Poets on Painters: One Medium Addresses Another

In our fifth session on May 23, we considered poems by Linda Pastan and James Arthur that dealt with artists and art, how one medium addresses another. In "Edward Hopper, Untitled" (a painting better known as "Solitary Figure in a Theater") we saw two stanzas describing the scene that Hopper offers us, and a third stanza with some editorial opinions ("cliche of loneliness"). Don offered an interesting suggestion, to split the last three lines off into a fourth stanza--this would break up the symmetry of the 8-line stanzas, but would underscore the interesting and controversial point made at the end. Maybe someone will go to the Whitney Museum one day and tell us if this painting is, in fact, "oil on board."

We speculated on the model James Arthur had in mind for the "Death of the Painter." Matisse had been suggested; Audubon and Gauguin were also mentioned. I sent James Arthur an e-mail on the subject, and received a prompt, gracious and very helpful reply:

"You're right; the artist in "The Death of the Painter" is based partly on Matisse. He's also based partly on Picasso -- and some details of his life are fabricated. I wrote the poem at an artist residency program in Provence when I was 30; the week before writing the poem, I'd been to see the Musee Matisse in Nice, and also the Musee Picasso in Antibes. 

But I'm glad you feel that you didn't need (additional) information to enjoy the poem. I often base my poems on my own life, and on the things around me -- but I want my poems to be accessible to be as many people as possible. I ended up feeling that mentioning Matisse or Picasso by name would restrict the poem's audience, and would give me less freedom to invent." (Italics mine)

So our conclusion that the painter was probably a composite seems to be what the poet intended. We also enjoyed Martha's "Pride of Place," which added to the ekphrastic experience of the morning.

I should have included in last week's report how much we enjoyed Dave's poem "Watch Out for Things," which won first prize in the Light Verse category of the 2013 Burlington Writers Club competition.