I've been thinking a bit about art and poems recently, as you do!
So this is my take on the whole poetry deal. I think words have a beauty and power all their own, quite separate from their literal meaning: They have sound, tone, colour. They are made up of layers of images, often unique to the reader or writer.
When you read and, perhaps, write a poem, I think the idea is to try and switch off the left side of your brain. Rather than listening to the concrete, the grammatical, the analytical, I think the idea is to use your right brain and hear only the abstract, the intonation, the perception: Not so much what the poem means, but what you think it's trying to say.
I imagine this is true for all art.
One of my favourite artists is the Japanese-American sculptor and designer, Isamu Noguchi. I've put a picture of his onyx 'Mother and Child' at the top of this entry. In my opinion, it's his best work.
I went to see an exhibition of his here in Tokyo a couple of years ago. On entering the first room, you were met by a two-metre bamboo and Japanese paper lantern hanging from the ceiling. It was massive and filled the small entry hall. It was almost claustrophobic.
At first I was like, 'So what. It's just a big lantern. I have a smaller version hanging in my very own flat. You'd probably see almost the same in 1 out of every 3 Japanese living rooms.'
This was my left brain doing all the talking.
I stood there a while longer and gave the work a chance. I tried to silence all the over-analyzing.
In a Japanese home you eat from a low table while sitting on the floor. The paper lantern hangs low above. As a young child looking up from the floor, such a lamp must appear huge and close. This warm, glowing orb suddenly represented idyllic family dinners crouched around a table sharing food and laughter. My right brain had really kicked in and suddenly I was thinking of ideas like nostalgia, the rosiness of past memories, the purity and perversity of childhood perception. I had the strange feeling that I suddenly just got it.
Now of course, I may have gotten it completely wrong. Perhaps the artist wasn't trying to say anything like that at all. But does it really matter? Whatever the result, Noguchi's work certainly communicated something to me that day.
In defense of my ideas about his art, I went on to find out that Noguchi lived a very troubled childhood. The illegitimate son of a Japanese father and American mother, his father was largely absent from his life and he was sent abroad to boarding school at 14. Much of his work explores ideas of parental bonds, family life, and the idea of void or something lacking.
I highly recommend you check out http://www.noguchi.org/ to find out more about Isamu and his work.
So this is my take on the whole poetry deal. I think words have a beauty and power all their own, quite separate from their literal meaning: They have sound, tone, colour. They are made up of layers of images, often unique to the reader or writer.
When you read and, perhaps, write a poem, I think the idea is to try and switch off the left side of your brain. Rather than listening to the concrete, the grammatical, the analytical, I think the idea is to use your right brain and hear only the abstract, the intonation, the perception: Not so much what the poem means, but what you think it's trying to say.
I imagine this is true for all art.
One of my favourite artists is the Japanese-American sculptor and designer, Isamu Noguchi. I've put a picture of his onyx 'Mother and Child' at the top of this entry. In my opinion, it's his best work.
I went to see an exhibition of his here in Tokyo a couple of years ago. On entering the first room, you were met by a two-metre bamboo and Japanese paper lantern hanging from the ceiling. It was massive and filled the small entry hall. It was almost claustrophobic.
At first I was like, 'So what. It's just a big lantern. I have a smaller version hanging in my very own flat. You'd probably see almost the same in 1 out of every 3 Japanese living rooms.'
This was my left brain doing all the talking.
I stood there a while longer and gave the work a chance. I tried to silence all the over-analyzing.
In a Japanese home you eat from a low table while sitting on the floor. The paper lantern hangs low above. As a young child looking up from the floor, such a lamp must appear huge and close. This warm, glowing orb suddenly represented idyllic family dinners crouched around a table sharing food and laughter. My right brain had really kicked in and suddenly I was thinking of ideas like nostalgia, the rosiness of past memories, the purity and perversity of childhood perception. I had the strange feeling that I suddenly just got it.
Now of course, I may have gotten it completely wrong. Perhaps the artist wasn't trying to say anything like that at all. But does it really matter? Whatever the result, Noguchi's work certainly communicated something to me that day.
In defense of my ideas about his art, I went on to find out that Noguchi lived a very troubled childhood. The illegitimate son of a Japanese father and American mother, his father was largely absent from his life and he was sent abroad to boarding school at 14. Much of his work explores ideas of parental bonds, family life, and the idea of void or something lacking.
I highly recommend you check out http://www.noguchi.org/ to find out more about Isamu and his work.
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