"Honeysuckle," Illuminated

Making the first page of art for "What Love Is: Book One."

Welcome to another post looking into the process behind making a page of artwork to accompany David Daniel’s poems. This time it’s “Honeysuckle.”

Work begins on the first poem on February 19, 2023. Writing with two Pelikan mechanical pencils with colored leads.

Of the thirty poems that comprise What Love Is, I chose ”Honeysuckle” to go first.

I said “yes” when David asked me if I would create art to go with his poems, though I had no idea what I’d wind up making. Mostly, I had in mind the kind of art I didn’t want to make. It’s often been the case for me that poem art has, at worst, no apparent relation to the verse, or it’s simply an illustrative “still” from a line or two. I didn’t want to do either.

There’s an idea that comes from making comic books about the way the reader constructs meaning and understanding differently if there are pictures or not. That is, a good comic tells only half the story with the words and the other half with pictures. Then the reader has to take two pieces of incomplete information and put them together themselves, activating a different mechanism for meaning.

I wanted my art to function in a similar way by presents another kind of challenge to that of the poem itself, another puzzle. Art that wouldn’t distract, dilute, or simplify, but rather art that offers another route to meaning. Or, as good poems do, suggest the simultaneous multiplicity of meaning. Plus, my POV is part of the whole mix…

“Honeysuckle” as my first illuminated poem serves as a manifesto of sorts. A declaration that in this mash-up of oblique and literal impulses, my art would be different.

The title suggests the poem is about Honeysuckle. Naturally, my first thought was to make an image of a Honeysuckle: woodcut, ink drawing, oil painting, etc. But the poem isn’t really about the plant, it’s about the experience of saying the word “Honeysuckle.”

But how do you draw sound? What does it look like? How do you draw what your mouth feels like when you say a certain word?

In the photos above, you can see that I had the idea fully formed at the start. Phonetics. Mouth shapes.

I broke the word into each individual sound and then found those sounds on a mouth sounds chart.

Thumbnail page design sketch with mouth sounds chart.

At this point, the page sort of made itself. First comes the pencils.

Pencils for "Honeysuckle."

India ink panels next.

India ink also used in mouths.

More India ink and then watercolor.

The finished page.

A note on the text: in the graphic novel poems (Coyote, The Kiss, White People Trying) I hand-letter the poems in my comic font. “Honeysuckle” is one of David’s poems in What Love Is: Book One that I don’t. But I wanted his words to always look like something on the page, something beyond “Baskerville.”

But what does the writer’s hand look like if they compose on a computer? Is it the font they choose? How good their printer is?

When a writer types, the physical act of writing ink and metal are pressed into the paper, leaving imperfect traces of the writer’s hand. Perfect.

I asked David to type up the poem on his typewriter and send it to me. We used it. Now, when the art appears across from the verse, the text has a more “handmade” feel. (We did this for “The November Meteors, too.)

Typescript and reader copy views.

I hope you enjoyed this short excursion into making art for What Love Is: Book One.

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I’ve written a few other posts about the project, including two that serve as general introduction to the collaboration. Here they are.

Here are posts looking at individual poems.

Thanks for your time and interest! Stay tuned for more. Subscribe for more derived directly to you inbox.