Slog - Comments on On the Fence http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/02/on_the_fence So the Poetry Foundation has been commissioning cartoonists to turn poetry into comics. The newest one is A.E. Stallings' poem Recitative. The artist they chose to illuminate the manuscript (so to speak) is R. Kikuo Johnson, who is a really good choice for this sort of thing. I love his art, but his stories are sometimes so minimalist as to be pointless. At the bottom of this page, there's a link to Johnson's cartoon of Recitative. I have to say, having read the poem first, the cartoon second, and then gone back and read the poem again, that I can... Copyright 2008 Fri, 15 Feb 2008 12:49:56 -0800 Fri, 15 Feb 2008 20:46:09 -0800 http://www.movabletype.org/?v=3.34 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Comment by Aislinn The first three links don't work, at least not for me.

As for the last one, I like the poem a lot, and I like equating the ideas of disappearing and existence to birth and death, but I don't love the self-referentialness (yay made up words!) of a comic featuring a comic artist.

]]> Aislinn http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/02/on_the_fence#c939875 http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/02/on_the_fence#c939875 Books Fri, 15 Feb 2008 13:45:00 -0800 Comment by Katelyn I'm not feeling it. I tried. It seems like a good idea, but the comic/poem thing does not make good on its promises.

Maybe it's because a good comic and a good poem are pretty much accomplishing the same goals, and one doesn't really enhance the other so much as distract.

]]> Katelyn http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/02/on_the_fence#c939877 http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/02/on_the_fence#c939877 Books Fri, 15 Feb 2008 13:45:28 -0800 Comment by NaFun Their SQL database is choking. Did they get the Slog equivalent of slashdotted?

]]> NaFun http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/02/on_the_fence#c939880 http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/02/on_the_fence#c939880 Books Fri, 15 Feb 2008 13:46:13 -0800 Comment by Paul Constant I think the four of us busted their servers. Aislinn, I agree with you about most of Jeffrey Brown's work, but I think that it works in this one, because it's understandable even if you don't know that it's Jeffrey Brown. (And when did Jeffrey Brown have a kid? And why do I feel so sorry for that kid?)

]]> Paul Constant http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/02/on_the_fence#c939929 http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/02/on_the_fence#c939929 Books Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:13:12 -0800 Comment by Will in Seattle Looks like they didn't change the number of connections on the server - the MySql database can't take the load:

"error: Cannot connect: Client does not support authentication protocol requested by server; consider upgrading MySQL client at /var/www/poetryfoundation.org/poetrycomp/database-connect.comp line 19"

Sigh.

]]> Will in Seattle http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/02/on_the_fence#c939956 http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/02/on_the_fence#c939956 Books Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:27:32 -0800 Comment by Gurldoggie I like it. I like it a lot. First, the adaptation may be literal, but it isn't linear. It still works like a poem, making you invent the connections between the staggered images.

But also, poetry and comics are two literary forms that tend to get ghettoized - ie. "only fanboys read comics, and only ivory tower types read poetry" - and deserve much wider readerships. Anything that encourages some crossover is a good thing.

As a personal case in point, I wasn't much of a poetry reader back in the day, yet I vividly remember reading a comic version of Gwendolyn Brooks' "We Real Cool" that opened up a whole new world. More please.

]]> Gurldoggie http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/02/on_the_fence#c940163 http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/02/on_the_fence#c940163 Books Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:03:10 -0800 Comment by Mr Catnip Got the "Recitative" link to work. Funny thing, I'm a poet who has recently started to read comics again and have pondered over how to marry the two. Some of Neil Gaiman's work is quite poetic.

Unfortunately, poetry just can't compete on it's own anymore against the other creative media. I heard Linda Bierds and her entourage read last night and felt like ramming my head against Hammering Man afterward. Well-crafted and clever but irrelevant.

This comix/poem hybrid could only be a good thing for American poetry. Unless poetry can seduce Youth, it dies.

]]> Mr Catnip http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/02/on_the_fence#c940190 http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/02/on_the_fence#c940190 Books Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:28:27 -0800 Comment by Sylvie Bummer that the links aren't working! I'd like to view this, but I'm getting error messages on every page. Grrr.

]]> Sylvie http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/02/on_the_fence#c940241 http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/02/on_the_fence#c940241 Books Fri, 15 Feb 2008 20:46:09 -0800