Found Found Visual Poetry

Without surprises, monotony would be our only friend. Fortunately, we cannot avoid surprises.

Plenty of surprises are bad ones—or at least quizzical. At work today, I had a few of those. A job candidate (who could not make it to an interview yesterday because of snow emergency parking coupled with the arrival of Hillary Clinton to our capital city) had to cancel her interview today because of a debilitating stomach virus. We have a job we must fill soon, so I had to tell her this was her last chance. While editing a document with a committee—a delicate procedure I would not recommend to anyone—I was frequently surprised by the disparity of our opinions and our hilarious seriousness about such important issues as the proper use of capitalization (“website,” for instance, or “Website”). During a discussion with a colleague about another job candidate, I was surprised that we had interpreted the same actions of that candidate in totally different ways: poised versus nervous.

But certainly plenty of surprises entrance us, or cause brief blips of unrepentant joy. And so we come to a photograph sent to me by a long-time correspondent, Tim Canny. While working on his own work project, Tim ran across this image.

Bob DuCharme, “DRIVE THRU” (11 Jul 2004)
Without even knowing it, the photographer Bob DuCharme has captured and created a dynamic visual poem. Look at the power of the lines in this three-color poem. The bold orange letters (“DRIVE THRU”) stenciled over the slightly faded white letters (“RIVE”). How the overpainted orange text moves across the mise en rue at a slightly different angle than the white—creating tension and the slight sense of twisting. How “DRIVE THRU” has changed from a simple direction into a bald statement of action. How the tight framing of the photograph and the exaggerated angle from which DuCharme took it intensify the drama of this small scene.

There are visual poets all around us. Sometimes, they do not know that is what they are. Some day, they may be surprised to discover their true selves.

ecr. l’inf.