Category: poetry

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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?”

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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:

A cou­ple ele­ments were mod­i­fied for this piece:

The 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.

The 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.

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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