falling to the ground
I watch a leaf settle down
in a bed of brown~ Anonymous: Source)
Following from our discussions last week, I selected a short anonymous Haiku from the UCLA Asia Institute site and identified certain words I felt carried greater weight: “falling,” “ground,” “leaf,” and so on. I created a text file, pasted in the original poem and then repeated words I wanted to emphasize. I pasted the resulting text with some words repeated many times into Wordle and manipulated the display using the “layout” and “randomize” features. Here’s the text I used:
falling falling falling falling falling falling falling falling
to the
ground ground ground ground ground
I I I I
watch watch watch watch
a
leaf leaf leaf leaf leaf leaf leaf leaf
settle settle settle settle settle
down down down
in a
bed bed bed bed bed
of
brown brown brown brown brown
The resulting adaptation may not be particularly effective in conveying the sense of the original Haiku; however, does it have any merit on its own? And does the above text, as an intermediary step, have any aesthetic merit?
I’d be interested in seeing more explorations of visual adaptations of poetry for this week’s seminar on literature and image.
Teresa
3 responses so far ↓
kedw // Sep 25th 2012 at 12:45 pm
That is a beautiful Haiku. I was interested, did you choose the colours? Because the colours work well with the poem… I just wondered if the wordle software did that on its own or if it is just a coincidence.
TMD // Sep 25th 2012 at 12:53 pm
Hi Katie,
Wordle enables you to choose colours, fonts, disposition of the words (horizontal/vertical). As well, it’s possible simply to click “randomize” and let Wordle run through a number of possibilities.
Best,
Teresa
dinouye // Sep 25th 2012 at 5:33 pm
Cool! I absolutely believe that these textual reformulations have aesthetic merit. The wordle textual visualization has an aesthetic appeal, the colors, the placement and size of the letters, the appearance of the letters as if “falling” diagonally from top left… it appeals to the visual aspect of poetry. The textual reformulation of the poem with the multiple word frequencies appeals in fact to the auditory aspect of poetry. It can be read as a “sound poem”, eliciting also the sense of falling falling falling falling…. Very fun to see these variations!
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