Writing is, and always has been, entwined with visual arts. Art shown in galleries and museums display artist statements to give the piece context. Illustrations and photos dot their way through books or are displayed boldly on the cover. The two share a vocabulary- one written, one visual- that can be used to explore new ideas, ways of thinking, or feelings. They can both achieve their goals while standing alone but together they enrich each other. It’s why they mix so well; why graphic novels, movies, and video games exist. 

Most of the combinations of art and writing we see are image-heavy. A cinematographer can only bring a movie to life if they have a script. Graphic novels take action, description, and subtle feelings from a story and translate them into illustrations. I’ve loved image-heavy writing since I was a kid, eating up movies and graphic novels at every opportunity. I can’t tell you how many times I watched James and the Giant Peach or read How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found. My dad, a true champ, would take me to the library over school breaks and let me check out entire manga (Japanese graphic novels) series with his adult library card (please imagine a pimply 16-year-old walking up to the manga section, grabbing an entire shelf, and then walking to the checkout line feeling like she’d won the lottery). With the amount of image-heavy writing in the world, it’s easy to forget the pendulum can swing the other way, to text-heavy imagery. 

Text-heavy imagery might be visual still; there are plenty of artists who play with typography and signage. What I’m thinking of, though, is poetry. The use of words to evoke feelings, conjure images, and do all the wonderful things visual art is meant to do with only the words on the page. It’s natural to wonder then, with all the image-heavy writing, why text-heavy imagery falls to the wayside. If I love image-heavy text, shouldn’t I be head-over-heels for the other side?

By all rights, I should like poetry. Anyone who loves language should be able to translate that to poems; anyone who goes to art galleries should also love poetry slams. Unfortunately, poetry stopped interesting me, and many others, back in high school. The great travesty of the American school system is that it tries to teach art and culture in a way that translates to test scores. They introduce you to poems only to tear the words apart, forcing you to circle every subject, decipher every adjective’s purpose, and beat it to death with rhyme schemes and possible themes. I hated the poetry section. AP English teachers would drag me kicking and screaming, shoving a scalpel in my hand and forcing me to dissect Dickenson like a frog in science class. By the end of it, if I saw one more line of iambic pentameter I felt like I’d lose my mind.

I don’t think my experience is unique, either. In college, I took a couple of English classes for fun and one was taught by a theater professor. Most of us groaned when we saw poetry assigned during the Othello unit. She nodded at our anguish as if she knew, then picked someone in class to read a poem aloud. Then another person read it. Then she read it, cranking up her acting skills for maximum effect. A light went on in a few of our heads. Poetry is about feeling, emotion, empathy- the rhyming scheme or the way the words are stressed are tools used for emphasis. Poetry doesn’t suck. The way we were taught poetry sucked. 

In the years since I still haven’t picked up a book of poetry. The closest I’ve gotten was a hybrid: a book of lyrics, along with poems that never made it into songs by Florence Welch. It’s hard to know where to start or how to read poetry when you’ve been in the dark for so long. That’s why when putting my reading list for the year together I knew I had to pick a book of poetry for April, National Poetry Month. 

Finding a book of poetry isn’t easy, especially for someone not used to reading any. Blurbs on the back of the books can only vaguely describe the contents; it’s not as if there’s a plot or characters to tease. After a few hours of searching, I settled on Lighthead by Terrance Hayes. Both a Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellow at different points, Hayes won the National Book Award for Lighthead in 2010. It received rave reviews and he’s been credited with creating the Golden Shovel technique, where the last word of every line recreates a line from an older poem from a different author. All these accolades aren’t what made me choose the book. Instead, it was Hayes himself. He is both a poet and a visual artist. 

My guess is that having a background in art will change his approach to poetry, perhaps in a way I can understand. I’m hoping that our shared visual arts vocabulary will translate into words, helping me see past the form and punctuation and into the depth and emotion of the poem. I may be pinning too much on his background for my own understanding, it’s true- I could end up floundering about as I often do with poetry- but that shared experience is what I hope will make it accessible for me, or at least force myself to change the way I engage with poetry. 

Last month I mentioned I didn’t know what my reflection would look like. That was in large part due to the genre; I still had an idea of what I would end up discussing. This month, though, I have no idea. I don’t even know the right way to read poetry if there is a right way. It’ll be an adventure! I hope you’ll join me to see where this adventure takes us. Happy National Poetry Month, and happy reading!