Showing posts with label assigned poem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label assigned poem. Show all posts

Friday, January 30, 2009

Poet + Museum = Poem




(image: interior of Hagia Sophia)




I did write a post concerning "homeopathic treatments for writer's block" once, but otherwise I don't recall posting anything like "an English assignment," chiefly because it seems like such a nerdy, English-professory, assignmentish thing to do.

However, one of the few readers of this blog recently asked, "Where do you find your creativity?" and a) I haven't answered that question, b) I'm not sure how to answer it, but c) one way to answer it is very specifically: by suggesting a task for anyone (including oneself), any poet, in the unlikely event that person needs a task to spark the writing or the "creativity."


Before I give the task, I should probably answer the question more generally.
I like how the question is phrased, first of all--using "where" as oppposed to "how." Poets or any artists can find stuff (now there's a precise term) to interest them anywhere. So I guess one answer to the question is, "Almost everywhere." Places, situations, language (especially odd overheard phrases), conditions, new places, familiar places, strange places, work-spaces, and so on.

Another answer is that I don't feel especially more creative than other people. I think I've always just liked to write, especially poetry, and if you enjoy "doing" some kind of art, then the creativity usually arrives in a steady flow, a trickle, at least. I don't enjoy writing fiction nearly as much as poetry, so when I'm writing that, I'm aware that sometimes the creativity is running a bit low. So I guess the answer is that one finds the creativity in the making itself.


Now that that paragraph is, thankfully, done with, here is an assignment I give poetry classes. It entails visiting a gallery or a museum, although one could just as easily pick up an art- or photograph-book of some kind and go from there.

But as I almost suggested earlier, posting an "assignment" may be taken as an insult, especially by those who know quite well what they want to write about, thank-you-very-much. If you count yourself in that number, you have my apology. Then there are people who recoil from the very idea of "assigning" a poem, although I think this assignment is so loose that it almost avoids the stigma of being an assignment. Almost. Anway, if you're in the anti-assignment group, you, too, have my apology. In the unlikely event you are a poet or are wanting to write a poem and might like something new or unexpected to write about, here 'tis:


An “ekphrastic” poem is one that is in some way inspired by a work of art, usually a work from a non-literary art. W.H. Auden’s “MuseĆ© des Beaux Arts” is one of the best known examples from 20th century poetry. In the poem, Auden argues that paintings by Old Masters such as Brueghel reflected a particular view of suffering. Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium” is another example; it focuses on the art in a church called Hagia Sophia in Constantinople/Istanbul. That poem seems to express a desire to live permanently in an ideal world of art. Our field-trip today takes us to [ ] Gallery, which features two exhibits, The Island and Juxtaposition, which hold especially rich possibilities for poetry. Look at the exhibits and then find a space on the floor, have a seat, and write either notes toward a poem or a poem or both. The poem might react specifically to one piece in one exhibit; or it may embody an overall reaction to the exhibit; or it may concern a topic triggered by the exhibit. The references to the art-work might be strong and obvious, subtle, or ultimately even non-existent. That is, the poem will begin as something that plays off the exhibits or a piece in the exhibits, but its real subject might be something else that springs from your memory and/or the process of writing itself.