Article published in:
Textual choices and discourse genres: Creating meaning through formEdited by Barbara Dancygier and José Sanders
[English Text Construction 3:2] 2010
► pp. 145–164
Illusions of simplicity
A cognitive approach to visual poetry
Mike Borkent | University of British Columbia
Visual poems employ the materiality of language (such as letter- and word-forms and page layouts), to help develop their meanings, thereby synthesizing visual and verbal cues. To discuss this multimodal genre, I posit a framework based on cognitive research of fictive motion, frames, simulation, and blending. I apply this framework to two works by Canadian poet bpNichol to illustrate some of the central cognitive processes and connections required to synthesize and understand them, something previous theoretical positions have struggled with. My analysis illustrates that these apparently simplistic poems are far more complex than we realize. The posited framework can easily extend beyond visual poetry to other multimodal genres, such as comics and advertising, and can also contribute to discussions of genre, style, and other issues of form in literature.
Published online: 11 October 2010
https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.3.2.02bor
https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.3.2.02bor
Cited by
Cited by 3 other publications
Borkent, Mike
Borkent, Mike
Vandelanotte, Lieven & Barbara Dancygier
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