Many poems have been inspired or influenced by work in another medium, such as painting. In translating a painting to poetry, it is important to do more than just describe the work. Some poets also interpret the work. William Carlos Williams wrote a series of poems titled Pictures of Brueghel in which he both describes and interprets the painter Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Poets usually use the paintings as a starting point, but quickly leave the painting behind. Then there is the poet Charles Wright, who after looking at many paintings by Paul Cezanne, decided to write poems in the same way Cezanne paints—in dabs and strokes and hooks, in blocks of paint building on blocks of paint, and by using all the canvas. Hence the dropped line.
Your assignment is to find a painting that speaks to you for whatever reason. The painting can be abstract or realistic or figurative. What matters is that you feel strongly about the painting. Please begin looking for this painting now. As you should always do in all your writing, go for the particulars, the details. Again, you may write “about” the painting or you may tell a fictional story inspired by the painting. You may write the poem from the viewpoint of someone in the painting (or many someones). Do not forget that the many someones may include a family dog, the fox who is being hunted, the dragon who has kidnapped the princess. Don’t be reluctant to complain, as the dragon and the princess do in “Not my Best Side.” (Why does that artist paint my forehead so prominent and my chin so weak?) Take yourself out of the painting and go to your own backyard as Jimmy Kimbrell does so beautifully in “True Descenders” in The Gatehouse Heaven.
Remember, as always, to strive for particularities and details.
This exercise was taken from course materials prepared by
Judy Jordan,
Southern Illinois University
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