Palpable design

We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us — and if we do not agree, seems to put its hand in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle or amaze with itself, but with its subject.
     —John Keats, Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds (February 3, 1818)

It is not the poems that have a palpable design here so much as the designer. Much artistry has gone into the publication. Both cover and inside text is set in gold (‘The sun behind the sun’). The good paper is a bright off-white with perhaps deliberate show-through, the end papers bright blue (‘our second hearts they glitter blue’).

The huge title for each poem is presented as a design, often on the opposite page to the poem; perhaps with duplicated words faded in behind the main lettering (the sun behind the sun). The titles are, one could argue, a kind of visual poem.

And there are sometimes drawings — aspects of the poem picked out and illustrated, also in gold.

No page numbers and no contents page. Easy to miss the poet’s name tucked away at the bottom of what might be a half-title sheet (but there is no title page).

Poems are placed variously on the spreads — ‘What It Is To Discover A New Mind’, on a left-hand page  has no margin at all and so begins right at the edge of the paper. Curious.

Some of the poems struck me as strikingly compelling. I found the illustrative design, however, distracting. The first line of the opening piece is ‘I spit this poem onto your palm’ – lovely rhythm in that arresting end-stopped statement. The drawing of a mouth with multiple tongues, however, seems to me to reduce the potency of the text.

Should poems be illustrated or not? It’s a bit like the argument between radio and television. With radio, your imagination fills in all the detail. On TV or film, they fill the detail in for you. When it comes to poems, I prefer radio.

Here, I specially liked ‘Time of Death’, ‘The Detective’ and ‘She Has A Dance I Cannot See’. In the last of these, her dance may be like ‘a star / not quite coal red, not quite glass blue, / not quite not there’. The author’s name on the first page is not quite not there. There is good writing here; and the design may attract eyes not normally drawn to poems.

Helena Nelson