Use Of White Space Research Articles

Reading Difficulty of Consumer Medicine Information (CMI) Leaflets for Five Chronic Ailments in Ghana

Purpose: This study examined the reading difficulty of Consumer Medicine Information leaflets of five chronic-disease medicines. Design/ Methodology/ Approach: In this descriptive, cross-sectional study, 192 leaflets were randomly downloaded from the World Wide Web: Asthma (35), Cancer (42), Diabetes (41), HIV (29), and Hypertension (45). Text from each ‘leaflet’ was analysed using the Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG), Flesch Reading Ease, and Gunning Fog indexes. Findings: Consistently, the difficulty of the texts exceeded the recommended difficulty levels. A comparison of mean scores showed leaflets for HIV medication were the most difficult to read because they were written at grade levels too high for the average literate adult. Research Limitations: Readability indexes are suited to only prose. They neither measure how well-organised the text is, nor indicate the suitability of typographical features, such as illustrations, typeface, appeal of presentation, and use of white space. Readability scores do not account for readers’ backgrounds, exposure, and motivation. Practical implication: Developing user-friendly consumer medicine information leaflets can reduce the need for extensive explanations, allowing healthcare providers to allocate their time more efficiently. Social Implication: Improving the readability of Consumer Medicine Information leaflets can enhance health literacy, leading to better health outcomes and reduced healthcare costs associated with medication errors. Originality/Value: While readability indices have been widely used, their application specifically to Consumer Medicine Information leaflets for chronic ailments such as diabetes, hypertension, asthma, arthritis, and heart disease in Ghana is novel. Chronic ailments require continuous and often complex medication regimens, making readability particularly crucial.

A STUDY ON THE ARTISTIC EXPRESSION OF INK ART OF CHINESE ANIMATION

As a treasure of Chinese traditional art, ink art has a unique aesthetic charm and artistic expression. Chinese animation has gradually incorporated ink and wash art, infusing it with distinctive Chinese aesthetic elements. The paper delves into the significance and progression of the integration between ink art and Chinese animation, examining the stages of growth and maturity. It also scrutinizes the artistic expression methods of ink art in Chinese animation, such as the use of white space, compositional techniques, the use of five inks and six colors, and a variety of brush strokes. Finally, it explores the artistic aesthetics of ink art in Chinese animation, emphasizing the beauty of meaning and mood. - We study the artistic aesthetics of ink and wash art in Chinese animation, which encompass the beauty of mood existing between reality and reality, the beauty of chiaroscuro existing between form and spirit, and the beauty of metaphor-implied content.

The Use of White Space in Poems: Meaning and Affect Making Through Manipulation of Space in Contemporary Indian Poetry

In poetry, line-breaks “shape meaning.” Poets use them to “encourage the interpretations they desire.” While several and often overlapping reasons may undergird the choice of a particular line-break in a poem, including “speed, sound, syntax, surprise, sense, [and] space”, this article explores the meaning-making and affectmaking practices through the manipulation of white space in poetry. The archive that it draws from is of contemporary Indian poetry, particularly the works of poets Arun Kolatkar (b. 1932), Agha Shahid Ali (b. 1949) and Aditi Rao (b. 1985). Furthering Wagner’s argument that white “space between and around lines create[s]…expectations that are fulfilled or countered by the text” and that organisation of space in poetry “create[s] a sense of drama,” this article studies the varying tactics through which contemporary Indian poets use the device of space to manage meaning and affect in their work.

Evaluation of TV White Space Implementation in Indonesia: A Case Study in Yogyakarta

TV white space is a technology that utilizes unused spectrum owned by primary users, namely TV broadcasters in a particular area and time. There are two main problems related to the use of white space, namely protection of primary users and identification of white space channels. The prohibited, strict, moderate, and loose (PSML) method has previously been proposed, dividing the TV protection area into four zones to model the white space system. Researchers generally use additional protection areas and television coverage areas with a location probability of less than 70% to consider the possibility of overlap between white space and protected areas. However, this method has not been in implementation in the field. In this study, the author implemented the PSML method in the city of Yogyakarta by using the coverage area of TVRI Patuk as a sample. Based on the measurement results, the author discovered that the deviation between the simulation results and the measurement results was 7.32 dB or 1.82 dB higher than ITU’s recommendation. This deviation indicates that, based on geographical conditions, Yogyakarta has a higher variation in field strength values than ITU’s recommendations.

Have You Seen My Invisible Dinosaur? by Helen Yoon

Reviewed by: Have You Seen My Invisible Dinosaur? by Helen Yoon Ally Byerly Yoon, Helen Have You Seen My Invisible Dinosaur?; written and illus. by Helen Yoon. Candlewick, 2023 [32p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781536226256 $18.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R 3-6 yrs A little girl conducts a tireless search for her invisible dinosaur, who seems to have gone missing in the wake of a bath that washed away all evidence of his existence. Though she prepares platters of her dinosaur’s favorite jam sandwiches and plasters the streets with missing posters, her prehistoric friend fails to materialize. Or does he? The trick of keeping an invisible dinosaur is that you can never quite tell where he’s wandered, especially on a clear day. Without any tracks to follow, the little girl flounders but finds unexpected hope while traversing the natural world around her. Yoon’s minimalist mixed media illustrations and generous use of white space activate the imagination, inviting readers into a hidden world of wonder, with the disappeared dino’s contours revealed by rain sluicing off his back or jam staining his cheeks. The juxtaposition of an endearingly diminutive, spikey-haired protagonist traversing sprawling landscapes recalls spreads from Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes. This picture book’s concise word count and conceit of directly addressing the reader make this an excellent interactive pick for a storytime for younger audiences, just make sure there’s enough room for every child’s invisible dinosaur to find a seat. Copyright © 2023 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

The Arc of the Moral Universe is Long and Bends Toward Conflation

This poem was inspired by reflection on the commonalities between civilian casualties of war and those bereaved by suicide. The use of white space in the poem symbolizes the threshold encountered after the sudden death of a loved one, particularly when violence, especially self-directed violence, is involved. The speaker cannot find meaning in so much death, and movement away from the right margin, the anchor of loss, is disorienting and dissociating. The speaker of the poem is frozen the threshold, unable to flee; much like civilians in war zones, very much like those experiencing posttraumatic stress.

Yiyecek İşletmeleri Web Sitelerindeki Görsel İçeriklerin Belirlenmesine Yönelik Bir Araştırma

Versatile applications in digital conversion along with marketing strategies come to the fore. The increasing frequency of use of food establishments today is due to the success of versatile applications. Websites of food businesses are very important for marketing. According to the related literature, it is possible to gather the visual content of these websites under four main headings; colors, typography, structure and visual objects. With this situation, which constitutes the starting point of this research, the website of the four most preferred food companies in the world was analyzed by content analysis method. The average length of stay on these websites, the average number of views of the web pages, the total number of words on the websites and hyper-text features were determined; visual content was accepted as the themes of the research with 4 main items and 36 items with sub-items extracted from the literature, and a checklist was created and coded according to these themes. According to the findings of four websites obtained from the research; it was determined that they applied visual content items such as the use of white space, the use of red-black, blue-green color combinations, the use of different fonts and the use of main messages on their pages.

Analysis on User Interfaces Readability: A Case Study of Instagram

The aims of this paper to determine how readability of Instagram’s user interface (UI) affect users engagement. The interface of several instagram features are analyzed through design theories such as user interface principles and the use of white space, followed by a survey among Instagram users to investigate the readibility. Findings on this studiy suggest Instagram interface is following some design principles, while the survey indicate the user finds Instagram is readable and easy to understand. This study conclude Instagram user interface can be perceived well by its users.

Trial marketing in the Pan-Canadian Early Detection of Lung Cancer Study.

Recruitment to clinical trials is suboptimal, increasing costs, and delaying the potential implementation of clinical advances. Among other barriers, the lack of marketing experience among trialists may limit recruitment. In this observational study, in the context of the Pan-Canadian Early Detection of Lung Cancer Trial, we assessed the value of a motivational survey of study participants in planning a tailored advertising campaign and analysed the value of individual components of advertising in generating telephone calls to the study and recruited subjects. The Pan-Canadian Early Detection of Lung Cancer Trial was a single arm study assessing risk modelling for lung cancer screening by low-dose computed tomography scan and autofluorescence bronchoscopy. Individuals were recruited to eight sites across Canada without a central marketing plan. On contact with the study, individuals reported how they heard about the study according to a predefined list. One site, the Juravinski Cancer Centre, worked with a marketing expert to develop a survey to assess participant motivations, source of study awareness, and personal habits. The survey was used to develop a media campaign for recruitment. Media events were collected from all sites. The primary analysis assessed the number of telephone contacts and recruited subjects associated with various media factors. Individual print media characteristics were assessed for their effect on recruitment. At all sites, 7059 individuals contacted the study, and 2537 were eligible and recruited. Among 52 individuals completing the Juravinski Cancer Centre survey, motivation included concern for personal risk of lung cancer (71%), followed by desire to contribute to a cure (67%), followed by personal knowledge of a person with lung cancer (50%). Most reported hearing of the study from the newspaper (58%) despite no print ad yet being distributed. With survey input, a newsprint campaign was executed. The number of media events varied by site (median: 13, range: 3-28). Among all recruits, 56.4% reported referral by newspaper followed by family/friend (14%). Telephone contacts and recruited subjects per event varied significantly by site, while unpaid media events appeared superior to paid events. Print media characteristics associated with increased telephone contacts and recruitment included use of a rational appeal (vs a mixed rational-emotional), less use of white space, and larger headline font. A survey of trial candidates provides useful information regarding personal motivation, media use, and lifestyle. Unpaid media events appear superior in generating recruitment, while print media may be superior to radio and television in selecting eligible recruits. The utility of individual print media characteristics appears to differ from the commercial advertising literature. Further research on marketing in clinical trials is encouraged to improve recruitment ( ClinicalTrials.gov registration: NCT00751660, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00751660 ).

La poésie délivrée: le livre en question du Parnasse à Mallarmé par Nicolas Valazza

Reviewed by: La poésie délivrée: le livre en question du Parnasse à Mallarmé par Nicolas Valazza Kate M. Bonin Valazza, Nicolas. La poésie délivrée: le livre en question du Parnasse à Mallarmé. Droz, 2018. ISBN 978-2-600-05894-0. Pp. 336. In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the publishing industry was booming: between 12,000 and 15,000 works published annually in France alone (20). Yet works of poetry were largely left out of this vast literary production. Valazza draws attention to how few of the canonical books of late nineteenth-century poetry actually were books: that is, printed, published, and promptly made available for purchase. Between censorship, posthumous publication, and even outright abandonment by their author (to cite one famous example, Rimbaud's 500 copies of Une saison en enfer, printed in 1873 but left at the publisher's shop, unclaimed and undiscovered until 1901), there is an important time gap between the production and critical reception of late nineteenth-century poetry, argues Valazza. The thesis of La poésie délivrée is that serious attempts to trace the evolution of poetic "modernity" must take into account poetry's chancy appearance and slow incubation, in distinct opposition to [End Page 238] the heyday of Romantic superstars such as Hugo, Vigny, and Lamartine. Valazza traces Parnassian poets' efforts to differentiate their aesthetic from the Romantics', not just in style, but also in form of delivery: e.g., poets banding together in collective volumes of the Parnasse contemporain rather than single-author published books. Yet the Commune divided Parnassian poets politically, sinking the commercial fortunes of pro-Commune poets such as Verlaine and Rimbaud even further. Moving away from Parnassus and its most popular voice, the now-all-but-forgotten Academician François Coppée, more licentious works (in both senses) opposed the moral posturing of the Second Empire and the Third Republic, but they also opposed the formal rigidity of Parnassus. Valazza analyzes these angry, funny, often scabrous works of older authors such as Gautier and Baudelaire, as well as younger voices (Verlaine, Glatigny, Rimbaud). These "marginal" works, cut, censored or blocked from "legitimate" publication, found expression in clandestine or anonymous editions, as well as ephemera such as short-lived reviews, albums, and cabaret performance. One example: the six poems censored from the 1857 Fleurs du mal wound up in Parnasse satyrique du dix-neuvième siècle, secretly published in Brussels. Valazza deftly traces the intertextuality between such works as the Album zutique and Verlaine's Cellulairement (written while the poet was incarcerated in Belgium 1873–75, unpublished until 1992), and François Coppée's bland (but popular) mediocrity. What more fitting illustration of "unliterary literature" (163) than Rimbaud's Illuminations: the scattered prose poems abandoned by Rimbaud himself, cobbled together by the Symbolist poet Gustave Kahn and published in partial form in 1886 (long after Rimbaud's own renunciation of the literary field): "un livre qui reste, en quelque sorte, en devenir," Valazza proposes (190). Rimbaud's (un)achievement prefigures Mallarmé's efforts to conceive an impossible "Livre," somehow dé-livré "du livre conventionnel" (216), leading to creative experiments with typography, use of white space, thickness of the paper and size of the page, but also (especially) to very little finished product. Memorable and thought-provoking, La poésie délivrée is a smart addition to studies of nineteenth-century poetry and the slippery evolutions of modernity. Kate M. Bonin Arcadia University (PA) Copyright © 2020 American Association of Teachers of French

Product performance implications of framing white space in advertising

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of framing white space around a product image (e.g. silver polish) and its intended effect image (e.g. tarnish-free, shiny silverware) in an ad on the performance perceptions of the advertised product. Design/methodology/approach Four experimentally designed studies demonstrate a positive impact of framing the white space around the product and effect images. A total of 270 MTurk participants provided data for these studies through online surveys. Findings Findings across four different product categories reveal that when the white space surrounding the product and effect images in an ad is enclosed by a frame, consumers perceive product performance to be significantly higher than when there is no white space framing. This effect is mediated by enhanced perceived fit between the two images based on the white space framing. Research limitations/implications The current findings contribute to multiple marketing research streams including the use of white space and frames in visual promotions, as well as the literature on product performance, perceived fit, stylistic manipulations (such as the framing of white space in this case) and advertising communication. Practical implications The use of product and effect visuals in advertising to convey product performance is one of the most widely used tactics in the consumer packaged goods industry. Managers and creative directors can leverage the current findings to improve consumer product performance perceptions by using a simple, stylistic manipulation (which does not alter the core ad elements but only the production aspects) of framing the white space around the product and effect images in their product ads. Originality/value To date, there is only a small body of research examining the role of white space and visual frames on marketing-related outcomes. However, none of that looks at white space framing. The current work is the first to examine how localization of white space around the product and effect images improves consumer perceptions about the advertised product’s performance.

A Handbook of Editing Early Modern Texts by Claire Loffman Harriet Phillips

MLR, .,   differing approaches and cover a wide range of languages, but also stresses the importance of the variable ‘genre’ for (historical) corpus research. E-U F J N H A Handbook of Editing Early Modern Texts. Ed. by C L and H P. (Material Readings in Early Modern Culture) London: Routledge. . xv+ pp. £. ISBN ––––. Reading this book is like sitting in on an immensely lively, informed, and provocative seminar; more than fiy highly experienced voices, cogently expressing their struggles with the material—early modern printed and manuscript texts of all kinds, literary, scientific, epistolary—and oen taking issue with each other’s positions. e book is divided into three how-to sections—‘Before Editing’; ‘Editing: Principles and Practice’; ‘Digital Editing’—each of which is subdivided into broad topics or problems, addressed in short position statements of perhaps two thousand words each by between two and seven contributors. e final section—‘Case Studies’—provides a selection of editors with slightly more space to explore how each of them worked through the issues described earlier in order to come to their own particular solutions. e volume makes it abundantly clear that editing was never a straightforward process, and that our digital age offers new solutions, perspectives, and opportunities that can in themselves present new problems. Running through these contributions is the question of whether or not to modernize spelling and punctuation, and (particularly important in manuscripts) whether to record the use of white space or ‘mise en page’, marginalia, underlinings, insertions, doodles, and crossings out, as well as the presence within one text of different scribal hands. e contributors agree that the editor should produce a text that is readable and ‘makes sense’, and should not be ‘seduced by the possibilities of hypertext into producing editions which are not only unreadable but unusable’ (Neil Rhodes, p. ). But sometimes, as Kate Bennett demonstrates in her case study of editing John Aubrey’s Brief Lives, the ‘mess’ is the message. Layout of manuscripts (as we must all know if we reflect on our own notes) is partly exigency—the amount and nature of available paper—but partly a reflection of the way the writer thinks. Sometimes in the case of letters, where that thinking is meant to be imparted to someone else, it can be a rhetorical act, as Joe Moshenska demonstrates from his edition of the correspondence of Kenelm Digby. Digby ‘presents himself as one who writes spontaneously and in a hurry, modestly reducing his learning to a “superficial besprinkling”’ (p. ). As a facsimile illustration shows better than any neat transcript—modernized or not—having reached the end of the page, Digby turns the paper; his words first fill the margin and then ‘charge onto the verso and down towards [his] cramped signature’ (pp. –), flouting the conventions that demanded the use of deferential space when writing to superiors. Describing, of course, is one thing and interpreting is another; can  Reviews one really describe adequately without interpreting? Perhaps the most important thing is to be aware that any editing (including editing that purports to edit lightly) is an intervention; readers as well as editors need to be aware of the effects. A short review cannot hope to do justice to the insights offered by each contributor to this volume. Anyone dealing with early material, whether a student approaching these problems for the first time or an experienced editor or reader of early texts, will benefit from reading it. e book’s own editors suggest that the experienced might want to skip the introductory essays on approaching archives, but it is as well to be reminded by Michael Riordan not only about the need to understand an archive’s ‘hierarchy’, since the reason it was assembled can tell one something about the individual items it includes, but also that archivists are human too, and you want them to ‘be your friend’: ‘though I’m not suggesting any sort of special treatment (though gis of wine and chocolate rarely go amiss!) a courteous and friendly attitude is essential’ (p. ). We have been (genially) warned! U  S R K e Music of Dada: A Lesson...

Comics Online: Detention and White Space in “A Guard’s Story”

This paper explores the intersections between online comics, biopolitics, and the experimental form in “At Work Inside Our Detention Centres: A Guard’s Story”. It begins by noting the domestic Australian context in which the comic is published, and the risks taken by the anonymous narrator in sharing the experience with the story’s creators. The analysis argues that the narrative intervenes in the visual archive by bringing to light encounters between guards and detainees who are mostly excluded from recognition in the broader mediascape. The paper suggests that in this way, the narrative draws attentions to ‘states of exception’ that repress knowledge about the plight and rights of refugees and asylum seekers, by depicting some of the traumas experienced by detainees and their guards. By undertaking a detailed examination of the mechanics of ‘A Guard’s Story’, including the use of white-space, and scrolling, the paper establishes the way in which the narrative seeks to intervene in the visual archive in relation to asylum seekers and refugees. Through this analysis, the paper demonstrates the productive capacity of comics to explore, and provoke, questions about aesthetics and the representation of biopolitics and human rights, particularly in the digital domain.

No Fits, Nilson! by Z. OHora

OHora, Zachariah. No Fits, Nilson! New York : Dial Books for Young Readers, 2013. Print.No Fits, Nilson! is a children’s story book written and illustrated by Zachariah OHora. Mr. OHora has written several other well received children’s books and is an accomplished illustrator.It is about Amelia and her best friend Nilson, a large blue gorilla. These two inseparable characters have such a strong friendship that they even share time-outs. Running errands with Amelia’s mother is a test of patience and Amelia provides support to her big blue friend with the encouraging words “no fits, Nilson” and promises of banana ice cream. Amelia herself gets tested when the banana ice cream runs short, but in the end Nilson is a true friend who lends a helping hand. This is a story of patience and fits, friendship and support, and is a reminder that sometimes life is challenging for children as they learn to navigate the world.No Fits, Nilson! is illustrated with beautiful flat drawings in a rich pallet of turquoise, pink, and mustard yellow. The simplicity of the illustrations together with the use of white space and a simple bold black font draws the reader’s attention to the facial expressions and emotion of the characters and this is the strength of the book.This book is recommended for preschool children as a read aloud story. While the story does not recommend ways to manage difficult behaviours, it will be sure to stimulate conversations between children and their caregivers about feelings and behaviour.Recommended: 3 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Connie WintherConnie is a Medical Librarian with Alberta Health Services. She has a broad interest in health care and medical librarianship. When not working, she enjoys all types of outdoor activities with her family.

“Why would it not think of its typographic form already from its birth!”: a genetic approach to the typography of Aaro Hellaakoski’s “Kesien kesä”

‘Why would it not think of its typographic form already from its birth!’: a genetic approach to the typography of Aaro Hellaakoski’s ‘Kesien Kesä’The study of visual poetry often focuses solely on the iconicity of the poem, i.e. the interplay between expressive typography and the linguistic text, leaving the possibly existing genetic documents and the processes they witness with little or no attention. The article shows how genetic criticism (critique génétique) can enrich our understanding and interpretation of visual poetry by examining the manuscript, proofs and published versions of the poem ‘Kesien kesä’ (The Summer of Summers) from the typographically experimental collection Jääpeili (1928) (Ice Mirror) by the Finnish poet Aaro Hellaakoski (1893–1952). The genetic approach to the typography of ‘Kesien kesä’ reveals a multiphase process of trial and error, where Hellaakoski strives to achieve a satisfactory visual rendering for his poem. Besides trying out different typefaces and sizes, Hellaakoski is especially concerned with the use of white space on the page, especially with indentation and stanza breaks. Based on the semiotics of Charles S. Peirce, the article proposes a genetic conception of typography as a more abstract entity, albeit that the interpretation of the genesis of typography is characteristically material.

Donegal Haiku by Francis Harvey (review)

Reviewed by: Donegal Haiku by Francis Harvey Donna L. Potts Donegal Haiku, by Francis Harvey, pp. 90. Dublin: Dedalus Press, 2013; distributed by Syracuse University Press. Moya Cannon's introduction to The Collected Poetry of Francis Harvey describes Harvey as a "Bashō-like figure"—a particularly apt comparison, as Harvey's publication of Donegal Haiku is a remarkable collection of 122 haikus that pay various kinds of homage to his seventeenth-century predecessor. Sandwiched between two pages featuring a single haiku each, the body of the book features three haikus arranged on each of sixty page spreads, complementing the three line form commonly used for haiku in English. The book's symmetrical arrangement and intelligent use of white space reinforce the symmetry, beauty, and austerity of the form it celebrates. The Imagist movement of the early twentieth century likely made a western audience more receptive to haiku's spare form and striking imagery, and modernism's general move away from the strict metrical form that had prevailed for centuries in the West would also presumably make the syllabic form a refreshing change. To say haiku is "syllabic" poetry is not exactly accurate; haiku traditionally consisted of seventeen on, or sound units—which westerners have widely and inaccurately interpreted as seventeen syllables, divided into lines of five, seven, and five syllables. Hence, Harvey should not be faulted for occasionally deviating from the syllable count; modern haiku writers do likewise. Despite the timeworn caution about not judging a book by its cover, it is worth mentioning that Harvey's cover, featuring a stunning photograph of Mount Errigal with a reflection of Mount Fuji in the water (courtesy of the author's daughter, Esther), eloquently prepares the reader for the parallels between representations of Harvey's Donegal and Bashō's Japan. In one haiku, Harvey makes the parallel explicit: Sleeping, I think ofErrigal and Mount Fuji,The shape of my dreams. Bashō's solitary journey from Edo to Mount Fuji, Euno, and Kyoto, during which he took in the scenery and the seasons, inspired him to modify his poetic form in response to the world around him. Likewise, Harvey's solitary hillwalking, through which he discovered the intimate connections between nature and himself, helped to shape the content as well as the form of his poetry. He has often averred that this relatively solitary life has taught him a great deal more about poetry than a literary life among his ostensible poet peers would have. The essence of haiku is "cutting" (kiru), which is often represented by the juxtaposition of two images or ideas and a kireji ("cutting word") between them, a kind of verbal punctuation mark, much like the western caesura that signals [End Page 148] the moment of separation and colors the manner in which the juxtaposed elements are related. Harvey demonstrates his mastery of the technique as he relies on this juxtaposition to highlight the parallels between nature and himself, as in Five crows in a tree.The wind ruffles their feathers.The leaves of my book. For the reader, these images that quickly cut both ways open up the resemblances between feathers and leaves of a book, and implicitly, between the leaves of a tree and the leaves of a book. Harvey's imagery is also grounded, here and throughout the collection, in nature, as the imagery of haiku traditionally was as well. The form is thus also the means by which Harvey expresses his quintessentially environmental sensibility, a defining characteristic of his oeuvre. Harvey continually reminds his readers that human enterprises—often delineated as culture, and thus held as distinct from and even superior to nature—have their origins in the nonhuman world. Another haiku juxtaposes blossoming flowers, singing birds, and poems: The bluebells blossom.A blackbird sings in the grove.Swallows and poems. The recent field of "ecomusicology"—ecocritical musicology—examines the ways in which music and nature are related, and how music reflects, is related to, or relies on nature. Harvey's portrayal of the essential role of birdsong in human language demonstrates this relationship, and reminds us as well that poetry has its origin in song. And nobody sings quite like Harvey: You planted...

“Astonishment Is Thinking”: Graphic Metaphor and Its Philosophical Consequence in Mahler’s Poèmes and Lemieux’s Stormy Night

“Astonishment Is Thinking”:Graphic Metaphor and Its Philosophical Consequence in Mahler’s Poèmes and Lemieux’s Stormy Night Andrea Schwenke Wyile (bio) “[O]ne of the worst snares of the study [of metaphor is] the assumption that if we cannot see how a metaphor works, it does not work.” (I. A. Richards qtd. in Zwicky 65 RIGHT)1 “Many have learnt the word ‘see’ and never made any such use of it.” (Wittgenstein, Last Writings 4) The force of a graphic metaphor can momentarily wipe one’s mind clean, leaving it blank for a fleeting instant before the import of what one is looking at comes rushing in to fill one’s head with sparks, flashes, or fireworks of ideas. This combination of loss or insensibility and amazement or wonder found in the meaning of the word astonishment may seem like a strange condition to equate with thinking. However, the notion of being stunned mentally as a means of initiating a thought process is a useful one because it draws our attention to the need for pause, evident in the familiar phrase, “it gave me pause for thought.” Michèle Lemieux’s Stormy Night (1999) and Nicolas Mahler’s Poèmes (2007) are deeply philosophical and unusual books that challenge our assumptions about picturebooks due to the astonishing juxtapositions of the verbal and the visual on their page openings. These juxtapositions spur philosophical thinking on existential matters. Metaphor rather than narrative is the driving force in these books. The metaphors are line drawings that present us with surprising images which, like good [End Page 277] poetry, make us see the world and life anew. As Victor Shklovsky argues in “Art as Technique,” “Habitualization devours works, clothes, furniture, one’s wife, and the fear of war. … And art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar’” (20). Lemieux’s and Mahler’s books astonish us into thinking by defamiliarizing various aspects regarding the dominant, and thus nearly invisible, metaphor of the journey of life. The books, which are collections of aphorisms in the form of graphic metaphors, also defamiliarize our notion of story. In a point similar to Shklovsky’s regarding the power of poetic speech “to remove the automatism of perception” (27), Ludwig Wittgenstein notes that a common impediment to understanding is “the contrast between the understanding of the subject and what most people want to see” (qtd. in Zwicky 115 RIGHT). Whereas Shklovsky claims that sometimes we are blind due to automatism, Wittgenstein suggests that sometimes we willfully misread the signs in front of us. Poèmes and Stormy Night surprise us out of our habitual modes of seeing not only through their graphic metaphors, but also through the absence of an overt plot. The books push us toward a new kind of reading, one in which the force of individual graphic metaphors or their combinations result in philosophical reflection and inquiry rather than story. While Mahler’s and Lemieux’s books are stylistically and thematically similar, they are structurally distinct. Stormy Night is presented in the form and shape of a sketchbook and thus shares with Poèmes a similar ethos of page design. The page offers room for the eye to rest and for the mind to contemplate, encouraging a pause for thought at every turn. Page openings are designed to present a dialogue, be it between a word or sentence and an image, or just an image that adds to a previous spread. In both books the use of white space is integral to the force of their graphic metaphors, and the look of the page and its contents is integral to the experience of reading and meaning-making. Poèmes (La Pastèque, 2007) is a series of twenty-one “graphic poem” pairs that rely in some degree on conceptual binary opposition to convey their meaning, such as night and day, air and water, curiosity and stupidity, solitude and company. The collection is framed to suggest the course of a lifetime, beginning with the pairings birth and...

When white space is more than “burning money”: Economic signaling meets visual commercial rhetoric

Previous work has demonstrated that the use of white space in advertising communicates specific meanings to consumers and that this meaning derives from particular historical moments in the art and visual rhetoric of 20th-century North America. The use of “empty space” in ads, however, can also be conceptualized as a signal of burning money, which could influence consumer perceptions about the size and power of a company through completely different mechanisms. Somewhat surprisingly, nearly all empirical demonstrations of burning money in a consumer advertising context also manipulated white space, leaving the mechanism of action unclear. The results of the three studies discussed here indicate that white space is different from other ways of burning money, and its meanings are sufficiently different across cultures, thus providing stronger support for the rhetorical explanation than the economic signaling one. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for previous research that found that consumers infer quality from the economic signals of burning money.

Sky Ward

Ken Klonsky Life Without Quattro Books The latest offering from Klonsky treats a subject he knows well: wrongful conviction and the corruption of a supposedly just legal system. After the novella’s protagonist is falsely accused of murdering his wife and sentenced to life in prison, his struggle to remain hopeful drives the plot. Klonsky examines a serious subject with a sense of comic absurdity and jaded experience. Young-ha Kim Black Flower Charles La Shure, tr. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt This multifaceted novel tells the story of the littleknown Korean diaspora to Mexico in the wake of the Russo-Japanese War, which plunged over a thousand Koreans into indentured servitude in an unfamiliar and often hostile country. Kim employs this historical moment as a jumping-off point from which to explore questions of ethnicity, faith, and immigrant identity. July–August 2013 • 69 Nota Bene contentment.” This vignette is not only complete, it is chaste. Much of Wolf’s work is surreal, monstrous, and startling . A character in another tale toys with “the idea of shooting a bullet into his body, through his urethra,” to give one lucid example. My mind tended to wander, until I reached the dreamlike “49th Digression :TwelveChaptersfromanExposed Life.” Here, at last, we follow a singular character through his nightmarish global travels. The closing chapters are more linear and descriptive but remain completely mad. The entire journey through one part of Africa “was like a creeping fever, a mucous congestion, and after all this creeping I was nothing more than the slimy discharge of my own head,” recalls the storyteller. Grasping for deeper meaning, I assigned various metaphors to the narrator, for instance Time and Death. In doing so, the forty-ninth digression transforms from absurdity to profundity. Throughout Two or Three Years Later, the author skips across scenes and events like a stone across calm but dark waters. I yearned for Wolf to pause occasionally, to throw me further into his deeply disturbing rabbit hole. As one story concludes, “But there was something more I wanted to say. If only I knew what.” Shaun Randol New York verse Kazim Ali. Sky Ward. Middletown, Connecticut. Wesleyan University Press. 2013. isbn 9780819573575 There is a kind of fragmentation in contemporary poetry that fails to convince , that seems to have been born only in fragments, calculated to be partial with no authentic relation to a missing whole. And then there is the truer, more compelling form of fragmentation, the kind that hints at a fullness irrecoverable, poignant in its unsettling allusiveness. The poems of Kazim Ali fall into this second category . Sky Ward gives us hints of narrative —the story of Icarus, the life of the poet—but Ali skillfully prevents the narrative from ever coalescing. Storyline in Sky Ward is like the face of a friend you recognize from far away; you start walking in that direction , waving hello, until you are close enough to realize you do not know the person to whom you have been waving. But perhaps rather than as fragmented it is better to think of these poems simply as open, even if it is an openness created by elision. This openness is exhibited in the use of white space on the page as well as in a syntax that resists closure: “gorgeous I miss / not salvation but bliss I adore / discs of green melting snow reveals,” the 70 worldliteraturetoday.org reviews poet writes in “Journey to Providence.” These lines convey a sense of lyrical disruption, a stirring refusal to settle into definite meaning. This rejection of closure often produces in the reader a feeling akin to longing. Sometimes Ali channels this longing in erotic directions, as in “Baptism ,” in which the poet, imagining Eros, longs “to lie still, to be destroyed, wanting only / to kiss the hands of my winged assassin.” At other times, the longing is more generalized, as in the imaginative, elusive, and moving prose poem “Fairy Tale”: “It’s nearly a party trick the way he opens his mouth and butterflies pour out, closes it again and the clock chimes, reminding him of being a young boy, coming home to an empty house, sure that he had been forgotten, that...

Standards for patient-friendly container labels released

The United States Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) recently unveiled universal standards for prescription drug container labels that are intended to make it easier for patients to take their medications as prescribed. The two-page document was unveiled in October and is officially known as United States Pharmacopeia (USP) chapter 17, “Prescription Container Labeling.” “The whole approach was to focus on what was most important for the patient,” said Gerald K. McEvoy, ASHP's assistant vice president for drug information. McEvoy is cochair of the USP Health Literacy and Prescription Container Labeling Advisory Panel, a group of independent experts who developed the new standards. According to USP, the standards provide, for the first time, “a universal approach to the format, appearance, content and language of instructions for medicines in containers dispensed by pharmacists.” The standards emphasize patient-friendly elements such as prominent placement of the most important information and the use of clear, simplified language and explicit instructions. The standards also address legibility by requiring high-contrast print, a large font size for critical information, and prudent use of white space.