Poetry Snapshot - Illustrating a Poem
Poetry Thursday suggests today to post a poetry snapshot...
What is Poetry?
This is the question I asked myself when I thought about capturing a poem with my camera.
After contemplating the question for some time, I resorted to an internet search and came away even less certain that I can define poetry :)
These words from Robert Frost help a bit:
"A poem begins with a lump in the throat, a home-sickness or a love-sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where the emotion has found its thought and the thought has found the words."
What is it
That provides the inspiration
For a poem?
The solitude
the light of breaking dawn
or eventide?
Is it the silence of the night
the sound of wind
rustling through each tree?
A golden autumn leaf on its
circuitous journey
to the ground?
A lovers kiss
A canopy of stars
or contemplation of the moon?
In thinking on these things
I find
I do not know
Do you?
© November 9, 2006
What is Poetry?
This is the question I asked myself when I thought about capturing a poem with my camera.
After contemplating the question for some time, I resorted to an internet search and came away even less certain that I can define poetry :)
These words from Robert Frost help a bit:
"A poem begins with a lump in the throat, a home-sickness or a love-sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where the emotion has found its thought and the thought has found the words."
What is itThat provides the inspiration
For a poem?
The solitude
the light of breaking dawn
or eventide?
Is it the silence of the night
the sound of wind
rustling through each tree?
A golden autumn leaf on its
circuitous journey
to the ground?
A lovers kiss
A canopy of stars
or contemplation of the moon?
In thinking on these things
I find
I do not know
Do you?
© November 9, 2006
posted by Endment at 2:06 PM
22 Comments:
Oh my, Endment, I've fallen behind in reading your blog. Yes, I really love that poem about the rustle in the middle of the night and the trajectory of the leaf falling to the ground. There are such arresting moments, and only poets know enough to write them.
Beautiful poem, Endment.
I like your photo, too. The squiggly reflection of the reeds adds such movement.
Your photo is a poem. Like your words, it captures moments. It shows what is there and then more. It shows what is hovering between and behind, shimmering because you were there to see it. Beautiful!
just lovely. it seems to be a dichotomy for me; simple and complex all at the same time.
perhaps the not knowing for sure, the questioning, is the greatest poem at all...I enjoyed this very much.
A poem is something that you experience and demands to be expressed.
I can't say I know either - it just seems to happen - though through opening myself to everything, inspiration is more likely to come.
In answer to your question where to buy my group's book, here is the URL of the bookshop that has copies
http://www.madrascafebooks.co.nz/
If you put "Chook Book" into the search box, it will come up (only a few copies left!)
Oh where would we be without Robert Frost? I love that quote. This is a wonderful post about the magic of writing. I have no idea where the words come from most of the time! I just try to catch them as they go by.
Thanks for the encouragement with my new camera. I have a whole new respect for all of your amazing wildlife shots ... those little buggers are hard to catch! Happy Weekend!
This is a beautiful poem and wonderful photo accompanying. I am a big Frost fan and I really like your take on the prompt.
Ah, Robert Frost...he said it so well. You too, I like your poem very much. And that photo! It draws you in with movement and color. It's beautiful.
In response to your comment on avoiding our toxic world...I'm in the same place. There is a good chance that the poisons that bombard us may have exacerbated my disease and avoidance seems to be one of the best ways to fight. What's happening in our pristine state of VT is apalling.
you images are poetry, motion and depth coming to the surface and singing! (...as are your words!!!)
I love poems about poetry!! Each one has it's own struggle to become one. You have succeeded in photograph and words!!
You picked the perfect photo for your poem.Water flows - words flow.
I had never thought of a photo as a poem but now after reading your post I do.
Lovely poem. Beautiful photo.
It is your sensitivity to the world, Endment, expressed so beautifully in words and image.
Given the right mood and a creative mind almost anything can become the basis for poetry. Loved your poem.
The Frost quote has always been one of my favorites. Your photography is beautiful. What is it about the play of light on water? I find it so transporting and you captured it so well as it sits above your lovely poem.
Really lovely, both the photograph poem and the word poem.
Oh my. Words and a poetry picture, both just right. I wish I could make poetry like this!
awwwwwwwwwwh A canopy of stars.
You have captured a beautiful poem in your creative work.
Thank you for sharing.
Endment, I loved your combination of wordart and photo today. A poem about poetry ... not so easy to succeed, but I think you have.
I did something similar to your photo-as-poem for this week's prompt. I had an artist's date with my camera shooting photos of my old dresses on the kitchen counter. What fun. And tons of good material to inspire poetry (for me, anyway.)
I, too think alot about what inspires a good poem, what is poetry (not sure anything I have ever written would qualify...) Your post inspired me to get out my old notebooks looking for what I used to know about poetry (don't we always know so much when we are young? heheh)
Years ago I happened to be writing about poetry and about "truth" as I understood it ... and the juxtaposition of those thoughts in my notebooks struck me as a good answer. It seems to me the question of what is poetry and the question of what is truth are the same question, really.
Dredged up from one of my old notebooks: I was paraphrasing a quote attributed to Vincent Van Gogh speaking of his paintings: "I want my poetry (paintings) to become lies ... lies that are more truthful than the literal truth."
And another scribbled inspiration. This one from poet James Dickey (1940s): he had learned something about poetry from Monroe Spears who taught him at Vanderbilt. Spears had been telling him what he needed to do to improve a particular poem. Dickey had said "It didn't happen that way," and Spears had told him "No artist is bound by the truth."
For me, when I give up my preconceived ideas about what a poem should be, that is the closest I ever come to writing what is true -- to writing lies that are more true than the literal truth.
thanks for your post - very inspirational, Endment!
The poem and the photo are one "and in thinking of these things", no, I don't know. I've never been able to write poetry, but oh, how I want to.
Beautiful Endment!
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