12.1: Expressions in Art and Poetry

“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen,”-Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519)

– “Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.”-Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

– “It took me four years to paint like Raphael but a lifetime to paint like a child.”-Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

-“Poetry is the best words in the best order.” –Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

– “A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape and significance of the universe, helps to extend everyone’s knowledge and the world around…”-Dylan Thomas (1914-1953).

“Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one’s sensations.” -Paul Cezanne.

(To explore more artists’ quotations, please refer to Caroline Schram, The Joy of art, Alworth Press, 2021, pp. 69-70).

Chapter Overview

As the above quotations suggest, poetry and art, combined, can be a catalyst to experiencing varied emotions: joy, surprise, shock, and delight. Poets and artists convey the complexity of human emotion in ways that can evoke contemplation and critical reflection.   Art can be a visual diary that record the artist’s feelings, thoughts, and ideals. Poetry and art can invite critical conversations that inspire empathy, awareness, and an revisioning of spaces and places of possibility.

The poems and pictures in this section highlight themes of the relationships, love, loneliness, despair, dreams, fears, journeys, wonders of nature, and the majesty of animals. The examples provide educators with ideas for connecting visual art with thematically linked  poems and related texts.

Poetry can be described as the language of sensory experiences (Perrine, 1992). Ekphrasis is Greek word (“description”) that denotes a descriptive poem that includes imagery and detail that reflect specific scenes which are often found in works of art and sculpture. Students can explore their own favourite art images, discover relevant poems that could be connected to them, and then write their own poems. Teachers can help students become more familiar with poetry throughout the ages and from different cultures. Individual learners can compile a constellation of favourite poems and create their own art images and collages. An art picture and poetry project can be a catalyst for creative writing and further critical analysis of artists’ lives and contributions.

Laurence Perrine (1992) writes that poetry takes all life as its province, and that its primary concern is not with beauty, not with philosophical truth, not with persuasion, but with experience—beautiful or ugly, strange or common, noble or ignoble, actual or imaginary” (p.8). He notes that:

“Poetry is a kind of multidimensional language. Ordinary language—the kind that we use to communicate information—is one-dimensional. It is directed only at the part of the listener, the understanding. Its one dimension is intellectual. Poetry, which is language used to communicate experience, has at least four dimensions. If it is to communicate experience, it must be directed at the whole person, not just at your understanding. It must involve not only your intelligence but also your senses, emotions, and imagination” (p. 10).

Poets use devices such as connotation, imagery, symbol, paradox, irony, allusion, sound repetition, rhythm, and pattern.  If educators wish to encourage poetic understanding, poems can be paired with art images in unique ways. Foundational knowledge of poetic devices and genres is vital; so too is foundational knowledge in understanding art images. Like visual artists, writers and particularly poets, must be keen observers of life. Susan Holbrook (2022) writes that “in addition to offering aesthetic delight and windows on culture, history, and philosophy, poetry can be a catalyst to transformative thought and action. She refers to Alexander Pope’s insight into poetic language: “What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed” (p.5). The great 17th century metaphysical poets like John Donne and Robert Herrick invented new words and the metaphysical conceit which paired incongruous or unconventional objects for an intellectual metaphoric comparison. In “Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” John Donne describes two lovers who must be separated for a time. While geographically they are far away, their spiritual love will keep them together like a fine gold chain being hammered but not broken .  The lover tells his soul mate “though I must go, endure not yet a break/but an expansion/like gold to air thinness beat.” Robert Herrick invented new words like “liquefaction” to describe the elegant flow of his lover’s dress. The metaphysical poetry of the 17th century signified a transformative shift in the way poetry was written. Artistic movements also reflect transformative shifts in society, culture, and philosophy (Rundell, 2022).  While poets use vivid words to convey visual images, artists use colour to project thoughts, emotions, and experiences.

In Art Synectics, Nicholas Roukes (1982/84) describes a mental image as an experience that reproduces “with some degree of sensory realism, a previous perceptual experience in the absence of original stimulation” (p.24). Images can be activated through sight, hearing, touch, taste, or olfactory processes. Some of these images include:

1) Memory Images- Memory images are recollections or retrievals of past input. They are not products of fancy, but rather, they are direct metal reconstructions of past experiences. Without memory as a touchstone to reality and as a day-to-day survival tool, human beings lack a map of previous knowledge to guide them in appraising new sensations and experiences.

2) Imaginary Images-These imaginary images may be rearranged or transformed by the subconscious. Within this real of visualization, images are transformed by the artist’s imagination and fantasy into new mental inventions. Any mental process demanding abstraction or creative thinking relies heavily on the mind’s capacity to produce imaginary images.

3) Hypnagogic Images- are imaginary experiences usually perceived in the twilight state of consciousness between sleep and waking. These mages may be accompanied by forms of light: flashes, sparks, geometric forms, and so on.

4) Dreams– Dreaming is associated with REM (Rapid Eye Movement) cycle and each person has about three to five dreams a night…Here the laws of space-time continuum are interrupted: the dreamer may at one moment see himself as an adult, then abruptly as a child, or suddenly as a bird in flight. While in the altered dream state, the dreamer actually believes that what is happening is real.  (Roukes, 1984, p. 27).

Roukes (1982) further explains that art, poetry, and other texts can strengthen an individual’s ability to be more perceptive and think more creatively.  In Art synectics, Roukes (1982) provides many excellent learning strategies to build creative thinking skills.

Activating Imagination through Art, Poetry, and Related Texts

“Imagination outstrips all the world’s magicians; it not only places the real before our eyes in a vivid image and makes distant things present, but also, with a power more potent than that of magic, it draws that which does not exist out of a state of potentiality, gives  it a semblance of reality, and makes us see, feel, and hear these new creations” -Bodner in E. Lucie-(1972).  Symbolist Art. London: Thames and Hudson (p.23).

Art and poetry can take us on a journey that can lead to new ways of envisioning ourselves and the world. The following art, poetry, and related texts can be viewed through the rich learning lenses: personal and philosophical; social, cultural, and historical; artistic and imaginary; and, environmental and technical. You can create questions for each poem (Manitoba English Language Arts Curriculum, 2020). Exploring the theme of a poem is a helpful way to start. There is also not one fixed meaning to understanding and interpreting above. Exploring and “visiting” or “re-visiting” a poem the perspective of culture, race, ethnicity, and gender can open new meanings. What do you think that the poem is saying about life? How does this experience and impression compare to your own? How is your interpretation of the poem shaped by symbolism and imagery and other poetic language used?  Writers and artists also continue to evolve and grow; in this respect, a work of art or poetry can be viewed as dynamic and evolving as well.  Poems can be grouped by themes accordingly (e.g. landscapes and nature, the sea, impressions, individual, identity, love, death, peace, etc.). Susan Holbrook (2022) provides many examples of ways to discuss poetry and art. She writes that “the best analytical discussions are creative, surprising, and intrepid but they are also grounded in evidence from the text” (p.8). She explains that poetic language can also be a catalyst to new thought and original ideas. The romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley referred to poetry as “the root or blossom of all other systems of thought” (Holbrook, 2022, p. 6). Holbrook further posits:

“If language contours the way we think then all the languages coming at you every day—advertising, news broadcasts, articles, books, social media feeds—is shaping who you are and how you see the world. If poetry can ignite in you an awareness of letters and words, a more active relationship with this powerful stuff that is language, perhaps you can be more conscious about that shaping, become a more critical thinker about your world as you participate in it as a citizen.”(Holbrook, 2022, p. 6),

Along similar lines, Phillips (2003) explains that artists “create bridges” that helps connect individuals and break silos of loneliness and alienation. She emphasizes that the creative journey is more important than the end product. Artists like Pablo Picasso viewed art as a “form of magic” that could be a mediator between a hostile and often incomprehensible world and individuals’ lives. Activating imagination through art and  poetry can lead to new understandings about oneself and the world. Empathy, Phillips notes, involves perception, identification, and imagination. Through role modeling and dialogue, teachers can create a climate where imagination can flourish. “Through imagination, our perception of the other becomes our reality. Our imagination creates a conscious choice to act with care or without.”  Phillips write that “art is that break through” by which new insights can be learned.  She refers to Maxine Green’s passage from Joseph Conrad:

“[The artist) appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition….(the artist] speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation-to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts.”(Phillips 2003, p. 58).