VISUAL POEMS

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I have previously posted poems that featured word play of various sorts. Here are some more . . .

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Guess the poem:

The following is a reconstituted poem by John Raymond Carson.

Scintillate, scintillate, globule lucific

Fain would I fathom thy nature specific

Loftily perched in the ether capacious

Strongly resembling a gem carbonaceous

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Calligrams:

Visual poems also known as concrete poems and calligrams, are poems in which the shape of the poem reflects its subject matter.

On of the most famous is from master wordplay poet Lewis Carroll from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In the third chapter, a mouse offers to tell Alice his story. "Mine is a long and a sad tale!" he begins, making Alice think that it means its tail, so that she pictures its recitation in the form of a twisted, tail-like shape. In the tale, the mouse (speaking of itself in the third person) explains how a dog called Fury proposed to have a trial and to condemn the mouse to death, Fury being both the judge and jury.

The poem in plain text:

Fury said to a mouse, That he met in the house, 'Let us both go to law: I will prosecute you.— Come, I'll take no denial; We must have a trial: For really this morning I've nothing to do.' Said the mouse to the cur, 'Such a trial, dear sir, With no jury or judge, would be wasting our breath.' 'I'll be judge, I'll be jury,' Said cunning old Fury; 'I'll try the whole cause, and condemn you to death.'

As it appears in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:

Shaped poetry has been around for a long time, even Chaucer used it.

Another well known example of a shaped poem is "Easter Wings," by 17th-century poet George Herbert. It was originally printed sideways on two side-by-side pages. When held at this angle, there would be shaped wings on each of the 2 pages. The poem is a reflection on redemption and begins with a sombre tone but, in the curve of the wing, things take a brighter turn with the line, "O let me rise."

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Which leads me to another well known concrete poem, this one a limerick.

This has been posted in Bytes before but not in the context of being illustrative  of concrete poetry.

There was a young fellow named Bliss

Whose sex life was strangely amiss,

On night flights with Venus

His recalcitrant penis

Would never do better than t

                                          h

                                            i

                                             s

(Hopefully the above works visually when posted and emailed. If not, here is an alternative . . . 

There was a young fellow named Bliss

Whose sex life was strangely amiss,

On night flights with Venus

His recalcitrant penis

Would never do better than 

t

h

i

s

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My work here is done.