Comics Poetry
Beyond ‘Sequential Art’
Tamryn Bennett
Abstract
Emerging forms of comics, such as comics poetry, multi-layer, experimental, abstract and digital works have significantly expanded the landscape of contemporary comics. Despite this creative evolution, comics scholarship continues to be dominated by narrative analysis that favours semiotic, prose, film and cultural studies over formal foundations of the medium (Gardner 2011). As a result, many emergent forms of comics, especially in the field of abstract, experimental and comics poetry have been ignored. Until now, a comprehensive theory capable of analysing both narrative and non-narrative comics has remained elusive. Accordingly, this study draws on Rachel Blau DuPlessis’ formalist strategy of ‘segmentivity’ to move beyond sequential definitions that preference narrative components over all other features of comics. Through a model of segmentivity, it is possible to construct and critique comics as an assemblage of segments that communicate in multiple directions, for both narrative and non-narrative means.
Résumé
De nouvelles formes de bandes dessinées, comme la BD-poésie, les BD multimédias, les BD abstraites, ou les BD numériques, ont élargi le domaine de la bande dessinée contemporaine. En dépit de ces changements créateurs, la théorie de la bande dessinée reste cependant dominée par des modèles d’analyse narrative qui privilégient la sémiotique, le texte, les études culturelles et cinématographiques au détriment d’analyses proprement formelles (Gardner 2011). Pour cette raison, on continue à faire l’impasse sur bien des formes nouvelles, surtout dans le domaines de la BD abstraite et expérimentale et de la BD-poésie et une analyse intégrée des aspects narratifs et non-narratifs fait toujours défaut. Le présent article s’appuie sur la méthode de lecture de Rachel Blau DuPlessis qui accorde une place centrale à la notion de ‘segmentivité’ et qui a pour ambition de dépasser les analyses séquentielles de la BD qui font primer les éléments narratifs sur tous les autres aspects du médium. La notion de segmentivité aide à repenser la bande dessinée en termes d’assemblage, dont les parties sont reliées de plusieurs manières, tant narratives que non-narratives.
Keywords
Introduction
While there’s no doubt narratology has formulated useful ways of understanding comics, it must be recognised that sequential narratives are but one piece of the comics puzzle. By concentrating on narrative elements scholars have often overlooked fundamental features of form, privileging ‘story’ and ‘reading’ over all other experiences and interpretations of comics. The danger of this narrative colonisation is the critical neglect of emergent comics that don’t fit sequential formulas as well as a lack of alternative modes for comics analysis. As Charles Hatfield attests, comics are a form ‘characterized by plurality, instability, and tension, so much so that no single formula for interpreting the page can reliably unlock every comic’ (2005, 66). To realise the divergent potential of comics it is essential to redress narrative dominance and enhance possibilities for pluralized creation and formal examination of comics, specifically comics poetry. Accordingly, this study expands on scholarship by Baetens (2011), Groensteen (2007, 2013) and Miodrag (2013) as well as Rachel Blau DuPlessis’ concept of ‘segmentivity’, to propose an alternative theory of comics; a theory capable of analysing a spectrum of comics, be they narrative, non-narrative, multi-linear, simultaneous, experimental, abstract or poetic. Development of an alternative mode of comics analysis is not anti-narrative, nor does it dismiss sequential scholarship. Rather it seeks to establish formalist foundations to support pluralised creation and examination of comics. As Groensteen asserts, ‘Far from deconstructing narration, or rendering it outmoded, these advances enrich it, and so fulfill the potential of comics as an art form that is both visual and verbal’ (2013, 174).
Why Comics Poetry?
Despite comics potential for plurality, semantic studies by European scholars such as Pierre Fresnault-Derulle, Benoît Peeters as well as sequential analysis by Will Eisner, Scott McCloud, David Kunzle, David Beronä and Douglas Wolk have largely confined comics studies to narrative examples and definitions of ‘images in deliberate sequence’ (McCloud, 1993, 20). As Miodrag observes, ‘sequentiality features nearly universally in critical attempts to nail down a definition of the comics form’ (Miodrag 2013, 108). The hegemony of narrative is further evidenced in Wolk’s review of Abstract Comics: The Anthology (ed. Molotiu, Andrei, 2009) in which he states, ‘anyone who’s used to reading more conventional sorts of comics is likely to reflexively impose narrative on these abstractions, to figure out just what each panel has to do with the next’ (abstractcomics.blogspot.com). Wolk’s statement is symptomatic of what Gardner (2011) suggests is an oversight of formal analysis in favour of ‘aspects of narrative that translate relatively effortlessly from novel to comic: the representation of time, narrative frames, the narratee, genre’ (54). Even as increasing numbers of abstract, experimental and non-representational comics resist traditional ‘reading’, the lack of alternative modes of analysis means narrative assumptions continue to be imposed on comics. The result of these narrative impositions is the neglect of formal and aesthetic comics analysis,
especially in the field of experimental, abstract and comics poetry where sequencing devices like panels and page grids are often removed and visual elements push beyond illustration of narrative captions. Aligned with these creative developments, the need to move beyond narrative analysis is supported by Jan Baetens in his article ‘Abstraction in Comics’ where he states the ‘a priori approach to narrative in comics as a mere instantiation of narrative in general is now under pressure’ (Baetens’ emphasis, 2011, 94). Increasingly, European scholars have expanded on sequential and semiotic studies to examine the
impact of other features of comics like fragmentation, spatial arrangement, line, and rhythm.
Limitations of sequential narrative approaches have also been criticised by comics creators like Gregory Gallant (a.k.a Seth) as increasingly inadequate:
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 their art to being merely a ‘storyboard’ approach (Seth, 2006, 19).
Comics, like poetry, concentrate on the aesthetic audio-visual arrangement of segments whereas other literary forms are more concerned with syntax than spatial composition. In addition to their concentration on formal qualities, comics and poetry both incorporate meter, juxtaposition, line breaks, enjambment, countermeasure and disjunctive strategies, amongst other typographic and aesthetic devices. In both
comics and poetry, visual and verbal components can be repeated, layered, removed from panels or presented as a simultaneous series of moments not bound by linear grid lines or narrative ‘closure’ (McCloud 20). Akin to poetry, comics are formed by consistent use of visual and verbal segments and spaces. And as Varnum and Gibbons attest
[b]oth texts and images are decoded visually and, for the most part, produced manually […] From the point of view of semiotics theory, images and words are equivalent entities, and comics is a system of signification in which words and pictures are perceived in much the same way (xi). This shared focus on visual-verbal signification, as well as spatial arrangement, results in a closer relation of comics and poetry than comics and prose. Despite the presence of leaps, ‘gaps’ and gutters on the comics page and screen, the dominance of narrative analysis urges audiences to focus on linear panels relations rather than acknowledge poetic pauses and the possibilities these gutters and gaps present to influence the pace and rhythm of ‘reading’ and viewing comics. The liminal spaces and combination of visual and verbal lines inherent in both comics and poetry are distinct from the linear experience of reading prose. And as creator and critic Gary Sullivan acknowledges ‘As more radical comics artists and publishers seed the field, attention has slowly turned from story value, with all other elements judged on how they contribute to the story, to an appreciation and consideration of other aspects of comics’ (2008).
Figure #1 Warren Craghead III
from, HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE, 2007 ‘I have given everything to the sun’
pencil on archival paper
Intensifying interest in combinations of comics and poetry is evidenced in collections of ‘comics poetry’ by Kenneth Koch, Dino Buzzati, Warren Craghead, Bianca Stone, Paul K. Tunis, Michael Farrell, Derik Badman, Andrei Molotiu, Austin English, Grant Thomas, Alexander Rothman, Matt Madden, Gary Sullivan, Eroyn Franklin, Richard Hahn, Ray Fawkes, Sarah Ferrick, Sommer Browning and creators within Franklin Einspruch’s Comics as Poetry, among others. Moreover, in comics poetry exhibitions like REBUS (2014), The Fire to Say (2014), the Poetry Foundation’s Verse, Stripped: A Poetry Comics Exhibition (2012) or Leuven Stript’s Graphic Poem (2012), as well as the growing field of comics poetry criticism including Steven Surdiacourt’s ‘Graphic Poetry: An (im)possible form?’ (2012), Derik Badman’s ‘Comics Poetry, Poetry Comics, Graphic Poems’ (2012) and Rob Clough’s essay in parts ‘Recent Examples of Comics-As-Poetry’ (2011). Despite these developments, the sequential focus within comics scholarship, largely borrowed from prose, film, cultural and semantic studies, has largely limited comics analysis to narrative examples.
Like comics creator Derik Badman, I employ the term comics poetry to describe the growing field of works that experiment with the visual-verbal topology of comics and poetic devices, not always for sequential narrative means. Critics and creators have also referred to this growing genre as ‘graphic
poetry’(Surdiacourt, 2012), ‘comics-as-poetry’ (Clough, 2009, 2011) and ‘poetry comics’(Stone, 2010). For me, however, the term ‘comics poetry’ more accurately foregrounds the origins of the form within the field of comics rather than graphic novels. As a genre in its own right comics poetry is still in its infancy with Joe Brainard’s C Comics (1964) considered a seminal collection. Other creators credited with laying the foundations of comics poetry include Dino Buzzati (1969), Jas Duke (1978) and Kenneth Koch (2004). Their experiments intersected with ‘art comics’ until recently emerging as a distinct genre with an increasing number of dedicated publications, exhibitions and conference panels. Consideration of comics poetry as a distinct category creatively and critically broadens understanding of the forms of comics beyond sequential narratives. Moreover, what distinguishes comics poetry from other forms of visual poetry, concrete poetry and illustrated prose is the conscious and consistent use of inherent comics devices includ ing, but not limited to, panels, captions, speech balloons, rhythm, countermeasure, spatial experimentation. For a work to be classified comics poetry it must consistently employ combinations of explicit comics and poetry devices, and be characterised by ‘segmentivity’.
Segmenting sequence
The concept of ‘segmentivity’ stems from Rachel Blau DuPlessis’ (2006) attempt to distinguish the components of poetry from ‘narrativity’ and ‘performativity’. DuPlessis argues that while narrativity and performativity can be applied to some poems, neither term comprehends all poetry. By focusing on the fundamental segments of poetry, DuPlessis’ quest echoes formalist approaches. She explains
‘I actually started thinking what was the –tivity of poetry— what was the irreducible element of the poetic text not dependent on exclamations around beauty, sincerity, personality/biography, image, “music,” and all sorts of empty, or half-empty terms […] In a funny way, I was repeating the trek of Jakobson in his “What is Poetry?” essay—again asking the question what distinguishes poetry’ (quoted in Bennett 2012).
Segmentivity does not deny any form or style of poetry and it is open to oral and written, visual and verbal, narrative and non-narrative. Segmentivity is not opposed to sequence, narrativity or performativity, rather it realises that segments form the foundations of sequential narratives. Narrative and segmentivity are not mutually exclusive, nor are they separate tendencies – segmentivity is the primary component of comics. Formally and fundamentally these works exist in parts and pieces.
Narrative and performance can also segment and sequence events, however, it is the dominant spatial arrangement of segments and subsequent negotiation of gaps that distinguishes poetry from prose. According to DuPlessis, the underlying characteristic of poetry as a genre is its ‘ability to articulate and make meaning by selecting, deploying, and combining segments’ (2006, 199). For DuPlessis,
“Segmentivity” constitutionally distinguishes the poem. This means poems are formed by their uses of segments – gaps at the turn of every line break; segments counted as/created by regular rhythm; caesura or the intralinear use of page space; gaps between stanzas; leaps and gaps in the
grammatical ordering; interesting clashes when sentences (one kind of segment) articulate across lines (another kind of segment) (2012, 60-62).
‘Meaning’ in poetry is not always dependent on syntax and temporal associations. In poetry, as in comics, there is a greater emphasis on segmented ‘matter’, spatial arrangement and ‘gaps’ than in prose. In both poetry and comics formal analysis of material components is encouraged, as ‘segments’ can be examined independent of narrative ‘closure’. The formal qualities of both poem and the comics page/ screen require aesthetic consideration, not only semantic cognition. As DuPlessis argues
to address the text successfully, readings evoking cultural studies methods need to assimilate formalist reading dialectically, making sure that the poem gets treated as an art object saturated with aesthetic choices (even banal ones) […] To ignore the formal issues in a poem, to ignore the signifier (the material, textual, poetic matter), to limit “cultural studies” to opinions, situations, and rhetorics in the signified (content, semantic meaning, extractable ideas, ideologemes, historically active political power relations and their representation) results in lopsided readings (DuPlessis interview:2011).
As a ‘spatio-topical’ tool, segmentivity provides a framework for a comprehensive theory of comics, capable of examining both spatial and temporal connections to understand both narrative and non-narrative works. Within comics creation and analysis segmentivity enables examination of fundamental components like ‘gutters’ and gaps as well as visual-verbal segments (panels, visual fragments, captions, speech balloons, page layouts, typography, gutters, etc.) and how these can be used in intralinear ways and for non-narrative means.
Segmented seriality
As in poetry, accumulation of ‘meaning’ in comics does not always occur in straight lines via narrative sequence or correct syntax. Both comics and poetry enable segments to be arranged and collected as a ‘series’ of fragments not bound by the same semantic and temporal rules as prose. In addition to spatial arrangement, identifiable gaps between words and page layouts, segmentation in poetry and comics also occurs through seriality. According to DuPlessis, seriality provides an alternative to linear narrative sequence:
Seriality is based on smaller units of material (individual sections of poems, for instance) which are not organized by narrative disclosure, single telos, cause and effect that can be naturalized in some way, ending as explanation or solution. They are organized by leaps, associative logic or juxtaposition, vectors of concerns (rather than mono-directional argument). A vectored text with several directions and gaps is an alternative to sequential narrative (quoted in Bennett 2012, 169). Seriality and sequentiality are not mutually exclusive or binary concepts. Seriality is not narrative, nor
is it anti-narrative. On the contrary, seriality offers an alternative model for understand ing that not all segments must be arranged or apprehended in linear sequence and syntax to be of value. Comics segments can be serialised and or sequenced to create meaning. Via segmented seriality, visual-verbal components can be arranged in multiple directions, as equal, dissonant or disjunc tive elements, as well as for narrative and non-narrative ends. Seriality, as a mechanism of segmentivity, has the potential to be utilised in both sequential narrative and non-narrative comics. Words and images in a series may be read in multiple directions, or as equal to one another rather than left to right or up and down. When ‘reading’ or viewing comics we can follow a conventional Z path, reading left to right across the rows, or we can assemble information up to down as in Manga, down to up, diagonally, via the path of the captions, as a series of simultaneous moments, as a narrative progression or a collection of non-narrative moments. Whichever way we ‘read’, a glimpse of comics by Ray Fawkes, Warren Craghead, Bianca Stone, Paul K. Tunis, Alexander Rothman, Matt Madden, Kenneth Koch, Michael Farrell, Richard Hahn, Souther Salazar, Renee French, Gary Sullivan, Eroyn Franklin and Malcy Duff, reveal the potential for comics to resist traditional narrative ‘reading’ paths and analysis. Similarly, collections like Comics as Poetry, Kramers Ergot and Abstract Comics demonstrate possibilities for comics to exist and convey ‘meaning’ outside of purely narrative paradigms. Although narrative readings can certainly be imposed on these works, as Wolk’s review of Abstract Comics (2009) shows, segmented seriality expands opportunities for spatial and material analysis to dissect and examine all the components of comics, be they narrative or non-narrative, multilinear, abstract, experimental or poetic.
UnMcClouding ‘closure’
Through cognitive processes and narrative impulses we continually impose contextual relationships on textual segments, seeking to make ‘meaning’ via sequential accumulation of segments. According to McCloud, the navigational process known as ‘closure’ requires negotiation of ‘gutters’ by the audience. In opposition, Cohn claims ‘closure’ is a cloudy term incapable of describing the complex cognitive processes of making ‘meaning’, questioning
If closure occurs ‘in the gaps between panels’ then how does it work if a reader cannot make such a connection until the second panel is reached? That is, the gap cannot be filled unless it has already been passed over, making closure an additive inference that occurs at panels, not between them (Cohn 135).
McCloud’s narrative insistence on panel associations and subsequent ‘closure’ not only excludes a sweep of non-narrative and single-panel comics like The Yellow Kid, The Far Side and Dennis the Menace, it has also led to sequential assumptions that ignore the potential for image/text segments to operate outside of panels and to represent simultaneous moments rather than linear sequence. This neglect of non-sequential comics strikes me, as it does Dylan Horrocks, as arbitrary; narrative closure is dependent ‘more on what relationship we wish to see between words and pictures in comics than on any objectively valid criteria’ (5). Despite the narrative resistance of many examples of abstract comics and comics poetry, narrative ‘readings’ are continually imposed by sequential modes of analysis (Baetens, 106). In opposition, Baetens contends ‘it is no less
possible to gradually “downgrade” the narrative strength of apparently very narrative panels, pages, or sequences by becoming sensitive to the power of abstractive mechanisms’ (106). Re-focusing attention on individual segments, abstraction, poetic devices, spaces and disjunctive strategies reveals that ‘meaning’ is capable of existing outside of narrative frames. Thus Baetens concludes
narrative and anti-narrative are not so much different forms as different strategies of reading and looking […] the dominance of narrative norms should not prevent us from seeing the perhaps more covert role of non-narrative aspects (110).
Aligned with Baetens’ assessment, segmentivity doesn’t discount narrative possibilities or the value of sequence, instead it enables visual and verbal components to be understood as a series of pieces that can contain both narrative and non-narrative elements depending on cognitive inclinations.
Like Horrocks and visual linguist Neil Cohn (2006), I take issue with the linear and narrative assumptions fueled by the concept of ‘closure’ and a definition of comics as ‘sequential art’. In Cohn’s article ‘Closure’s assumptions’ (2008), he contends, ‘[j]ust because we experience reading sequenc es of images linearly doesn’t mean that is how we understand them’ (1). Using cognitive research methods, Cohn looks beyond linear panel relations to argue that information is grouped via unconscious cognitive processes rather than as complete sequences. Contrary to conventional analysis, cognition of visual and verbal segments is not only dependent on sequence or narrative disclosure. Experiments by Dr. Morton Ann Gernsbacher (1985) that rearranged page sequences determined that ‘people’s comprehension did not appear overly damaged by flipping the composition of images’ as audiences grouped elements by segments rather than linear sequence (in Cohn ‘Segmentations in visual narrative’ 2011). Not only is the process for ‘closure’ cognitively questionable, the concept of neat narrative ‘meaning’ confines analysis to examples of comics with sequential panels and grid structures.
The speed of simultaneity
In addition to the fog of closure, McCloud’s explanation of six panel to panel ‘transition types’ perpetuates the persistent illusion of space and time as linear constructs (74). Five of the six examples given by McCloud illustrate a linear interpretation of panels that restrict sequences to ‘moment to moment’, ‘action to action’, ‘subject to subject’, ‘scene to scene’ and ‘aspect to aspect’ (74). By focusing on the immediate panel relations of sequential images critics like McCloud have overlooked the possibility for comics to operate outside of linear grids and conventional narrative structures as occurs in works by Craghead, Tunis, Salazar and Rothman. These creators demonstrate that it is possible for comics segments to operate in both narrative and non-narrative ways much like the dual properties of a photon exhibiting as both wave and particle.
In both comics and poetry there is the potential for works to be created and understood in multiple directions. They share an emphasis on spatial experimentation, manifold layers of ‘meaning’ and combinations of visual-verbal components that make them more malleable than prose. Most comics analysis relies on the arrangement of segments in specific syntactical sequence to engender ‘meaning’
or move towards disclosure, yet in abstract, experimental and non-linear comics, segments are without enforced order or narrative imperative, leaving the text ‘open’ to interaction and interpretation. Beyond linear sequence, segmentivity also enables analysis of information that doesn’t have to be sequentially or syntactically ordered to make ‘meaning’. It also demonstrates that audience reception does not always rely on sequentially collected information and supports concepts of semantic networks (Cohn, 2011). Increasingly internet searches, advertising, pictographs, non-linear technologies and hyperlinked texts are informing multi-directional interactions with text. According to Wil lard Bohn, these multi-directional, ideographic foundations were laid by the ‘chief priest’ of simultaneism, Guillaume Apollinaire, in his essay ‘Simultanisme-Librettisme’ (56). By arranging poetic text into representational shapes – flames, rain, horses, the Eiffel Tower – Apollinaire encouraged simultaneous viewing of verbal and visual components. This quest for simultaneity influenced numerous artistic movements from Cubism to concrete poetry where formal analysis frees the work from the service of sequence and narrative:
the poetic nucleus is no longer placed in evidence by the successive and linear chaining of verses, but by a system of relationships and equilibriums between all parts of the poem (de Campos 1958). Poetry, like comics, recognises the potential for simultaneity via multi-directional arrangement of segments, gaps and graphemes where ‘gaps’ are as much a part of the text as verbal components. Examples of simultaneity, disjunctive strategies, hypertextual or multi-directional reading paths in comics can be found in collage, montage, cut-up and fragmented works of Brainard, Koch, Craghead, Fawkes, Ware, Farrel, Hahn, Stone and Salazar. In these comics, words, images, lines, stanzas, sweeps and spaces are layered, looped, recombined and repeated in various ways to challenge sequential narrative analysis.
Beyond ‘sequential art’
Figure # 2 Warren Craghead III
from, HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE, 2007 ‘MUSIC OF SHAPE’
pencil on archival paper
Epitomising the potential of segmentivity and simultaneity is Warren Craghead’s pioneering example of comics poetry, HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE (2007). The collection takes its name from Apollinaire’s ‘insistence on the importance of “simultaneity” as a way of representing the way we experience the world’ (Craghead 5). Symbolism, segmentivity and simultaneity are at the core of Craghead’s reworking of the manuscripts of Apollinaire into 50 new visual poems that consistently feature visual-verbal comics devices such as speech balloons and captions. Apollinaire’s Calligrammes 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.
Distinct from conventional comics, Craghead does not use panels or page grids. There are no linear or narrative structures enforcing reading paths, instead, each page of HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE is a self-contained poem often made of seemingly disconnected visual and verbal segments. Like
Apollinaire, Craghead, found freedom in assembling a poem out of disparate parts, stating in the work’s introduction ‘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). Craghead’s approach results in a series of vividly poetic, non-linear vignettes exampled in the combination of visual and verbal segments of the poem. Borrowing techniques from Apollinaire and the Cubists, Craghead creates diagrammatic pages that expose the multi-linear potential for both comics and poetry. Lines link words and images in multiple directions, destabilising linear connections and sequential narrative approaches to reading the page. This process encourages audiences to connect several segments simultaneously in the process of seeing rather than searching for narrative captions.
In ‘MUSIC OF SHAPE’, lines between text and image lead to various dead-ends. There is no single or sequential path, instead a maze that draws audiences around and across the page. 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.
Figure # 3 Warren Craghead III
from, HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE, 2007 ‘They have hung death’
pencil on archival paper
Similarly in Figure # 3, fragments of text and image are enjambed across the page, creating a countermeasured rhythm between visual and verbal segments. Lines between stanzas and images imply a slow-motion framework reminiscent of comics panels and gutters but not as 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 of Apollinaire. Craghead’s erasure of panels and frames further emphasise the sense of a poetic vignette as the words and images bleed into the gutters rather than the sequence of the next page. Through segmentivity Craghead’s works can be understood as simultaneous moments within a larger page scene rather than linear elements that must be read in a single direction in order for ‘meaning’ to be made.
Figure # 4 Ray Fawkes from, ONE SOUL, 2011
pp.10-11
Figure # 5 Ray Fawkes from, ONE SOUL, 2011
Multi-direction reading paths are also presented in Ray Fawkes ONE SOUL (2011) where visual and verbal segments can not only be read left to right or up and down but across double-page spreads. A masterful multi-layered comic, ONE SOUL experiments with time and space to depict the simultaneous unfurling of eighteen individuals’ lives throughout history. The comic consists of double-page spreads, each with eighteen panels that reveal a moment in one character’s life. From the particles of first life (11) to the characters final breath (169), Fawkes plays with traditional sequential markers of time and space. The eighteen characters are each from a different epoch, spanning a spectrum of careers, classes and cultural contexts from ancient Egypt to 20th century anarchy.
Figure # 6 Ray Fawkes from, ONE SOUL, 2011
pp.60-61
Within each of these 18 panel spreads, Fawkes’ use of segmentivity and spatial arrangement demonstrates possibilities for hypertextual, multi-directional comics that defy traditional narrative reading paths. Reading ONE SOUL left to right using a conventional Z path exposes an entirely different series of events than reading across the pages to the corresponding character’s panels. The following examples illustrate the potential for multiple associations between segments and simultaneous moments.
ONE SOUL reveals that conventional linear interpretations are not negative, they are simply too narrow to encompass all forms of comics, including poetic, multi-sequential and non-linear works, especially those that remove panel and grid structures. In contrast, segmentivity does not limit poetry or comics to purely 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 that by looking at comics through the lens of segmentivity one can analyse individual components in various combinations, be they linear, non-linear, multi-linear, abstract, narrative or non-narrative. As Fawkes explains
“You could read them separately, read their lives one panel at a time, but when you put them together and see their differences and their common points, you catch a glimpse of a greater scope. The characters, through their frustrations and triumphs, are asking and answering big questions and, in a way, in cartooning ONE SOUL, I’m trying to do the same for myself.”
ONE SOUL, like HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE, proves that comics creation and analysis are not dependent on a sequential narrative framework. Both Fawkes and Craghead employ poetic devices like condensed language, spatial arrangement and syntactical experimentation to expose meaningful possibilities for comics creation and analysis beyond linear narrative. Their uses of segmentivity show audiences that moments, lives and stories occur in the chaos of simultaneity, not only in neatly sequenced lines. Analysing these examples through segmentivity enables each image, panel, word or piece to be discerned in and of itself instead of always for a narrative means.
This study is by no means a complete account of segmentivity or comics poetry. It is one small piece of an ongoing conversation with comics poetry creators that exposes the analytical potential of segmentivity to enhance comics scholarship. As a creative and critical tool, segmentivity doesn’t diminish the role of narratology, rather it presents possibilities for an expanded approach to comics analysis, of which narrative plays a major part. Narrative comics certainly account for the largest percentage of the market and any comprehensive model must address these works, but narrative nine-panel grid structures are not the only structures for comics. In poetry, meter and rhyme were once staple elements, but modern poetic techniques have expanded the possibilities of the form via spatial arrangement as well as syntactical and sound experiments, to name a few. Accordingly, if comics creation and criticism is to continue advancing, the potential for experimental, digital, abstract, multi-linear, poetic and non-narrative comics must be recognised and embraced, not ignored. Segmentivity offers a starting point from which to construct, critique and examine visual-verbal components in all forms of comics be they narrative or non-narrative.
References
Badman, Derik. ‘Comics Poetry, Poetry Comics, Graphic Poems’. The Hooded
Utilitarian. 30 August 2012. Web. 21 November, 2012. <http://hoodedutilitarian.com/2012/08/ comicspoetry-poetry-comics-graphic-poems/>.
Baetens, Jan. ‘Abstraction in Comics’. Substance # 124, Vol.40, no.1, 2011. pp. 94– 113. Print.
---. Baetens, Jan. ‘A Cultural Approach of Non-Narrative Graphic Novels: A Case Study from Flanders.’ Teaching the Graphic Novel. New York: MLA, 2009. pp.281–87. Print.
Bennett, Tamryn. Comics Poetry: Beyond Sequential Boundaries (Thesis). Sydney: University of New South Wales. 2012.
1986. Print.
Chute, Hilary. Secret Labor: Sketching the connection between poetry and comics. Poetry Foundation. 1 July 2013. Web. 12 August, 2013. <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/ article/246090?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social_media&utm_campaign=general_ marketing#article>
Clough, Rob. ‘Rhythm & Rhyme: Asthma, The Blot and Comics-As-Poetry’ The
Comics Journal. 8 December 2009. Web. 5 March 2010. <www.tcj.com/gamma/alternative/rhythmrhyme- asthma-the-blot-and-comicsas-poetry>
---. ‘Comics-As-Poetry: Badman, Moulger Digest, G. Thomas, Moreton’. High Low.
20 August 2011. Web. 21 November, 2012. <http://highlowcomics.blogspot.mx/2011/08/comics-aspoetry-badman-moulger-digest.html>
Cohn, Neil. ‘Un-Defining “Comics’. International Journal of Comic Art, Vol. 7, No. 2. 2005. pp.236–248. Print.
---. ‘The limits of time and transitions: challenges to theories of sequential image comprehension’. Studies in Comics, Vol. 1, Issue 1. 2010, pp. 127–147. Print.
Craghead III, Warren. HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE. Merryland: Gallery Neptune, 2007. Print.
de Campos, Augusto. Trans. Tolman, John. Concrete Poetry: A Manifesto. 1958. Web. 13 August 2013 <http://www2.uol.com.br/augustodecampos/concretepoet.htm>
DuPlessis, Blau Rachel. Blue studios: Poetry and its cultural work. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006. Print.
---. DuPlessis in Cary Nelson, Ed. Oxford Handbook of Modern and Contemporary American Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Print.
---. ‘Interview with Rachel Blau DuPlessis (RBD)’ in Comics Poetry: Beyond Sequential Boundaries (Thesis). Sydney: University of New South Wales. 2012. Print.
Einspruch, Franklin. Comics as Poetry. New York: New Modern Press. 2012. Print Farrell, Michael. BREAK ME OUCH. Melbourne: 3 Deep Publishing, 2006. Print. Fawkes, Ray. ONE SOUL. Portland: Oni Press, 2011. Print.
Franklin, Eroyn. ANOTHER GLORIOUS DAY AT THE NOTHING FACTORY. U.S.A. Self-published. 2009. Print.
Gardner, Jared. ‘Storylines’. Substance # 124, Vol.40, no.1, 2011. pp. 53–69.
Geha, Katie. ‘The Assemblages of Jess: What does is mean to say a visual thing is poetic?’ Poetry Foundation. 9 June 2010. Web. 13 May 2013. <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/ article/239480>
Groensteen, Thierry. The System of Comics. Trans. Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen. Jackson: The University Press of Mississippi, 2007. Print.
---. ‘The Current State of French Comics Theory.’ Scandinavian Journal of Comic Art. Vol 1: 2012. Web. 20 January 2014 http://sjoca.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/SJoCA-1-1-Forum-Groensteen.pdf
---. Comics And Narration. Trans Ann Miller. Jackson: The University Press of Mississippi, 2013. Print.
---. LUMAKICK #2. New York: Lumakick Studio, 2004. Print.
Hankiewicz, John. ASTHMA. Portland: Sparkplug Comic Books, 2006. Print.
Harkham, Sammy. Ed. Kramers Ergot. Issue Two, Volume One. Beverley Hills: Avodah Books, 2001. Print.
Hatfield, Charles. Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005. Print.
Hejinian, Lyn. ‘The Rejection of Closure – first presented in 1985’ reprinted in Jacket #14, 2001. Web. 7 July 2011. <jacketmagazine.com/14/hejinian.html>.
---. ‘Continuing Against Closure.’ Jacket#14, 2001. Web. 7 July 2011. <jacketmagazine.com/14/hejinian. html>.
Horrocks, Dylan. ‘Inventing Comics: Scott McCloud’s Definition of Comics.’ The Comics Journal #234, 2001. Web. 20 November 2012 < www.hicksville.co.nz/Inventing%20Comics.htm>. Koch, Kenneth. The Art of The Possible: Comics Mainly Without Pictures. Brooklyn: Soft Skull Press,
2004. Print.
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Harper Perennial. 1993. Print. McHale, Brian. ‘Beginning to Think about Narrative in Poetry’. Narrative. Vol. 17, No. 1, 2009 pp.11–
27. Print.
---. Constructing Postmodernism. Oxon, Routledge, 1992. Print.
---. Postmodernist Fiction. New York and London: Methuen, 1987. Print.
Miodrag, Hannah. Comics and Language: Reimagining Critical Discourse on the Form. Jackson: The University Press of Mississippi, 2013. Print.
Molotui, Andrei, Ed. Abstract Comics: The Anthology: 1967–2009. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books. 2009. Print.
Moore, Alan., Williams III, J.H., and Gray, Mick. Promethea Book # 1. New York: DC Comics, 1999. Print.
Rothman, Alexander. Versequential – Comics Poetry. (versequential.com). Web. 14 April 2010. ---. Circulating Drafts. New York: Versequential. 2011. Print.
Shringer, Katherine. ‘Perceiving Text and Image in Apollinaire’s Calligrammes’. Paragraph, Vol. 34, No. 1, 2011, pp. 66–85.
Spurgeon, Tom. ‘A Short Interview With Warren Craghead’. The Comics Reporter, September, 2007. Web. 16 January 2011. <www.comicsreporter.com>.
Stone, Bianca. I Want To Open The Mouth God Gave You, Beautiful Mutant. Northampton, Mass.: Factory Hollow Press. 2012. Print.
---. THE SECRET INTIMACIES OF INSECTS. New York: Poetry Comics, 2009. Print.
---. OUR BODIES, OURSELVES. New York: Poetry Comics, 2010. Print. ---. Poetry Comics. (www.poetrycomics.com). Web. 20 October 2012.
Sullivan, Gary. ‘Poetics of Comics: “Closure”’. 10 July 2008. Web. 8 8, 2011 http://garysullivan. blogspot.com.au/2008/07/poetics-of-comics-closure-elsewhere-4.html
joe-brainard/
Surdiacourt, Steven. ‘Graphic Poetry: An (im)possible form?’ Image [&] Narrative #5. 21 June 2012. Web. 19 November 2012.<http://comicsforum.org/2012/06/21/image-narrative-5-graphic-poetry-an-impossible-form-by-steven-surdiacourt/>
The New York Comics and Picture Symposium. The New York Comics Symposium: On Comics Poetry with Alexander Rothman, Paul Tunis, Gary Sullivan & Bianca Stone. 9 August 2013. Web. 12 August 2013. < http://therumpus.net/2013/08/the-new-york-comics-symposium-on-comics-poetry-with-alexander-rothman-paul-tunis-gary-sullivan-bianca-stone/>
Tunis, Paul K. ‘Death By Orphans’ webcomics. Web. 21 November 2012. <deathbyorphans.com>. Ware, Chris. Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth. New York: Pantheon, 2000. Print.
Wolk, Douglas. Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean. Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2007. Print
Dr. Tamryn Bennett is a writer and artist. She has a PhD in Literature from UNSW where she taught Creative Writing. Tamryn is Education Manager for The Red Room Company and has designed and delivered poetry programs for Artspace and El Centro de Cultura Digital, Mexico. Her comics poetry, artists books and illustrations have been exhibited in Sydney, Melbourne, Miami and Mexico. Her poetry and essays have been published in Nth Degree, Cordite, Drunken Boat, English in Australia, ImageText and various academic publications.
