; it wouldn’t matter how good a poem was, it’d probably drown on a page like that.
Here are some good sites for broadsides:
The Poetry Center at Chicago has a great (albeit expensive) series, with some pretty good art and A-list writers.
http://www.poetrycenter.org/Broadsides?apage=F
City Lights sometimes has cool ones every now again.
http://www.citylights.com/bookstore/?fa=books_broadsides
Red Dragonfly Press is also pretty great. You actually have to see the books to appreciate them, as the nuances of the paper (hand-made, I think) doesn’t come across as well in photos. Here’s an example of a book by a fella that Willow Springs has published.
http://www.reddragonflypress.org/music/490
Here’s another cool one, this time by everyone’s favorite wearer of oversized glasses, Joyce Carol Oates.
http://lopezbooks.com/item/21253/
Lost Horse Press in Sandpoint, Idaho has done a bunch. in fact, I’ve got this one on the wall of my kitchen:
http://losthorsepress.org/images/broadsides/coffeeLG.jpg
i eventually did find that puddinghouse page you linked to in my poking around yesterday – and i thought all that stuff looked like it was designed in MS word. but i don’t buy this argument that gig posters would take away from the meaning of the poem. that’s like saying album art somehow devalues the music inside. at worst, i think it’s a visually compelling physical object that acts as a delivery mechanism for the art in question (i.e., the poem or the music or whatever). at best i think it can not only complement the main piece of art, and/or give someone a different interpretation of the art that they wouldn’t have originally considered – but, in the case of the poetry poster, it would put poems into the hands of people who would never read verse otherwise.
i’ll admit i hadn’t seen those poetry center ones before (and they do have some really nice stuff), but i did find that city lights link on my own, and frankly i think those mostly look like crap. my main point was just that the overwhelming majority of broadsides are boring and i don’t know what to do them – and that by embracing this other art form (which is arguably more popular than contemporary poetry in america right now), poets could be reaching whole new audiences.
“my main point was just that the overwhelming majority of broadsides are boring and i don’t know what to do them”
Right, but it seems clear that you haven’t really seen that many broadsides. And I don’t mean any offense by that; it’s just that it seems unfair to judge a whole category of art without giving it a fair chance.
I mean, I wish I could find a gallery from the The Loft Literary Center and their broadsides; some of the art is just fantastic and so is the writing.
I found a few here, but one has to wade through many extraneous pictures.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/centerforbookarts/sets/
And I’m probably biased, but I’m fairly confident that poetry can hold its own against gig posters in terms of popularity. Then again, I’m a poet, so I suppose I have something at stake in the question. What does everyone else think?
A majority of those broadsides are boring. Some are awesome- go figure my favorite that I was all set to order turned out to be $100. Guess not. I have a feeling gig posters would be too overwhelming with not enough focus on the writing- music fills a different space and so wouldn’t be affected by the same distraction. You can’t compare the two. However, I also get the feeling a lot of these poets are visual art impaired, our favorite wearer of over sized glasses included.
The Lawrence Ferlinghetti- Pennycandy store beyond the El (my favorite of the broadsides I saw) manages to incorporate image and overlay the poem in a compelling mixture. Joyce Carol Oats has a few stupid cuts of the world next to the writing, that’s it? The Marvin Bell’s coffee one is interesting, with block print, the writing and the print image feel connected and the whole piece is working a retro image feel- like an old woodblock poster. I agree the distinction of the quality of paper clearly comes through in some cases. I guess what I’m saying is that when it’s working, it really works, but the gap between the ones that work and the many that don’t is pretty big. Maybe more poets should take up calligraphy or something, at least different fonts to add more interest.
I love the idea of combining the flash and wild of gig posters with poetry. Of course, when I see something on a wall with words, I rarely want to read them. But I do like the idea and imagine it could work.
I’d like to see some of Jeremy Halinan’s poetry on gig posters. Many of his poems are short and all of them I’ve ever read grab you hard and hold you still. They would definitely hold their own in a wash of crazy-awesome graphics.