#146 Prose & Poetry

 
146 Prose & Poetry
#146 Prose & Poetry
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#146 Prose & Poetry — inspired by an ampersand fan

I just fin­ished one of my very favorite Amper­Art pieces ever, thanks to the inspi­ra­tion of a tal­ent­ed poet & fel­low amper­sand fan. Sev­er­al years ago Saman­thi Fer­nan­do, a sub­scriber, left a spe­cial com­ment on an Amper­Art post. That led to my dis­cov­ery of her poet­ic min­istry of hope & heal­ing — & the per­fect poem for an Amper­Art piece, as it con­tained an amper­sand! More about that piece below. 

A novel set in poetry

& the leg­end lives on — in the poet­’s love song. 

Most nov­els are writ­ten in prose. But one par­tic­u­lar writer sur­pris­es & delights. I am pleased to announce that Saman­thi Fer­nan­do recent­ly com­plet­ed her first nov­el — com­posed entire­ly in poet­ry. As she says, “I wrote the romance I dreamed of writ­ing when I was a kid.”

Saman­thi invites you to take a jour­ney through nature with rhyme & romance.
A gar­land for love.
A roman­tic epic.
A mov­ing love song.
Saman­thi Fernando’s ninth poet­ry book, her sixth themed in nature, & final­ly after many years…the one romance she dreamed of writ­ing as a kid.

Silver Lotus Song: Romance in Nature

Silver Lotus Song by Samanthi Fernando

Sil­ver lotus
we meet again
in flow between
real­i­ty and dream

Sym­bol of love
pas­sion and pain
your seed gave life
to this song of mine

This book is a set of lyri­cal poems arranged with the aura of a roman­tic epic.

You can sample & purchase Silver Lotus Song on ama​zon​.com

 

Love & Be Loved 

Back when I first dis­cov­ered her poet­ry, Saman­thi Fer­nan­do had writ­ten a poem which con­tained an amper­sand, so of course I asked to fea­ture it as an Amper­Art piece. #79 Love & Be Loved was issued for Valen­tine’s Day 2015.

Just like this issue’s #146 Prose & Poet­ry, it too is one of my favorite pieces. Saman­thi even con­tributed to the design, as she intro­duced me to the col­or rose gold.

 
Love & Be Loved
 
 

Feel the warmth & uplift­ing spir­it of Saman­thi Fer­nan­do’s lyri­cal poet­ry on her blog. Just like her writ­ing, Saman­thi’s visu­al com­po­si­tion is stun­ning — the pho­tog­ra­phy com­ple­ment­ing each poem is hers as well.

 

Read poetry of hope & healing by Samanthi Fernando here.


Prose & Poetry & Verse

For those of you who write prose & poet­ry, or sim­ply enjoy read­ing it, here is a great web­site: poet​ry​foun​da​tion​.org. Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est is an arti­cle “Is It Poet­ry or Is It Verse?


Concept & Design

The illus­tra­tion for Amper­Art #146 Prose & Poet­ry is a repro­duc­tion of a chap book from the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. This is the orig­i­nal reproduction:

19th century chap book

A cou­ple ele­ments were mod­i­fied for this piece:

font: GermanicaThe orig­i­nal title “The Chap Book” was replaced by a custom-​designed mast­head “Prose & Poet­ry” fea­tur­ing a type­style that I felt was reflec­tive of the peri­od, Antique No. 14.

I like to give a spe­cial treat­ment to our friend the amper­sand when­ev­er fea­si­ble, so here I took the orig­i­nal form of the amper­sand set in Ger­man­i­ca, shown at left, & extend­ed the flat top & bot­tom ele­ments into long hor­i­zon­tal rules.

Note that there is anoth­er amper­sand in the low­er para­graph in the orig­i­nal illus­tra­tion, form­ing the con­trac­tion “&c.” In the past, this was a com­mon way of abbre­vi­at­ing the term “et cetera.” It is sel­dom used today (but one of us still uses it frequently).

On the oth­er hand, anoth­er type of con­trac­tion is nev­er used any­more. That con­trac­tion is “annex’d,” seen in the same para­graph, where the apos­tro­phe sub­sti­tutes for a miss­ing let­ter; it used to be applied to any num­ber of words in a doc­u­ment, cor­rect­ly or not. There is the excep­tion to this type of con­trac­tion falling out of style, as we see every­day in ubiq­ui­tous con­trac­tions such as “don’t” & “can’t” & “del’d”…&c.

original artThe oth­er change to the orig­i­nal illus­tra­tion is where you see a chap book with­in the chap book illus­tra­tion, held by the dude read­ing to his hot date. There was a human char­ac­ter on the cov­er of the lit­tle book in his hand. This was replaced by a more inter­est­ing char­ac­ter: an amper­sand, of course.

 

The orig­i­nal illus­tra­tion showed the tex­ture of the sub­strate it was print­ed on. I sam­pled the tex­ture & applied it to my new art­work. Then a pho­to of old paper, suit­able in the shape of a chap book, was placed behind the cov­er art. I guess you could say I turned the chap book into a chaz book.


Ampersand Land

by Chaz the Poet

There once was a com­po­si­tion of land
Where each neigh­bor was an ampersand

Mr. Gara­mond & the Bodo­nis & Miss Hel­veti­ca Neue
Fritz Quadra­ta & Arnold Bock­lin & even Com­ic Sans too

Every type of char­ac­ter was styl­ish­ly grand!

This is my attempt at a lim­er­ick. How­ev­er, “The Struc­ture of a Lim­er­ick” states:

Lim­er­icks are short poems of five lines hav­ing rhyme struc­ture AABBA. It is offi­cial­ly described as a form of ‘anapes­tic trimeter’.

The ‘anapest’ is a foot of poet­ic verse con­sist­ing of three syl­la­bles, the third longer (or accen­tu­at­ed to a greater degree) than the first two: da-​da-​DA. The word ‘anapest’ shows its own met­ric: anaPEST.

Lines 1, 2 & 5 of a lim­er­ick should ide­al­ly con­sist of three anapests each, con­clud­ing with an iden­ti­cal or sim­i­lar phoneme to cre­ate the rhyme.

Lines 3 & 4 are short­er, con­struct­ed of two anapests each & again rhyming with each oth­er with the over­all rhyme struc­ture of AABBA.

That is all too con­fus­ing for me, so I’ll just let my lit­tle rhyme be & concede:

I’m not a poet
But I don’t know it


 Please comment here.


chaz sez

Want more?
Rants & raves most­ly about design, some­times about the universe.

An occa­sion­al bit of use­ful advice.
des​i​monedesign​.com/​c​h​a​z​-​sez


Production notes for #146 Prose & Poetry:
Original size: 20x30 inches

Program: Adobe Photoshop
Fonts: Antique No. 14, Germanica, Attic (all modified)

Ampersands: Germanica (title), Attic (illustration) (both modified)
Credits:
Chap book cover: Will H. Bradley, 19th century; deposit​pho​tos​.com; vector by Morphart
Paper background: deposit​pho​tos​.com
Note: &” replaces “and” in most or all text, including quotations, headlines & titles.
You may repost the image & article. Please credit Amper​Art​.com.
To download a full-​size high-​resolution 11x17-​inch poster, click on the image.

For pro­fes­sion­al graph­ic design, you absolute­ly, pos­i­tive­ly* must vis­it Des­i­mone Design.

Desimone? Damn good!

*Thanks, FedEx.