Visual poetry
Calligram: definition, Apollinaire's famous examples and how to read one
A calligram is a poem whose letters draw what it says: rain falls in slanted lines, the Eiffel Tower rises in words, a heart turns over like a flame. The word comes from the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who gave it to his 1918 collection. Here is the definition, the history, the examples worth knowing and how to read them.
What is a calligram?
A calligram is a text arranged on the page so that it forms a picture, and the picture shows what the text says. You look at it before you read it, then you read it to understand what you saw.
The word was coined by Guillaume Apollinaire for his collection Calligrammes, published in Paris on April 15, 1918. It blends calligraphy and ideogram, from the Greek kallos, beauty, and gramma, letter: beautiful writing.
The difference from an ordinary poem fits in one sentence: in a poem, the shape is the shape of the lines; in a calligram, the shape is a picture, and it is part of the meaning.
Who invented the calligram?
Apollinaire invented the word, not the idea. In the 4th century BC, the Greek poet Simmias of Rhodes already shaped his verses as wings, an axe or an egg. In the 9th century, Rabanus Maurus wrote a book of picture-poems in praise of the Cross; in the 16th, Rabelais drew a bottle in words in his Fifth Book. English readers know the mouse's tail in Lewis Carroll's Alice.
What Apollinaire invented was the modern calligram. On June 15, 1914 he published Lettre-Océan (Ocean-Letter) in his review Les Soirées de Paris: words radiating from a center like the radio waves the Eiffel Tower sent around the world. He called these poems "lyrical ideograms" and planned a collection with a telling title, And I Too Am a Painter, for August 1914. The war stopped it: the book became Calligrammes, four years later.
What are Apollinaire's most famous calligrams?
Calligrammes, subtitled Poems of Peace and War (1913-1916), has six sections. The best-known calligrams are in the first two:
- It's Raining (Il pleut): "It's raining women's voices as if they had died even in memory", in lines that fall. The one taught in schools.
- The Stabbed Dove and the Fountain: a dove made of the names of women he loved, above a fountain where the friends gone to war are mourned.
- The Eiffel Tower, in 2e Canonnier conducteur (1915): "Hello world, of which I am the eloquent tongue that your mouth, O Paris, sticks out and always will at the Germans". The tower sticks its tongue out at the enemy.
- The Tie and the Watch and Heart, Crown and Mirror: everyday objects drawn in sentences.
- Ocean-Letter and The Mandolin, the Carnation and the Bamboo.
See Apollinaire's calligrams as prints
How do you read a calligram?
In three steps: look, read, connect.
1. Look at the shape. Before reading a single word, name what you see: rain, a tower, a dove. That is the poem's silent title.
2. Read along the drawing. It's Raining reads top to bottom, line by line, the way you follow a drop. The Eiffel Tower reads from the tip down. The Tie and the Watch reads object by object, and the watch's hours turn with the dial.
3. Connect shape and meaning. Ask why the text took this shape: the rain says melancholy, the tower says Paris holding on, the upside-down heart says a burning love. That is where the calligram becomes a poem.
See the Eiffel Tower as a print
How do you make a calligram?
Pick an object linked to your text: a raindrop for a sad poem, a heart for a declaration. Sketch its outline very lightly in pencil. Write the text along the lines, packing the letters in the curves and spacing them on the straights. Erase the outline.
Two rules from Apollinaire: a simple shape you can recognize from across the room, and a short text you can read in one breath. Beyond three objects, as in The Mandolin, the Carnation and the Bamboo, the drawing gets crowded.
Why does a calligram make great wall art?
Because it reads at two distances. From afar it is a picture: rain, a heart, a tower, readable from the couch. Up close it is a poem, discovered as you step in. Few prints give you both.
A calligram loves a large size: in 50x70 cm (about 20x28 in), every letter of It's Raining stands out and the rain fills the wall. In 30x40 cm (about 12x16 in) it suits an entryway or a desk. And it goes with any literary decor, what Pinterest calls poetcore.
And I too am a painter. Guillaume Apollinaire, planned title for his calligrams, 1914
The calligram in one sentence
A poem you see before you read it, named by Apollinaire in 1918, and still holding a wall a century later.
Apollinaire's calligrams
Calligram prints
Sixteen calligrams in 30x40, 40x50 and 50x70 cm, on thick uncoated matte paper.
See all 16 calligrams →
Frequently asked questions about calligrams
Who invented the calligram?
The word was coined by the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire for his 1918 collection Calligrammes. The idea is much older: Simmias of Rhodes was already shaping verses in the 4th century BC.
What is Apollinaire's most famous calligram?
It's Raining (Il pleut), whose lines fall like rain, followed by the Eiffel Tower of 2e Canonnier conducteur and The Stabbed Dove and the Fountain. All three are in Calligrammes.
What is the difference between a calligram and a poem?
A calligram is a poem whose layout draws a picture tied to its meaning. In a regular poem the shape is the shape of the lines; in a calligram the shape is a drawing.
What is a famous calligram in English?
The best known is the mouse's tale in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), a story printed as a winding tail. Apollinaire gave the form its name in 1918.
