The relation
word/
image is crucial to modern communication. Graphic designer, for example, use short-verse poetry alongside visuals to get an effective message across. They would even go further to
design the text itself (typography) in an attempt to turn the word itself to an image. If such attempt succeeds then the designer triumphed in the way he exchanges meanings – on the one hand wisdom (i.e. the word) and on the other hand the speed (i.e. the catchy image which the eye can decipher quickly). It seems that poets could follow that path and develop the visual elements of their own presentations.
Today, we are living in times where the moving-image is an important source for delivering information. Almost anyone can create short video and post it on the Internet. Words with images shift from a static representation to a moving representation, in the form of videos. This tendency challenges the poet once again, raising a debate of the power balance between word and moving-image. Who dominates? Is the image, with its capacity of movement, overcomes the word? And yet in the outskirt of poetry, one could argue that words in poetry come to portray images! It seems that even such words as ‘love’, which could be categorized as ‘emotional’, portray a sense or a feeling that is bound to place, time, and hence – to image. To love means to Be in a place, to feel someone, to fully ‘use’ one’s emotions that are bound to their physical body and the spiritual soul.
Hence, we should ask – where does poetry going in this duality of word/image? Would the image become the important carrier of
poetic message?
Silent short poetry accompanied by expressive visuals is another interesting example. This kind of poetry does not attempt to ‘dwell’ on emotion, but to raise it up and then move on. Hence the poems are very short. For example, ‘Petals of Trust’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-2pGrCNUmU), which juxtaposes silent short-verse poetry alongside images that seem to come from the same poetic source from which the words come. This project is interesting in that it is officially linked on youtube.com with a different type of what could be seen as poetry – the sung word (‘Change’ by the British act ‘Sugababes’. See link at bottom of video ‘Petals of Trust’).
In a way, images seem to provide with the colours and shapes that poetry, using words, so much craving for.
Gil and Natalie Dekel
www.poeticmind.co.uk
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