Embodying Art

Inspiration

Somebody more mathematically astute than me said a picture is worth a thousand words. I’d wager they didn’t see the above picture. If they had, the quote would have been something like, “a picture is worth, give or take, fifty words, at best,” but that doesn’t have the same ring to it. With that in mind, let’s see if we can add to that word count just a bit, shall we?

For those who like to read the “liner notes” or listen to the “director’s commentary” track, I’ll run down the inspiration for this prompt. After reading Glenda Funk’s wonderful poem “When I Grow…” for Angie Braaten’s June prompt, my brain was set ablaze. I mean, who doesn’t love the lines, “I want to live in a / Mary Oliver poem”? What a cool idea that is. And then my brain reminded itself of Billy Collins’s poem “Introduction to Poetry” which led me to – who knows how these things work? – a memory of reading a rather haunting poem about a woman who was “in” the poem, a photograph or painting, but also wasn’t. (This, of course, was Margaret Atwood’s powerful and somber “This Is a Photograph of Me.”) This shifted my thinking to photography and paintings and “embodying” those works of art. So, here we are.

Process

I’d like you to find a painting you’re “drawn to” for whatever reason and then, à la Billy Collins’s “Introduction to Poetry,” step into it. If you remember his instructions to his students from stanza four – “[W]alk inside the poem’s room / and feel the walls for a light switch” – that’s what I’d like us to try today. Find a painting, enter the painting – choose a perspective from something/someone in the piece – and write about it.

You can find some artwork here: Google Arts & Culture There’s a lot to see at this site. Try not to be overwhelmed. If you click on Explore (at the top), you’ll be able to find Art Camera (or just click on those words) and that will get you closer to actually examining some works of art.

The three poems above could all serve as wonderful mentor texts, but if you’d like one more, here’s one by Allen Ginsberg about a Cézanne painting: “Cézanne’s Ports.”

When “stepping into the painting,” you could take the perspective of someone in the painting. You could take the perspective of someone not in the painting, too, someone just “off camera,” as it were. Or what about the artist herself? What about the patron who commissioned the work? You could even delve a bit into the background of the work itself and explore/interrogate that in your poem. The sky’s the limit and your palette awaits, as they say. (Does anyone say that?) Choose whatever poetic “format” you’d like.

And if you provide a link to the painting, we’ll not only have a bunch of cool poems but a bunch of cool pieces of artwork (within arms’ reach), too, to enjoy today. (And if you provide the link instead of the actual image of the artwork, we won’t be infringing on anyone’s copyrights! But we’ll still have the benefit of reading some cool poems and then exploring some cool paintings: We’ll have our very own “gallery walk.” There, I felt the need to insert some “teacher speak” into this prompt somewhere, lol.)

Scott’s Poem

Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks

Nighthawkish

I mean, yes, it was 1942,
and Pearl Harbor was fresh
in our minds, and there were
only a handful of us in the diner,
but it wasn’t all Hemingway’s
Clean-Well-Lighted-Whatnot
and all that, not despair, not
existential dread, sure we were
isolated, and sure we were in
New York City, but it was just
a lull in the conversation,
I had made a joke, something
off-hand, but a bit too close
to home, perhaps, something
about – I don’t remember,
but there was a pause in
the conversation, a beat
change, they were re-
collecting themselves,
see, it’s not all drab as
what everyone makes it
out to be, I know, I was
there, just out of frame,
Hopper felt the need to
cut me out (didn’t agree
with his aesthetic or
somesuch nonsense, frfr)
truth is I was dressed in
a chicken suit, all feathers
and beak, and, to be honest,
this is where the title came
from, not, as some people
would have you believe
from his wife’s diary entries
about the painting, I mean,
sure, she’s there, too, she’s
the redhead, she’s holding
something that I never quite
figured out what, (and Hopper
wouldn’t tell me), anyway,
it wasn’t there “in the scene,”
oh, I had made a joke about
all the feathers and how they
got everywhere like sand
after going to the beach
which, I guess, made everyone
think of the ocean and
harbors and