Like most people, before I learned to read and write, I taught myself to draw. How easy to pick up a crayon, a magic marker, or a pencil, and make something—anything—on the page (or on the living room wall). As children, we confidently draw what we want to see and what we see, as we see it. Our drawings are not wrong, misspelled or illegible—and if they are illegible, it’s often the kind of illegibility that one reads as poetic, abstract, mysterious, and open to interpretation. Thankfully, we don’t need to speak an artist’s national tongue to read his visual work. Everyone is capable of reading a painting by Rothko or a sculpture by Brancusi, sans translation.

It’s no surprise then that visual images—particularly abstract ones—can lead students to written poetry. When what stands before us is not easily described or defined, we must engage our imaginations and search for our own words to make meaning. In the presence of non-narrative, non-graphic visual images, we are forced to let go of our reliance upon narrative and focus instead on sensitizing ourselves to tone, color, mark, mood, and feeling. Perhaps most importantly, we are left to trust our own readings.

Here is a playful lesson that brings together written and visual poetries:

Genre: Poetry, Art
Grades: 6 – 12
Student needs: general ed, especial ed, visual learners
Common Core Learning Standard: E2: Response to literature
Interpret, analyze, and evaluate narrative, poetry, and drama, aesthetically and philosophically by making connections to: other texts, ideas, cultural perspectives, eras, personal events, and situations.

Workshop Objective: To explore mood and develop connections between visual and written languages.

Do Now: What’s your favorite song? How would you describe its mood?

• Students share. List words on board.
• Distribute three poems: “I’m Nobody—Who Are You?” by Emily Dickinson, “Winter Moon” by Langston Hughes, and “miss rosie” by Lucille Clifton.
• After each reading, ask: “What is the mood of this poem?” “What feeling/s does it bring up?” Add to the list on the board.
• Distribute visual images on a color printout, or display using a projector.
• Activity #1: Pick a visual image that you feel goes with each poem. In your journal write down the name of the poem and the # of the visual image that you picked. Let us know why you paired the poem with that particular image.
• Activity #2: Pick a visual image, but don’t tell anyone which image you picked. Write a poem or a story that evokes the mood of that image. Remember, you’re not trying to EXPLAIN the image—you’re just writing something that relates to the image in terms of mood or tone. Repaint the picture using words.
• Students read their poems out loud and the class tries to guess which image they chose.

Student poems:

The Sunlight

I see the clouds
are the shape of the moon. The clouds are the shape
of Mexico. They fill the air with gases that spread
far and near. They feel
like wind blowing,
and the clouds are shaped like
blue waves.

The moon is around like the sun.

–Anonymous

Except For You

A love cast away
Endless memories of home passing by
The heart beats slow and soft
Fruitless trees and flowerless fields
The blood pumps through the veins
Cast away, alone, except for you

–Anonymous

–Maya Pindyck

Maya Pindyck is a poet and T&W teaching artist. You can read more about Maya here.

Find me one person in the world who has nothing to say about her name. (Then find me a writer who doesn’t wish, longingly, to write like Sandra Cisneros.) Whether adored or despised, our names live with us. We cherish them, announce them proudly, turn away from them shamefully, shrug them away, change them, and twist them into nicknames. They are our identifiers and our travel companions. Points of mockery and praise, they make us cringe, stand tall, and perk our ears at their sound. 

The chapter “Names” in Sandra Cisneros’ House on Mango Street introduces us to Esperanza:

In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting. It is like the number nine. A muddy color. It is the Mexican records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he is shaving, songs like sobbing.

The lesson is simple. Students read this short chapter and then explore their own names in a free-write. The narrator’s own playful and personal associations make it easy for students to dive into the deep waters of their own names. Without knowing Esperanza, we feel like we know her as we might an old friend, simply based on these vivid descriptions. And so we can get to know any young writer who takes the same plunge. Each voice, inevitably, sparkles.

-Maya Pindyck

Maya Pindyck is a poet and T&W teaching artist.  You can read more about Maya here.

Different
By Magda Chinea

My name is different and easy. It represents a shade of dark. Some people say it like it’s a long name. A lot of times, people say it wrong. Only Spanish people say it right. My name represents everything about me—from my head to my toes—from my outside to my insides. My name comes from a beautiful place that I wish to visit. My name is also a sort of mistake, but as much as people make fun of my name and mess it up, the more I like it. I love my name: Magda Luz Chinea, and I will never change it. It is the reflection in my mirror.

My Name
By Ashanti Garner

My name. It’s like a windy day or a huge black cloud. My name is like a question with no answer. I feel it’s pointless. I don’t know what it means, or hardly where it comes from, and I don’t really care. My mother named me. I don’t know what she was thinking. I wish I were Tiana or Emmanuella… 

when I watch you
wrapped up like garbage
sitting, surrounded by the smell
of too old potato peels
or
when I watch you
in your old man’s shoes
with the little toe cut out
sitting, waiting for your mind
like next week’s grocery
I say
when I watch you
you wet brown bag of a woman
who used to be the best looking gal inGeorgia
used to be called the Georgia Rose
I stand up
through your destruction
I stand up

It’s hard to escape “miss rosie.” She is everywhere just as the speaker is everywhere. We might recognize our own gaze in the watchful, judgmental, and direct gaze of the speaker who notices how this poor woman wears “old man’s shoes/with the little toe cut out.” In the character of miss rosie, as she is brought to life through startling and precise images, similes and metaphors, we might see the homeless woman on the street corner—perhaps even our mothers, aunts, and grandmothers. Who is the woman being watched? What might it mean to watch a person you once knew as beautiful and loved become a “wet brown bag of a woman”? How common, insulting, and necessary is this urge to stand up through someone else’s destruction? Does responsibility play a role in this poem?

I have heard students call this poem sad, disrespectful, angering, powerful, true, and false. After discussing our personal responses to “miss rosie,” I often ask my students to consider somebody they have observed closely and to try writing their own “miss rosie” poems for or about that person. Students work to paint a picture with words of somebody they either know personally or have seen frequently. The exercise becomes an engaged character study. I ask them to use similes and metaphors while addressing that person directly. As writers, they are expected to be both observers and communicators, aware of their relationship with the person they choose to portray. How will they use the literary tools of imagery, simile and metaphor to breath life and color into their subject? What do they want to say to the person of their choice?

Clifton’s careful and short line breaks—how she moves the poem along—is a skill we discuss. Usually, students findClifton’s lack of punctuation to be freeing and empowering, as the rules of grammar clearly don’t apply to the rules, or anti-rules, of poetry. I encourage students to followClifton’s form as they explore their own images, tones, and subjects. The slow movement of this poem and the ways in which each line leads us, painfully, to the next, is something to be studied. As a result, many students begin their poems with the words “when I watch you” and stay close toClifton’s form, as they find a personal path in the luminous dark.

Student Sample:

When I Watch You
by Tina Deonarine

when I watch you
back in 1995 you were small
now you’re big as a Ferris wheel
sitting, surrounded by a fireplace
drinking hot chocolate by the smell of s’mores
or
when I watch you
near the christmas tree feeling
like spikes on a porcupine
go outside, make angels in the snow
snowman, snowball, snow globe
I say
when I watch you
sitting by the window
looking at the snow fall
I see
light reflecting on the window
making the ice melt
or
when I watch you
tucked in your bed and say
“good night”

-Maya Pindyck

Maya Pinkyck is a poet and T&W teaching artist. You can read more about Maya here.