How To Be Everywhere

by Warren Craghead

Drawings by W. Craghead III, based on the poetry of Guillaume Apollinaire.

Genres: Poetry, Comics, Graphic Novels

90 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great collection of comics as poetry and comics as more than merely illustrating excerpts from the poetry of Guillaume Apollinaire. Craghead writes an introduction in which he says he is influenced by Apollinaire's "collage" approach to art and poetry in his comics-making, an approach "that does not just represent the world but competes with it." Apollinaire, Craghead claims, invented the modern "calligramme" or visual poem (or concrete poem: poems in the form of the content they address: A poem about a boot in the shape of a boot, for instance), and coined the word "surrealism" as an approach to art. He died in 1918 at the age of 38 within days of the Armistice of WWI, and some of the poetry Craghead uses here from Apollinaire is about the war, a kind of artistic stand against it.

Craghead says of him, "He was in the war and knew how to be everywhere."

Apollinaire's epitaph: "He knew how to love."

Apollinaire: "And sing right through the gunfire/and branches wave their leaves resembling poor sailors/winged and whirling like fake leaves/ You must be tired of startling the sky"

Apollinaire: "And may all things bear a new name." (And this is Craghead's challenge, too, to make things new, rename them and not just "reflect" Apollinaire's poetry).

The art is paper and pencil and often quick sketches, not "polished" in the least, but deft and insightful about art, comics, poetry and their relations. And remarkable, somehow fragile and strong and intense at the same time.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is definitely one of the best comics ever, and one of the (still) early poetry comics. It showed the new way that the words and pictures together make meanings.

Pedro Moura's review of the work is well written. http://lerbd.blogspot.ca/2007/07/how-...

[بيان · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eye pleasing. I totally loved it.