Poetry Comics: An Animated Anthology

Poetry Comics: An Animated Anthology

       Poetry Comics: An Animated Anthology is an anthology of well-known poems throughout time converted into a quirky and fun animated comic book. The book includes poems such as “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot, and “Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman. Each poem is reinvented using different artistic styles, varying from the creature filled world of “Sonnet 18” by William to Shakespeare to the throwback to Batman in “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe.

       The unique part of this anthology that first grabbed my attention in the shelves of Leddy was the use of intertextuality to create an unconventional comics display not frequently considered when studying comics. Duncan and Smith define intertextuality as images that “…remind the reader if something he or she has encountered in other media” (161) and write that, “… whether [it] has the intended meaning for a particular reader depends on that reader’s background knowledge” (161). As an English major this book had a lot of intertextual references for me. There were some poems I had not heard of, but there were many that I had studied or read on my own time. Reading the poems in comic form added another layer of meaning to my interpretation of the poem.

          In the book, there is a comic representation of part of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven”. There are multiple layers of intertextuality that can be considered here. First, there is the reference to the poem itself. This creates a layer of intertextuality regarding the text of the comic. Anyone who has read “The Raven” goes in knowing the story, so the text is not as important to them as the images that accompany the text. Second, there is the reference to Batman which represents the comics, TV shows, movies, and other elements of the Batman enterprise. The difference here is that Batman becomes “The Raven”, but the reference is clear. This helps set up an understanding of the character and adds an element to the comic where the reader already has opinions of the main character. Third, there are references to Emily Dickinson’s poems in “Lenore of the Jungle”, the comic talked about within the actual comic in the book. Fourth, page 56 refers to Mad magazine, only in this panel it is referred to as Sad magazine, and there is a twist on some classic Mad magazine covers.

            Jones comments on the active process of both the reader and the author and believes that the reader must be aware of the references in order for meaning to be made (281). Hill and Helmers also comment that, “The reader is active in this process of constructing a reference. If the reader if unaware of the precursors, the image will have a different meaning, or no meaning at all” (5). For example, on page 63, there is a one page comic spread for Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess”. The text used is only an excerpt from the poem itself, but the other layer of intertextuality is the reference to the Mona Lisa. The majority of people know the Mona Lisa as a painting, and despite the obscured depiction presented, the reference is still clear. What Hill and Helmers point out though is that if someone does not know the reference to the Mona Lisa the meaning is either lost or changed in regards to its connection to Browning’s text. Looking at the Mona Lisa as just a standard portrait with no history behind it, meaning can be created between image and text, but the meaning is intensified when it is paired with the strength of the Mona Lisa. 

         There are many more uses of intertextuality within the book. What I liked about reading this comic book in particular was that it made me consider how intertextuality works within the comics medium. This allowed me to read a comic book in which the majority of the work was already familiar to me. I went into reading this book with a strong foundation in the meaning behind many of the poems represented, so it was interesting to see how I interpreted the different poems and how they were represented. “Howl”, a poem about the destruction of a generation, is represented using a depiction of Dracula. Initial reading of the poem itself conjures images of New York, the 1950s, drugs, sex, and other things, not Dracula. There is no immediate connection between “Howl” and Dracula or vampires, but the comics format allows a reader to reconsider the poem. It does not change the meaning created by Allen Ginsberg, but it allows a reader to consider the images through the lens of meaning from the text.
          The comic itself is one large hypertextual reference too. Jones defines this as, “…the relationship between two texts (the hypertext and the hypotext) in which the hypertext ‘transforms, modifies, elaborates, or extends’…the hypotext” (281). The hypertext in this case is the comic book and the hypotext is the poems being used within in. The poems were originally written in simply a text format; except William Blake’s poems, which despite their unique representation here, were written with visuals attached. The use of the comics form creates a new level of multimodal interpretation not initially available to a reader. There is now a combination of words and images that allows a reader to reconsider the poem as read without the images.   

           This book was an interesting read and allowed me to question how we create meaning using other meanings. I realized that it adds a new layer of understanding in which a reader takes previously acquired knowledge and applies it to their current reading. Different meanings can be created based on past experience with the intertextual reference and the reader themselves.

       Works Cited

Duncan, Randy and Matthew J. Smith. “Experiencing the Story.” The Power of Comics:     History, Form, and Culture (2009): 153-170. Print.

Helmers, Charles and Marguerite Hill. “Introduction.” Defining Visual Rhetorics (2004): 1-23.Print.

Jones, Matthew T.. “Reflexivity in Comic Art.” International Journal of Comic Art 7.1(2005): 270-286. Print.

Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Poetry Comics: An Animated Anthology. New York: Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 2002. Print.