46 Comments
User's avatar
Rosa Lía Gilbert's avatar

Wowow. These are stunning. @A.A a part of your poem, “oars are our hope…” reminded me of the ending of Great Gatsby. And @Dabney, “where there was once a great bear to point us home…” ah what a line. Meditating on the ways we’ve erased opportunities to see the Lord, replaced him with the man-made.

Dabney Baldridge's avatar

Thank you!! Yes, I’ve been thinking on that a lot as well. I always need a reminder to look up!

A. A. Kostas's avatar

Yes very Gatsby! But with some more hope, hopefully!

Melanie Bettinelli's avatar

What a fabulous collaboration. I love how these pieces sing to each other.

A. A. Kostas's avatar

trying our best! thanks for reading and appreciating :)

Rachel Palm's avatar

These are gorgeous! I've never attempted a poem like these, but you both have inspired me!

A. A. Kostas's avatar

thanks Rachel! glad they had that effect and looking forward to seeing what you create :)

feel free to subscribe as there are lots more art-poems in the Waymarkers archive, and some new ones coming over the next few weeks!

Julie's avatar

So lovely! I’ve just recently found you both :).

A. A. Kostas's avatar

thanks Julie, glad you found us!

feel free to subscribe to Waymarkers for more collabs in the future, as well as my own art-poetry, essays, and fiction

and make sure you subscribe to @Dabney Baldridge because her work is awesome

Julie's avatar

Thanks! I was mostly drawn because of how you built her work up! My fave thing! Would love to keep connecting with you both! We need more of that!

Abigail's avatar

I love to see poets playing with words and experiencing them in all their dimensions. So enjoyed reading both of these, A. A. and Dabney. The year of collaborations is off to a beautiful start!

A. A. Kostas's avatar

Thanks Abigail! You are a nother great example of someone using their publication here for mutual benefit to others

Abigail's avatar

Awww thank you! The collaborations and community possible here are special.

Hrvoje Šimić's avatar

So creative! Love these.

A. A. Kostas's avatar

Thanks Hrvoje - it's a joy to push each other toward creative heights!

Kayla Norris's avatar

this is gorgeous and now I want to draw them

Dabney Baldridge's avatar

Yes! I love how art inspires poetry and poetry inspires art.

erin's avatar

Love the collab, love the idea, love the art and poetry of it all and most importantly you’ve both inspired me to give my space bar a workout this weekend! I’ve been meaning to do this, so thank you both:)

A. A. Kostas's avatar

Can't wait to see what you come up with! And maybe one day you and I can collab too

Mark Zumpano's avatar

if these poems were ants they’d be brilli-ants

A. A. Kostas's avatar

and if they were stars they'd be rockstars?

Mark Zumpano's avatar

if these were Microsoft programs these would be excel(lent)

Samuel Buhler's avatar

Elite poetry as always. Visio and Lectio all in one.

A. A. Kostas's avatar

you know me, can't have my visio without my lectio

Jed Meyers's avatar

"See see see see" (!) Also, "A starless sky haunts us" (!) ...brilliant work by you both!

A. A. Kostas's avatar

Thanks Jed! Glad you enjoyed

Hardin Crowder's avatar

A dumb question but what program do you use to make art poems? I imagine it would be very frustrating to just use enter and space bar on a typical word processor.

A. A. Kostas's avatar

I can't speak for Dabney, but I genuinely use the old space bar and text boxes method in a google doc. No fancy software, just a lot of time spent moving letters around a page

Dabney Baldridge's avatar

Same. Lots of space bar here!

Hardin Crowder's avatar

I admire both of your patience! I loath trying to format anything that isn’t a preset in docs/word.

Jacob Hintz's avatar

These are so good! I'm going to need to come back and re-read these a few more times.

I also need to learn/practice how to do this style of poetry.

A. A. Kostas's avatar

It can be good fun! And also really frustrating... like the best things often are

C. J. W. Armstrong's avatar

How’d you make these, A A? I’ve started experimenting with poetry and aesthetics I wanted to represent my words on the page a certain way, but Substack kept auto-wrapping my text in weird ways after I published. I thought creating an image and then just uploading that might work better, which seems to be exactly what you’ve done. Any advice?

I really like these poems by the way—the theme, and that they’re responding to one another. Doesn’t seem gimmicky to me when they’re clearly crafted with care and thematically coherent.

A. A. Kostas's avatar

yeah that’s right. I create my art-poems in google docs using text-boxes, then just screenshot and upload as an image. It’s time consuming, but I don’t know any other way to do it

Cipher⁉️✨✨'s avatar

I’ve been dipping my toe into shaped poems more so I really loved reading this!!

A. A. Kostas's avatar

Awesome! Shape poetry is my favourite tbh. Excited to see what you come up with!

Clara York's avatar

So excited by the collaborative projects!! Keep it up!