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Visual Poetry Series, Pleiades Press
In Between: The Poetry Comics of Mita Mahato
Praise for Patterns by Mita Mahato
"It's part vaudeville, part demonstration of how hard it is to really talk and listen, and it's entirely beautiful."
-Paul Constant in The Seattle Review of Books
Praise for Sea by Mita Mahato
"Her paper-cut style, and topics drawn from her dreams, are both compelling and unique. Feel free to drop the common advice not to share your dreams, if your subconscious does half the work of hers."
-Martin McClellan
Mita Mahato is one of handful of artists and writers whose visionary work is defining the new genre of Poetry Comics. In Between is a collection of pieces that bring together simple, elegant expressions of thought and emotion with dreamlike mixed media artworks. There are comics that reflect on grief for a loved one who has died of cancer and others that explore ideas of inspiration and surrealist delight. Others combine whimsical word play with visually absurd witticisms. Each work in this volume stretches the definition of what a comic can be, as well as expectations for how much genuine feeling words and pictures on a page can hold.
"It's part vaudeville, part demonstration of how hard it is to really talk and listen, and it's entirely beautiful."
-Paul Constant in The Seattle Review of Books
Praise for Sea by Mita Mahato
"Her paper-cut style, and topics drawn from her dreams, are both compelling and unique. Feel free to drop the common advice not to share your dreams, if your subconscious does half the work of hers."
-Martin McClellan
Mita Mahato is one of handful of artists and writers whose visionary work is defining the new genre of Poetry Comics. In Between is a collection of pieces that bring together simple, elegant expressions of thought and emotion with dreamlike mixed media artworks. There are comics that reflect on grief for a loved one who has died of cancer and others that explore ideas of inspiration and surrealist delight. Others combine whimsical word play with visually absurd witticisms. Each work in this volume stretches the definition of what a comic can be, as well as expectations for how much genuine feeling words and pictures on a page can hold.
80 pages, Paperback
Published November 6, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 19, 2020
This is really beautiful. Fully, b e a u t i f u l.
March 14, 2018
This was brilliant, innovative and gorgeous. There’s not much poetry by the way of words, but this is truly a visual poetry unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It’s a magical reading experience with exquisite detail. I really enjoyed the haunting comic about the election.
March 29, 2026
I was in Powell's Bookstore in Hyde Park (Chicago) yesterday, one of my favorite bookstores in the world, where I used to buy boxes of used books in the early seventies, and I got a bunch of books as usual there, including this one. Now there are two categories of collections named poetry comics; 1) illustrated poems and 2) books that sometimes use words but tend to focus on the juxtaposition of images in one or another in kind of "poetic" way, as in, say, lyric poetry where there are "leaps" between images, and you as a reader have to fill in the gaps any way you can. I almost exclusively prefer the latter category, of which this is an entry.
The epigraph is from George Harrison: "We were talking about the space between us all," Within you Without You, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band
The book is short, a collection of 9 pieces, or comics poems. the style, the effect, is ethereal, reflective, in kind of a papercut collage style, as in the inviting cover. Nature proliferate. Many have no words, whcih pleased me.
*Unidentified Flying Feeling takes place in space, speculatively. Wordless. Navigating spaces between.
*September is a grief letter to a dead loved one. Mostly words. In death, unbreachable space.
*Salmon is about a couple on a walk freeing some stranded salmon who had been swimming upstream--that's it, just short, images, 2 pags, 55 word anecdote.
*Sometimes You See Only What You Want To See--elliptical, about struggles in communication, a gap or space between in understanding. No words, but images of people fighting, talking, closing the gap--the space between them--in"making up."
*Patterns--experimental, animals in clothes, repeating things, just making an impact, the most visually complex and elliptical or surreal. A cycle of non-communication.
*Caws. Ravens in a woman's hair, just a page.
*Beached. Whales. That's it. two facing pages, seen from above. Can a single image be a poem? Why not? See ee cummings or Beckett or almost any abstract painting. The space in ths one might be the space between humans and other animals, the failure to understand we are family.
*Extnction Limericks only have the beginnings of limericks such as There once was a crow from Hawaii, or There once was a western black rhino. Missing animals, blank spaces.
*By the Dawn is a meditation in snippets of patriotic songs and images, just fragments like graffiti. But in the graffiti are violent, bloody, scary images, too, dragons, snakes, 47. Fragnentation, spaces between us all. A separation between how different people define patriotism.
I like it.
The epigraph is from George Harrison: "We were talking about the space between us all," Within you Without You, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band
The book is short, a collection of 9 pieces, or comics poems. the style, the effect, is ethereal, reflective, in kind of a papercut collage style, as in the inviting cover. Nature proliferate. Many have no words, whcih pleased me.
*Unidentified Flying Feeling takes place in space, speculatively. Wordless. Navigating spaces between.
*September is a grief letter to a dead loved one. Mostly words. In death, unbreachable space.
*Salmon is about a couple on a walk freeing some stranded salmon who had been swimming upstream--that's it, just short, images, 2 pags, 55 word anecdote.
*Sometimes You See Only What You Want To See--elliptical, about struggles in communication, a gap or space between in understanding. No words, but images of people fighting, talking, closing the gap--the space between them--in"making up."
*Patterns--experimental, animals in clothes, repeating things, just making an impact, the most visually complex and elliptical or surreal. A cycle of non-communication.
*Caws. Ravens in a woman's hair, just a page.
*Beached. Whales. That's it. two facing pages, seen from above. Can a single image be a poem? Why not? See ee cummings or Beckett or almost any abstract painting. The space in ths one might be the space between humans and other animals, the failure to understand we are family.
*Extnction Limericks only have the beginnings of limericks such as There once was a crow from Hawaii, or There once was a western black rhino. Missing animals, blank spaces.
*By the Dawn is a meditation in snippets of patriotic songs and images, just fragments like graffiti. But in the graffiti are violent, bloody, scary images, too, dragons, snakes, 47. Fragnentation, spaces between us all. A separation between how different people define patriotism.
I like it.
November 2, 2021
For my Special Topics: Graphic Forms class I’ve finished another poetry collection in a form I had never heard of before. This time it’s Mita Mahato’s poetry comics collection In Between. I’ve never thought of not just making comics out of poetry but doing it in a cut up, found image/object, collage style. The art here is absolutely beautiful and the themes are ones most people can relate too. From love and loss to living in these wild times (AKA post 2016/Trump America). The collection reads quickly but leaves so much to be interpreted “between” the lines. I’m very excited to get into class tomorrow afternoon and talk with the class about how they interpreted it. There’s so much to dissect here and I want all of you to read it for yourself and make up your own minds on it. Without a doubt, 100% a 10/10 from me. Get out there and support an amazing poet and her amazing work! -Tyler.
January 16, 2019
Some beauty, some disturbance, some "too real": all powerful.
November 19, 2020
One of the best examples of poetry comics I've ever read.
February 23, 2021
3.5-4 // gorgeous handwork
July 30, 2020
Unique, gorgeous, and delightful little book!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews