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The ARTS. Thinking Feeling Creating. What Are “The Arts”?. MUSIC PAINTING DANCE SCULPTURE THEATRE (DRAMA/ACTING) HORTICULTURE QUILTING SYNCHRONIZED SWIMMING HOCKEY (WHEN PLAYED WELL—LIKE BY THE SABRES) and POETRY. Why Do People Make Art?.
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The ARTS Thinking Feeling Creating
What Are “The Arts”? • MUSIC • PAINTING • DANCE • SCULPTURE • THEATRE (DRAMA/ACTING) • HORTICULTURE • QUILTING • SYNCHRONIZED SWIMMING • HOCKEY (WHEN PLAYED WELL—LIKE BY THE SABRES) and • POETRY
Why Do People Make Art? • Because the Things Which Matter Most to Us are Invisible! Example: An emotion like Love. (Art makes them visible/hearable/touchable.) • Because there are invisible things inside of each of us which need to get OUT! • Because we need to SHARE with each other. • Because we have THOUGHTS and FEELINGS which we need to EXPRESS so we can look at ourselves and our lives! • Because we have QUESTIONS we need to ASK and try to ANSWER.
The Art of POETRY • Making LANGUAGE into ART
Where do the poet’s THOUGHTS, FEELINGS and IMAGES come from? EXPERIENCE! the experiences we have living our ordinary lives. . . . . . watching, tasting, talking, playing, working, creating, thinking, pouting, celebrating. . .
THOUGHTS (IDEAS) • Observation: That stone building is crumbling and falling down. It looks very old. • Meditation: Things do not last. Not even stone buildings. • Generalization: Nothing lasts. (universal) • Personal reflection: Including me. • Personal involvement: I won’t live forever.
FEELINGS • That crumbling building makes me sad. • I’m sad when I think of all the people who built it. (They must all be dead.) • Sad. Sad. Scary and sad.
THOUGHTS and FEELINGS combined in a “complex”. • That crumbling old building reminds me that time passes by— • And that reminds me that all things are transient • And that all living things are mortal— • And that I am mortal. • Which makes me very sad and a little afraid. • And that complex thought-feeling (# 1 — # 5) happens to me in one quick second without my even being able to explain how or why!—and without even having it at the forefront of my mind as something I could articulate immediately
The poet concentrates on the IMAGE of the crumbling building. • The real “poet” is the one who notices things and images like the crumbling building, and has thoughts and feelings in response to the crumbling old building which is stored as a memory-complex and later can be given verbal expression in a disciplined creative act called a poem. • The image of the crumbling building can then be used as an emblem or symbol of the poet’s coming to terms with his own death some day, or failing to come to terms. • ORDINARY EXPERIENCE becomes EXTRAORDINARY when the images from our world are examined, analyzed, touched, studied, contemplated, etc.!
“Common Sense” • Most people will have the same basic response to an image of a crumbling old building . . . • Or at least we can say that most people will have some negative feeling over it. • So a poem constructed around the image of a crumbling old building will feel negative to almost anyone who reads it.
Poetry is Like MUSIC When people are in an audience together listening to music, almost everyone will agree that one piece of music is happy and that the next one is sad. I don’t mean that they will all like it or dislike it . . . But they will agree on the basic mood, emotion or atmosphere which the music makes.
An EXPERIMENT • Let’s try it out with several recordings: Please listen to each of the following brief excerpts from different CD’s, and after about ten seconds, write down 1 to 3 words which name the emotion or the feeling or the atmosphere which the music creates for you.
An Experiment with IMAGE-WORDS • Now, as words or phrases appear on the following slides, write down the name of the emotion or feeling or atmosphere which each word or phrase creates for you.
fluid (ambiguous) (needs context to discern meaning)
bat (ambiguous) (needs context to discern meaning)
ALL OF THOSE WORDS are IMAGE-WORDS, • And poets use image-words to get basic emotional responses out of people to help their listeners and readers to feel a feeling which they want to share, or to “feel” the personal importance of an idea or observation which they want to communicate.
What is an IMAGE? • An IMAGE is anything which can be IMAGINED in the IMAGINATION. • An IMAGE can be expressed through CONCRETE LANGUAGE which appeals to any or all of the FIVE SENSES. • An IMAGE in a poem is signaled by any word or phrase which causes the reader or listener to hear, see, taste, touch, smell something in the IMAGINATION.
Why write in “figure” (image) language instead of literal language? Which note would you rather receive? Which would be more memorable? “I love you.” or “When you hold my hand, I feel like a young lion being energized by the sun.”
Begin with the ORDINARY and connect it to the VIVID IMAGE. • Example: Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” • Pound was at a train station in Paris, France on a gray, rainy day. He was watching passengers getting off a train, feeling low down, when a beautiful woman and her beautiful children stepped off the train and walked passed him.
Pound was so impressed by their beauty—especially against the background of ugly people and a gray day– that he went home and wrote a poem about them. He wrote 36 lines of poetry, trying to make a poem which would make his reader experience the sense of surprise, awe and beauty which he had experienced upon seeing this sight.
His poem became too abstract. • It had too many words. • It was too philosophical. • It did not capture the essence of his experience. • So he cut the poem down to 2 lines!
“In a Station of the Metro” The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.
Ezra Pound’s poem grew out of his own EXPERIENCE. • Once he got his experience down on paper, then he shaped it and rewrote it and chopped it and polished it until it was a two-line work of art in words.
But of course, Ezra Pound was a very intense man who lived life with all his antennae out. • What might have been a very ordinary and dull experience for many of us was often an extraordinary experience for him because he was almost always paying attention and caring while he was awake.
The SOUND a POEM MAKES • Aside from the “image” which a word calls to mind, the sounds of the words a poet uses can also add to the atmosphere and mood of a poem. • For example, if you were to write a poem about an animal, and that animal made a particular letter noise, such as ‘sss,’ you might want to choose more words with the ‘s’ sound than you would normally choose.
EMILY DICKINSON was especially good at using the sounds of words to convey the mood and emotion of her poems.
Consider this riddle poem by Emily Dickinson. She doesn’t name the animal she is describing, but it should be easy to figure it out. • Can you name the animal?
