Poems to Pictures

In honor of National Poetry Month, I hosted a poetry workshop entitled Poems to Pictures. Author and poet Ruth Baja Williams read the poems she'd set to a series of watercolors by artist Jane Andrle Gillette, photos of which we're projected for viewing.  Workshop participants then chose from a selection of magazine and postcard pictures set out on a table, and crafted their own poem to picture. The results were stunning. In just 30 minutes, drafts were completed, read aloud, and appreciated. My favorite is Remember the Lake, by George Mason University creative writing student Benjamin Renne.  He chose a magazine photo of Morning, Lake George, an 1871 oil on canvas by A T Bricher.

Morning, Lake George. Oil on canvas by A T Bricher 1871

Remember the Lake
By Benjamin Renne

Remember the lake
That swollen Autumn morning
When you and me and Jack went
Out for a row. We brought
The tackle box and the rods and
A paper bag full of fried egg sandwiches.

Remember the rocks
In the middle of the silent
Pond, frost covered and slick. They
Were the giants and the sirens,
Enticing fantasies and chimeras which
Even brave Ulysses can’t avoid.

Remember the shoreline,
How it seemed so far away
When we were alone, the three
Of us in the middle of the peaceful lake.
The pebble beach, littered with goose
Shit, was far away. So far.

Remember the trees,
Bare of life and slanted
Like an old man with a broken
Back. The birds, which used to
Call those dead trees home, would
Sing to us on that frosty morning.

Remember the sky
And the mountains gray,
Fading into the background, where the
Fog blends everything together
So that the future is masked
With the low clouds, fuzzy and unpredictable.

Remember the car,
The smell of fish
Which permeated the leather seats,
And Jack complained the whole way back.
My boots were wet and stunk still
Of the lake, but I smiled.
Remember the lake?

Other posts on poetry:
April is National Poetry Month
Franz Schubert and Friedrich Rückert: Poetry and Music
Late Wife
When Writing a Poem
MLB, Opening Day

April is National Poetry Month

I'm trying to understand what it is about poetry that excites me. Each year I make a big deal of National Poetry Month at whichever library I happen to be working. Yet, there are many poems that I do not understand. So what is it about poetry that I like?

I began thinking about this as I planned blog posts, tweets, displays and programs for National Poetry Month 2011. When I read the poems that I consider favorites, I see that it's the art of the words that I love. In poetry, words are carefully chosen and strategically arranged to produce a sight, a sound, a smell, a feel, a memory. Following are examples, a few of my favorite poetic lines.

"...sensing only the pale humidity
of the night and the slight zephyrs
that stir the tops of the trees"

from Night Letter to the Reader by Billy Collins.

"Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Thro' the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot."
from The Lady of Shalott by Alfred Lord Tennyson

"He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake."
from Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

Recently someone suggested to me that the written word is an impersonal form of communication compared with face-to-face conversation. I see it differently. I'm a writer and a reader, and words are the most intimate, most lovely, most heartfelt form of communication. This is what I like about poetry: The precisely chosen beautiful words and the pictures they paint.

Happy Birthday, William

William Shakespeare is the most renowned English playwright and poet in history. Details of his life are sketchy due to the fact that little documentation remains besides his writings and a few church documents including his baptismal, marriage and burial records.
Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, on or about April 23, 1564. Records from Holy Trinity Church indicate that he was baptized on April 26. He was the third of eight children born to John Shakespeare, a glover and leather merchant, and local heiress Mary Arden.
On November 28, 1582, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. Their first child, Susanna, was born on May 26, 1583, and twins Hamnet and Judith were born on February 2, 1585. Hamnet died at age 11, but Shakespeare’s wife and other two children outlived him.
Scholars estimate that Shakespeare arrived in London in about 1588 and began to work as a playwright and actor. By 1594 he was acting and writing for London’s most popular and successful theater company of the day, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, as well as serving as the group’s managing partner. He is credited with writing 38 plays, 154 sonnets, and two narrative poems.
As with his birth, the date of William Shakespeare’s death is a guess -- April 23, 1616. Church records do show that he was buried at Holy Trinity in Stratford on April 25. In 1623, two of Shakespeare’s colleagues published the First Folio, his collected plays, half of which were previously unpublished.
Special thanks to Dora Lee for the graphic.