Poetry is in itself an art and has inspired artworks as well. But what most people often overlook is how art, like paintings and sketches, can inspire poetry. A painting can convey a thousand words without having to display any words at all. The beauty of it lies in the intricate details and the symbolism. Whether it be the usage of the colour blue to symbolise sadness, or the imagery of a serene flower field to induce serotonin and have a calming effect on the mind, paintings always encompass a greater meaning than what one can make out.
Poets come across and examine the details in certain artworks and later on pen down their thoughts in the form of a poem. Whilst researching I found a list of beautifully crafted poems that were influenced by paintings. Two of which were paintings by renowned artists who have a highly sophisticated brand in regards to their social acclaim. The painting “The Old Guitarist” by Picasso was the inspiration behind Wallace Stevens’s poem “The Man with the Blue Guitar”. This poem primarily focuses on creating alternate and new realities for the life of the man in Picasso's painting. Upon reading the poem we notice that it switches perspectives from the third person’s perspective to the first person’s perspective, which suggests that the poem is a dialogue between the guitarist and his audience.
The second poem that I found was inspired by Van Gogh’s infamous painting “The Starry Night”, written by Anne Sexton with the same name. Her poem perfectly captures the essence of the painting and she begins by describing the contrast between the turbulent sky and the serenity of the town below which seems calm. She mentions a longing for the void of death, for the act of not only dying but also disappearing. The dark tree at the edge of the painting is described as “black-haired” and it “slips up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.” It appeared as though it was her desire to die in the same way. Her poem conveys the same feelings of alienation, insecurities and loneliness as the painting by Van Gogh. All these ideas reinforce my initial statement and lead us to believe that there's much more to paintings than simple visuals that meet the eye.
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