1. Writing Poetry
In Response to Art

2. Directions Select one of the following images.
Try and focus on the things in the painting as if they were words in a foreign language you have to make sense of.

3. OR You can choose to write in the first person
Write in the third person, standing back, telling the story.

4. Be as fresh and original as you can and be alert for any cliched or too easy interpretations.

5. Observe the images closely.
Select the image you want to focus on.
Answer the questions found after the paintings. You can use these to help you write your poem.

6. Painter: Rosseau

7. Painter: Caspar David Friedrich

8. Painter: Turner

9. Indian minature

10. Painter: El Greco

11. Painter: Millais

12. Adriaen van de Venne Dutch, 1615 Oil on panel

13. Painter: Picasso

14. Painter: Caspar David Friedrich

15. Painter: Homer
Painting: Homer

16. Painter: Salvador Dali

17. Painter: Renoir
Painter: Renoir

18. Japanese Wood block from 1903

19. Water Lilies
Monet

20. Painter: Virginia Olson

21. John Singer Sargent

22. Statements to help you create lines while observing the painting
Describe the scene using at least three of your five senses. (Develop a word bank on a separate piece of paper and use it as you write.)
Use a simile to describe something in the painting.
Select something in the painting. Use personification to describe it or what it is doing.

23. 4. What other things do you associate with this image/scene-- things, experiences or places, etc., it reminds you of?
Finish this sentence: This isn’t......
Create a line of dialogue that someone in the painting is thinking or might say or that an object in the painting might be saying if it could speak.

24. The most important thing about this image is…(finish the statement
The most important thing about this image is…(finish the statement.) If this were a sound, what would it be? Name it.
8. What is the focus of the painting, the heart of what it is showing you about its subject? Use a metaphor to describe it.

25. Making the Poem.
Focus on one idea or feeling. Take the lines you made and rearrange them in a way that makes sense. Add any necessary connecting words or ideas.
Structure Possibilities:
Start with I/She/He
Start with an action or a verb...
Begin or end with a line of dialogue
Use sections/stanzas
Use two voices or use contrasts
Optional:
Share your lines with a partner, rearrange your lines or combine them and make a poem together.

26. Other 0ptions for Writing a Poem About Art
Observe the following sculptures.
Select one.
Choose one of the poetry form options to make a poem in response to the sculpture piece.
Create your own poetry form in response to the art piece using poetry elements we learned about in class.

27. a train that pushes every half second
Example:
In my heart there is a
a train that pushes every half second
and it pushes because it wants to carry
away all evil and bring in the new
from where there is lost love.
It is red in color.
That which is evil in me
I don't look at.
My heart will not stop
until the love is finished living
and because of that I'm not going to fear.
And I ask myself,
what does the evil want from me.
Elizabeth Rosales
Watsonville, California, USA