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Sunday, April 3, 2016

ARTSPEAK! 2016: Poem #3 "Man, Reading"

Hello, and welcome to day 3 of my National Poetry Month poem-a-day-project ARTSPEAK! in which I respond to images found in the online collections at the National Gallery of Art.

Before we get to that, Now, please visit Doraine at Dori Reads to see how our Progressive Poem is progressing!

Okay, so this year's theme is "Plant. Grow Eat." It was inspired by the release of my latest book FRESH DELICIOUS: Poems from the Farmers' Market. Here are the poems I've written so far:

"Triolet for Planting Day" after The Artist's Garden at Eragny by Camille Pissarro

So, Day 3, and I'm already stretching the theme a bit. What does a piece that features a man reading in a garden have to do with Plant. Grow. Eat? Well, I think maybe a lot of things! All is metaphor with we poets, isn't it? And this guy surely has a story... and one thing I've learned from entering contests is that it helps to come at a subject from an odd angle. You want to be the poet who writes something unexpected and memorable about a subject. But mostly I selected today's piece because I love writing love poems. And it just seemed like a Sunday thing to do!  

Man, Reading
- after Denoisel Reading in the Garden by James Jacques-Joseph Tissot

And this bench
is where I shall meet
the one who'll make
a garden of my life –

I'll be reading
(in my dapper suit)
and she'll say,
you're reading that one?
Me too!

And not a blossom
in the garden
shall compare
to the bounty we find there –

the two of us,
now a pair,
sharing a bench,
talking about books.


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