Painting Poetic Lines:
A Muse in Composition
Let’s Talk About Art…

“In the category of literacy, writing poetry helps students in
all genres of writing. Writing poetry aids students in
understanding the importance of careful word choice,
especially active, vivid verbs and nouns. (Lynn Marsico)

“Perceptiveness is an awareness of things and people, of their
qualities. (Ben Shahn)”
Possibilities with Picasso…
What I See…
What I feel…
Possibilities with Picasso
Continue…
1.
Let’s think-pair-share in groups
2.
The group speaker is…
3.
All listeners will record whole group
discussion comments
Ekphrastic Poetry, eh?
Ekphrasis (also spelled "ecphrasis") is a direct
transcription from the Greek ek, "out of," and phrasis,
"speech" or "expression.“ More narrowly, it could
designate a passage providing a short speech
attributed to a mute work of visual art. In recent
decades, the use of the term has been limited, first, to
visual description and then even more specifically to
the description of a real or imagined work of visual
art. (Alfred Corn)
Dare to Write Your Own Poetic
Line
Now,
create a poem from your
list of what you see and feel.
Spend
Let’s
10-15 minutes writing…
share
Prelude to a Poetic Introduction
Allusion Alliteration Antithesis
Personification
Repetition
Imagery
Simile
Metaphor
A PRISM is the acronym!
My Many Colored Days
By Dr. Seuss
Scaffolding Poetry? Use a R.A.F.T.!
Role= Choose the old man or the guitar
Audience= A bystander
Format= A poem
Topic= While using your notes, create a poem
using vivid images from the point of view of
the old man or the guitar in Picasso’s
painting.
Ekphrastic Examples:
THE MAN WITH THE BLUE GUITAR
by Wallace Stevens
I
The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.
They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."
The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."
And they said then, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,
A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are."
II
I cannot bring a world quite round,
Although I patch it as I can.
I sing a hero'd head, large eye
And bearded bronze, but not a man,
Although I patch him as I can
And reach through him almost to man.
If to serenade almost to man
Is to miss, by that, things as they are,
Say that it is the serenade
Of a man that plays a blue guitar.
Another Ekphrastic Example:
The Guitar by Federico García Lorca
Translated by Cola Franzen
The weeping of the guitar
begins.
The goblets of dawn
are smashed.
The weeping of the guitar begins.
Useless to silence it.
Impossible to silence it.
It weeps monotonously
as water weeps
as the wind weeps
over snowfields.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps for distant
things.
Hot southern sands
yearning for white camellias.
Weeps arrow without target
evening without morning
and the first dead bird
on the branch.
Oh, guitar!
Heart mortally wounded
by five swords.
Muse Can be Musically Inspired
Let’s dance, move our
bodies and our
pens!
1.
2.
3.
What do you hear?
How does it make
you feel?
What memories
are evoked?
Visual Artistic Influences

“A visual artist expresses voice
through conscious choice of lines,
colors, shading,
foreground/background and
detail.(Nancy Dean)”

“Poetry and painting alike create
through composition. (Wallace
Stevens)
Painters to Consider:
 Degas
 Monet
 Cassat
 Edward Hoper
Photographer to
Consider:
 Gordon Parks
“Penning
poetry stretches the mind
and awakens the imagination. And
isn’t that what teaching is all about?”
~ Nikki Grimes
Supporting Sources:
Ekphrastic Poetry website:
http://tinyurl.com/nakpd7
Ben Shahn,The Shape of Content
McClatchy, J.D. ed,Poets on Painters