Transcript Poetry and Photography - Hunterdon Central Regional High

Poetry and
Photography
Project
• Find a poem online that uses lots of rich
imagery
• Think of images that you can shoot that will
accompany the poem well
• Shoot multiple images, using various angles,
experiment with composition
• Black and white or color – your choice
• You will present the poem (printed) and
images together at the end of the project
Poem selection
• Here are two good resources to search for
poetry – use these unless you already
have a poem in mind:
– http://www.poemhunter.com/ (this site lets
you search by poem TOPIC)
– http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/ (a poem a
day from the Library of Congress)
Artists have been illustrating based on
poetry for decades…and the other
way around too – writers compose
based on artists.
Song of the Builders
Jessie Wilmore Murton
O beams of steel are slim and black,
And danger lurks on the skyward track,
But men are many, men are bold,
And what is risk when the stake is gold?
So riveters ring,
And hot bolts fly,
And strong men toil,
And sweat …and die…
But the city’s towers grow straight and high!
O beams of steel are black and slim,
But the will of men are stubborn and grim,
They reach forever to clutch the sun,
And what is like if the goal be won?
So riveters ring,
And hot bolts fly,
And strong men toil,
And sweat…and die…
But the city’s towers grow straight and high!
Midwest Town
Shellsburg
Arnold Pyle
Ruth DeLong Peterson
Farther east it wouldn’t be on the map –
Too small – but here it rates a dot and a
name
In Europe it would wear a castle cap
Or have a cathedral rising like a flame
But here it stands where the section
roadways meet.
Its houses dignified with trees and lawn;
The stores hold tete-a-tete across Main
Street;
The red brick school, a church – the town
is gone.
America is not all traffic lights,
And beehive homes and shops and
factories;
No, there are wide green days and starry
nights,
And a great pulse beating strong in towns
like these.
I Ask My Mother to Sing
Li-Young Lee
She begins, and my grandmother joins her.
Mother and daughter sing like young girls.
If my father were alive, he would play
Water Lily (detail)
John La Farge
his accordion and sway like a boat.
I’ve never been in Peking, or the Summer
Palace,
nor stood on the great Stone Boat to watch
the rain begin on Kuen Ming Lake, the
picnickers
running away on the grass.
But I love to hear it sung;
how the water lilies fill with rain until
they overturn, spilling water into water,
then rock back, and fill with more.
Both women have begin to cry.
But neither stops her song.
From a Dakota Wheat Field
Hamlin Garland
Like liquid gold the wheat field lies,
A marvel of yellow and russet and green
That ripples and runs, that floats and flies,
With the subtle shadows, the change,
The sheen.
That play in the golden hair of a girl, A ripple of amber a flare
Of light sweeping after – a curl
In the hollows like swirling feet
Of fairy waltzers, the colors run
To the western sun
Through the deeps of
The ripening wheat.
Fairy Ring #2, Fent’s Prairie
Terry Evans
To Make a Prairie
Emily Dickenson
To make a prairie it takes a clover,
And one bee,
One clover and a bee.
And reverie.
The reverie alone will do,
If bees are few.
Wheat
Thomas Hart Benton
Sources for images
• Take a drive or walk around town
• Set up a still life (watch the lighting!)
• Ask friends to pose
• Re-create images you have seen before
• Detach yourself from your surroundings and
look at them through someone else’s eyes…