Shaker Visual Poetry (Gift Drawings & Gift Songs)

Shaker Visual Poetry (Gift Drawings & Gift Songs) at UbuWeb. "...Between 1837 and 1850 ('known as the Era of Manifestations') the Shakers composed (or were the recipients of) 'hundreds of visionary drawings - really [spiritual] messages in pictorial form,' writes Edward Deming Andrews (The Gift To Be Simple, 1940). 'The designers of these symbolic documents felt their work was controlled by supernatural agencies — gifts bestowed on some individual in the order (usually not the one who made the drawing.' The same is true of the 'gift songs' and other verbal works, and the invention of forms in both the songs and drawings is extraordinary, as is their resemblance to the practice of later poets and artists."