Thesis Blog

For centuries, poets have used carefully layered rhetorical devices to create seduction, persuasion, and beauty in their words. Figures of speech are a stylistic sub genre of rhetoric that depart from ordinary language; they enhance meaning while also ornamenting a poem.

Verse Patterns is a system of visual textures designed to underscore the layering of rhetorical figures. The project investigates literary language while illuminating its subtle nuances. Simple patterns overlap to create super-patterns where multiple rhetorical devices are in play. Applicable to any piece of poetry, Verse Patterns seeks to reveal poetic universality across time, oceans, languages, and genres.

Verse Patterns applied to the selected stanzas by Geoffrey Chaucer (14th Century) and Jay-Z (21st Century).

In Geoffrey Chaucer’s day, the density of rhetorical elements marked the strength of the poet. Poets and lyricists today still use these classic formulas. Jay-Z, like Chaucer, is a metrical poet whose words, rife with figures of speech, flow with syllabic emphasis and culminate in pleasing end rhymes. In addition to sharing structural and stylistic devices, Chaucer and Jay-Z use common motifs. The recurring themes of sex, drugs, misogyny, storytelling, lyrical prowess, politics, social issues, and money permeate both generations of work. A closer look shows that new school rap resembles old school poetry performed over a beat, and verse patterns accumulate when the poets carefully consider their words.

Close-up of my color-coded pattern system for labeling rhetorical devices.

Like most design, poetry is a compilation of form and meaning. We may remember a poem for its overall theme or arrangement, but we should also take into consideration any well-crafted line-by-line intricacies within.

Through my thesis, I am examining poetic structure and rhetoric in classical and contemporary English poetry through the lens of graphic design. I base my designs on parallel typographical analyses of the works of Geoffrey Chaucer and the lyrics of modern rap MCs, primarily those of Jay-Z. Chaucer, the 14th century grandfather of vernacular literature and iambic pentameter, paved the way for much of the English poetry that pervades our literature anthologies. Complex yet casual, humorous yet insightful, and bawdy yet polished, Chaucer’s poetry was pun-filled, rhythmic, and forward thinking: an archetype of rhetorical verse. Substantive rap today is the same way.

Some people are so adverse to the content in hip-hop music that they fail to hear extremely complex vernacular poetry, utilizing similar rhetorical devices and rhythmic stylings of its Middle English predecessor. Jay-Z, like Chaucer, is a metrical poet whose words, rife with figures of speech, flow with syllabic emphasis and culminate in pleasing end rhymes. And not only does the parallel analysis make sense in terms of structure and language style, but also in terms of motifs. The recurring themes of sex, alcohol, misogyny, credibility, pop-culture, lyrical prowess, politics, and money permeate both generations of work. At a closer look, new school rap resembles old school poetry performed over a beat.

I’m going through rhetorical devices and making posters from rap lyrics that use them well. The dots represent the words “like” or “as” here.

A little diagram to see where design tropes and figures of speech (might) fit into the overall discourse.

Glossary of poetic terms, derived from longer definitions.

End of Semester Entry
My next steps are to take what I’ve learned so far and continue creating a body of thesis work. I would like to be more experimental in my designs, since I now feel like I have better control and more freedom with my new “epigrams” content.

So far with my thesis I have explored poetic structure and vernacular through a design lens. Both heroic couplet poetry and hip-hop rely heavily on a similar structure. My designs have therefore been based on parallel analyses of Chaucer and modern hip-hop lyrics in the search for related patterns in the following: language use, meter, assonance, rhyme, alliteration, and meaning. Oftentimes these explorations were confusing, so I experimented with using design to show the patterns of metric feet (long and short syllabic emphases), and from there began to think about a more informative design approach to poetry. I created a glossary from definitions of poetic terms, and then began to entertain the idea of designing from a different form of poetry.

I began creating a list of historical and modern epigrams, which are short, witty poems or coupleted excerpts from longer poems. Though they are brief, epigrams are sophisticated in structure and often in meaning.

I will confine myself to either purely typographic, typographic + illustration, or purely illustration within each group of designs. This will be a working exploration, and I hope that significant material will result that could be used for my final body of work. I am not planning on neglecting my work and research thus far along the lines of Chaucer and rap, but want to use what I’ve learned and move forward into a much more experimental phase. I think that by limiting the type and style of the designs, I can be more creative with the content. I still plan on upholding and exposing the beauty of poetic structure through the subtleties in language and sly intricacies that exist within really good epigrams. Perhaps I can try to bring those creative nuances to my designs.

He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram on his tombstone. —Oscar Wilde


Catullus was the Latin epigrams expert.

Both poetry and hip hop rely heavily on meter. Here I experimented with using design to show the patterns of metric feet (long and short syllabic emphases).