Poetry Postcard 13 & A Guest Postcard Poet

Deep into the 44 Postcard Project, several poetic themes are emerging. There are poems about birds, poems about marriage and relationships, and poems that allude to myth.

Osiris and...

Odysseus both have cameos
in the postcard poems.

Poems 12 (Paul Klee, see post here), 13 (photo of Georgia O'Keeffe, poem below) and 17 (painting by Sulamith Wülfing, post to come) are all ekphrastic. Each poem was written in response to a work of fine art featured on its postcard.

Maryland poet Michael Ratcliffe is visiting today to tell us about another postcard poem project. This one was run by the Paris journal Do Not Look at the Sun in 2011. (Mike's poetry blog is here.)

Thanks for visiting Author Amok, Mike!

Paintings, Poems, and Postcards

My poem “Thoughts While Viewing Van Gogh’s Fishing Boats on the Beach at Les Saintes Maries de la Mer” ties in nicely with Laura’s postcard poems project and her discussion of ekphrastic poems.  I wrote the poem for a friend who, when I mentioned I was going to the Netherlands and planned to visit the Van Gogh Museum, told me the painting was her favorite. 

The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

She liked the rich colors of the fishing boats, and said she felt a sense of sadness when viewing the painting. So, there I was, in the museum gallery, viewing her favorite Van Gogh without her. The poem came out of my engagement with the painting, and wishing my friend was with me to enjoy it. Most of the poem came to me quickly; the ending took longer to find. After several drafts, it seemed right to move from viewing the painting to imagining being in the painting, and to end by asking if she would be in one of the boats sailing away, or standing with me on the beach.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saintes-Maries_(Van_Gogh_series)

A month or so after writing the poem, I ran across the quirky Paris-based journal Do Not Look at the Sun. The theme of the Spring 2011 issue was “Postcards from Paris,” with poems printed on postcards and mailed to various addresses around the world.

Until that time, I hadn’t considered publishing the poem, but the journal’s theme intrigued me, and I had a postcard of the painting to offer if needed. Why not have a bit of fun when publishing a poem? The poem was accepted, and copies mailed on postcards to random locations, including one to my friend.

The message/poem on Mike's postcard. Posted with permission of the author.

Do Not Look at the Sun continues its quirky themes and distribution methods.  The Spring 2012 issue’s theme was “Paper Plane Poems;” my son and I engaged with poetry in a new way by flying paper plane poems at the Inner Harbor in Baltimore. The video of our flights on You Tube at http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZfhysBLUxurWNz68w3eJ2w/videos. 

The theme of the next issue is “Stories Sent to Sea.” I have had a poem accepted, but the issue apparently is delayed.  If it does come out, I will be sending out poems in bottles from undisclosed locations along the Potomac, Patapsco, or Chesapeake Bay.

And, by the way, my friend’s response to the poem’s concluding questions was that she was in a boat on the beach waiting for me.

Thanks for sharing the poem, Mike.

Michael Ratcliffe is a geographer, who after years of writing memos, academic papers, and Federal Register notices, started writing poetry again. His poems have appeared in Symmetry Pebbles, Loch Raven Review, Little Patuxent Review, Do Not Look at the Sun, Poetry Quarterly, The Copperfield Review, Three Line Poetry, Dead Beats Literary Blog, The Beatnik, and You Are Here: the Journal of Creative Geography. When he is not writing poetry, he manages geographic programs at the Census Bureau and teaches population geography at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. 

I love how the postcard page at Do Not Look at the Sun is set up. If you hover your mouse above a postcard, you can flip between the front (art) and the back (poem). I hope you'll have time to check out the other postcards/poems at the journal's website.

There are many directions one can take with an ekphrastic poem. Some of them are:

• finding a personal connection, as Mike did in  “Thoughts While Viewing Van Gogh’s Fishing Boats on the Beach at Les Saintes Maries de la Mer;”
• speaking in the voice of a figure in the image (remember Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George?);
• using the visual elements of the artwork to express emotion.

I took the third approach with Postcard 13. It is a famous image of the painter Georgia O'Keeffe, taken by Alfred Stieglitz. (Find the photograph here.)

As I've mentioned, I have to a tendency to over-do visual images, and this photograph is filled with small details. Composing the poem was a matter of asking myself which details best tell the story, as I see it.

Thinking about Georgia

After Georgia O’Keeffe, 1918, Alfred Stieglitz

dressed in his bulky sweater,

thin cushions at the edge of --

not really a garden --

more a bed, leaves

dark as spades, her skirt

white as teeth in a face,

she looks right or

somewhere else, not at his lens --

a sketchpad, her boots, a tray

he takes it all into the frame,

corner of the house,

watercolor paints

on the dirt path beside her

a fluted, ordinary glass --

already, the water is muddy

by Laura Shovan

Portrait Poems Part 1

One of my students' favorite workshops -- not matter what grade they are in -- is on portrait poems.

The backbone of the lesson is simple. We use an image of a person to gather concrete facts, a list of things we know or can see. Then, we take the same image and let our imaginations go crazy as we make up a story about the person.

Try using images of people students don't know, magazine clippings
or portraits like this one of Ann Boleyn from englishhistory.net.

I like this exercise for several reasons. First, it teaches point of view on more than one level. As writers, many of the students will opt to write in the voice of the character. That makes the portrait poem something like acting. On the human level, writing a portrait poem teaches compassion. For some children, it's a stretch to imagine what the person in that photo might be thinking about or feeling. Writing a poem is a safe way to wonder about someone else's point of view.

The second lesson lesson that portrait poems teach is more subtle. Because we are taking what we can see (the facts) and then imagining what is unseen (what happens next, or the person's feelings), the portrait poem mirrors the process of writing poetry. Poets take concrete experiences and present them in a way that creates emotional impact or some kind of revelation. That's exactly what we do in a portrait poem.

I'm worth how much?!

I was working on portraits with the Northfield third graders earlier this month, when the Edvard Munch painting The Scream was in the news. A version of the painting (there are four) recently sold at auction for just under $120 million.

One of my students wrote a portrait painting on The Scream a few years ago.

Scream (Response to “The Scream”)

by James, Grade 4

The frightened man on

the bridge in black

he screams as the bridge

opens while he’s on it

in the front of the

bay, the boat goes

by and two people walk

toward him, helping him

off the bridge and running

as he yells to his

family as they scream

in horror as their son

almost died as the

bridge went up and down.

The Northfield third graders and I looked at The Scream and read the poem. We talked about which elements of the poem were facts (the frightened man, the bridge, the water, the boat, two people) and which were the poet's imagination (the drawbridge, the idea that the two people are helping, the family, the idea that he almost died).

This student model sets us up well for discussing another painting/poem pair, Shonto Begay's "Down Highway 163." You can find them in Begay's wonderful book, Navajo. 

We'll look at that tomorrow. For now, here are some third grade portrait poems.

Thanks to Northfield's family and staff (and poets!) for allowing me to share these poems. You'll notice that some of the students have opted for one stanza on "what I see" and a separate stanza for "what I imagine," as in this first poem.

I See a Family

I see a family

playing on the sand

two small boys

walking through the water

the water is rushing up

and covering their feet.

Maybe the mom is worried

and scared.

The current might pull

her sons into the dark

cold sea.

Richard's poem is literally immersed in what the speaker of the poem is doing.

Splash

by Richard G.

Splash

arms flailing

legs kicking

having fun in the water

being almost weightless

and perfectly round

bubbles floating

to the surface

I don't realize how

much time passes by

and suddenly

I hear my dad

and mom say

It's time to go!

I love how Noah imagines the complex emotions of an astronaut -- talk about a different point of view than your own!

Untitled

by Noah H.

The man is very happy.

He finished his job

middle aged man

is forty years old,

is an astronaut.

Loved space.

A little dizzy.

Wants to go again.

Happy to see his

family. Happy to

go home.

It will be clear to you which famous landmark was in the photograph Alex wrote about.

Waving "Hello!"

by Alex N.

Foreigner kids

waving hello

to a statue of freedom.

Entering America.

Maybe they're happy.

They could be frightened.

England or France,

where are they from?

Children are waving because

they're entering

a new life and a new world.

They've traveled through storms

and the coldest of nights.

They're finally there.

Whew!

What a delight.

Look for the second half of the portrait poem lesson, including a "poem walk" through "Down Highway 163" tomorrow.