Editing Iconicity (section)

==Poetry==
Iconicity often occurs within poetry through the use of onomatopoeia, which may be called auditory iconicity. Sometimes the form of the poem resembles or enacts the poem's content, and in this case, a visual iconicity is present. One poet well known for his visual poems, and therefore visual iconicity, is [[E. E. Cummings]]. Another poet known for "shape poems" is [[George Herbert]]. In his poem "A Wreath" (1633) <ref>{{cite book
	| last = Wall (Jr.)
	| first = John N.
	| author-link = 
	| date = 1984
	| title = George Herbert: The Country Parson, The Temple
	| url = 
	| location = 
	| publisher = The Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle 
	| page = 312
	| isbn = 0-80912298-7}}</ref> each line overlaps the next while the rhyme scheme makes a circle, thus mimicking the form of a wreath.

A subset of visual iconicity involves a spatial iconicity. For instance, in Cummings's grasshopper poem ("r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r") the word "arriving" begins on the far right of the poem with the "a", the "r" is near the middle of the poem, and the rest of the word is on the left of the poem. The reader must travel a great distance across the poem, therefore, in order to "arrive". The spatial dimension, then, can relate to a temporal dimension. In the poems "The Fish" and "The Moose" by Elizabeth Bishop, temporal iconicity is at work. The amount of time it takes to read "The Fish" coincides with the length of time a fish could live outside of water; likewise, the duration of the long bus ride in "The Moose" coincides with the poem's long first sentence as well as the twenty-some stanzas it takes before the passengers on the bus (and the reader) actually encounters the moose.