What makes a poem a poem? What defines art?
I’ve been posting info related to those questions, and it all began a few days ago when I shared William Carlos Williams’ poem about the red wheelbarrow – but is that really a poem?
PART 1 is HERE. PART 2 is HERE.
I’ve been posting info related to those questions, and it all began a few days ago when I shared William Carlos Williams’ poem about the red wheelbarrow – but is that really a poem?
PART 1 is HERE. PART 2 is HERE.
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I suppose it’s easy to dismiss the lines as nothing more than a stagy and meretricious statement; however, if you completed your homework and read Sharon Creech’s book “Love That Dog,” you might sit back and think, “Hmm – maybe there’s more to that sentence (i.e., WCW’s) than just sixteen precisely placed words.”
Same with E. E. Cummings’ “l(a.” When I post that poem on the board in classrooms, students are quick to dismiss it – except that I employ an abundant use of wait-time until someone (or some ones) begin to decipher the lines – “A leaf falls; loneliness” – and we discuss why Cummings split the words up like that. Suddenly, their opionions take a complete one-eighty.
Same with E. E. Cummings’ “l(a.” When I post that poem on the board in classrooms, students are quick to dismiss it – except that I employ an abundant use of wait-time until someone (or some ones) begin to decipher the lines – “A leaf falls; loneliness” – and we discuss why Cummings split the words up like that. Suddenly, their opionions take a complete one-eighty.
| Another Cummings’ work I love is “old age sticks,” a poem about generational conflict – and I LOVE the fact that the final two words, “growing old,” is split so that the actual final words are “owing old” – as one generation owes the previous one for how they pushed the boundaries. Okay, so that brings me back to those artworks from the Guggenheim Museum I posted yesterday – and yesterday I posted them without any information. This morning, I’ll post the statements that were included on the museum’s walls – and see if (like Creech’s book for WCW’s poem) the inside dope does anything to change your initial reactions to the pieces. They may or may not – but at least one can begin to appreciate how the artists in these examples ventured to push boundaries – and, of course, we can then consider whether or not they pushed the boundaries forward – or sideways? Did they push them thoughtfully? Haphazardly? |  |
CLICK THE IMAGES BELOW TO ENLARGE.
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| You know, Dickinson was quite a boundary-pusher herself with her errant punctuation, discommodious syntax, and deviant capitalization and rhyme – so much so that early publishers tried to revise and repair her works to make them more palatable for the public. BTW: I found a little more info on those jeans -- see the info pictured at the right. Also, I found info on the artist -- quite a "boundary pusher" himself; click HERE. AND -- a few years ago, one pair of those jeans sold for $25,000.00. Click HERE. |  |
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