Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jul 16, 2026

Iconograph

An iconograph is a picture formed by a word or words. It can take the form of irregularly shaped letters or irregularly aligned text.

Last revised
Jul 16, 2026
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A word iconograph of the initials "VDC" as an eye. source ↗

An iconograph is a picture formed by a word or words. It can take the form of irregularly shaped letters or (especially in the case of poems) irregularly aligned text.

American poet May Swenson popularized such poems in her 1970 book Iconographs, which contained a number of poems laid out to resemble their subjects (e.g. a butterfly).1

References

References

  1. Swenson, May (1970). lconographs; Poems. The United States of America: Scribner. OCLC 89868.