design + build

Another way to think of poetic form: Not as a template passed down through time, but something designed and built by the language of a particular poem.

function, structure and design.

The Roman architect Vitruvius suggested that buildings can be judged according to their utilitas, firmitas, and venustas, that is, according to their fitness for their purpose, their structural soundness, and their beauty; or, in Richard Krautheimer’s version, their function, structure, and design.

—Sylvan Barnet, A Short Guide to Writing about Art, (HarperCollins, 1989)

[The same criteria could be applied to a good poem.]

describe then design

We are searching for some kind of harmony between two intangibles: a form which we have not yet designed and a context which we cannot properly describe.

—Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (Oxford U. Press, 1977), by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein.

winslow homer

The consummate designer of the great compositions based his design upon the same acute observation that delights us in the sketches; the brilliant sketcher, though he does not carry design to its ultimate perfection, is yet always a born designer, so that almost any one of his sketches has the possibility of a great picture in it, and his slightest note is a whole, not a mere fragment.

—Kenneth Cox, What is Painting?: Winslow Homer and Other Essays (W. W. Norton, 1988).

back of the tapestry

Every artist works, like the Gobelins weavers, on the wrong side of the tapestry, and if now and then he comes around to the right side, and catches what seems a happy glow of colour, or a firm sweep of design, he must instantly retreat again, if encouraged yet still uncertain...

—Edith Wharton, "A Backward Glance," Delphi Complete Works of Edith Wharton (Delphi Classics, 4th edition, 2011)

accident prone

One should not be afraid of accidents occurring in one’s art as accidents happen only to those who are engaged in accidents. (103)

=

Composition is a design personified, a design not mechanically perfect but emotionally perfect. A design is of an evocative nature. Design that is magic. In a perfect composition shapes excluded and shapes included are equally important. (104)

—John D. Graham, System and Dialectics of Art (Johns Hopkins U. Press, 1971), annotated from unpublished writings and critical introduction by Marcia Epstein Allentuck.

shaker poem

Spare in design, elemental in material, and elegant in its function: a Shaker poem.

adagia to design

Marjorie Perloff delivered the 2009 Wallace Stevens Birthday Bash lecture at the Hartford Public Library last Saturday night. Her talk was entitled: "Beyond Adagia: Eccentric Design in Wallace Stevens' Poetry."

“Poetry is a pheasant disappearing in the brush.” —Wallace Stevens, Adagia

purple and paisley

Purple in description and paisley in design.

letterpress to the rescue

There is nothing like seeing a display of fine letterpress books and broadsheets, the simple & elegant designs, the almost palpable fonts, the textures and muted colors of the beautiful papers, to restore one’s faith in poetry in its purest sense. Even slight discolorations at the edges of pages, or the fading of some of the text, reminds you of what it was that first drew you to the art of poetry.