The Personal Response to Art - "World Make Way"

          Poetry Friday is flashing today at Jama's Alphabet Soup with the birdbird of happiness, Jama Rattigan! Thanks, Jama, for helping our appetites grow for tasty food and beautiful art, fabulous books and the sweetest of animals. 

         Though I haven't written many ekphrastic poems, I do love what others do when writing about the art they are viewing, art that they love. Diane Mayr at Random Noodling wrote cheritas to art by women artists this past April, Irene Latham at Live Your Poem wrote  to art from the Harlem Renaissance and often poets share some new poem they've written or discovered about a piece of art for Poetry Friday. This year, for Laura Shovan's birthday month, a large group signed up to share a piece of art they own for all of us in the group to respond to. You can read about her plan here. I posted a few of the poems I wrote here. It was special to read the depth of the poems written and the varied responses to each piece of art. After all, this was a daily exercise, not easy to write beautiful words so quickly! Here is the piece I shared and the intro to it: This is a pencil drawing from one of my grandfathers who went to art school briefly before having to return to the family farm while his brother served in WWI. He said this was by one of his teachers. Over 25 wrote a poem response. 

          I tried a prose poem to this, my own response!  

Long Ago Life

       When I was young, after World War II, I lived with my maternal grandparents. We had flush toilets then, but others did not, nor running water. The war meant sacrifices of more than people. Grandma had those luxuries but washed the clothes in big tubs. Grandpa dumped the wash water on his garden, nothing wasted. I remember handing her clothespins as she hung the clothes on the line. My uncles came home from the war, midst celebration for them, grief for my father, who did not. They held a party with distant family finding enough gas to make the journey to welcome them home. People hugged me and my uncles a lot, ate, laughed, and cried. The first thing one uncle did was borrow Grandpa’s truck and take it to the nearby bigger town, brought back a wringer washer for Grandma. She sat down on the sofa and cried and cried. I didn’t understand. It seemed like a wonderful thing to me.

       

           This brings me to a most important "other" sharing, of a marvelous new book brought out recently by Lee Bennett Hopkins, a book filled with a wide array of art from an art museum and ekphrastic poems from an equally wide array of contemporary poets, all of which you know from Poetry Friday and other poems and books they're written. That book is World Make Way, New Poems Inspired by Art from The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

        Lee Bennett Hopkins opens the book with a sketch of a bear by Da Vinci, emphasizing the strength given to this bear even in this brief sketch, saying to us viewers: "World make way!" Bennett's words further explain that all who view a piece of art "may see and feel things differently than your friends or classmates. You might focus on the work as a whole, or you might zero in on a small detail that jumps out--a patch of sky, a sailboat, even a swirl of color." He gives permission to respond in personal ways. What a gift to all, especially to young beginning writers!

         The art has been chosen from all times, all parts of the world in varied media and subjects. It, like each piece of art we see, evokes responses that are both personal and beautiful. In a group setting, it would be wonderful to show the art, to write, then to read what these poets have written from their own personal and poetic response. 
        When you have the book in your hands and can experience the art and read each poet's words, you will understand the opening quote that Lee Bennett Hopkins chose from Da Vinci: "Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen." It is a book filled with poetry to savor as it speaks to the beautiful art.

          Accompanying the artwork and specially commissioned poems is an introduction, biographies of each poet and artist, and an index. It's a terrific book to add to your poetry collection.