Rockwell/Woods Poetic America Experiment...or not

[scottwoods]

I love Norman Rockwell. There is probably little more I can tell you about how important his paintings are in American culture - and not just on the level of art, mind you - that isn't me just saying "I love Norman Rockwell" over and over. I have always been enamored of his paintings, the whole of my life. When a Rockwell exhibit blew through the

Comments

[wonderdave]

Sounds interesting to say the least. Norman Rockwell's "the Winner" is the inspiration for a verse in my piece "the Wrong heaven" despite me not being a huge Rockwell fan. That's beside the point I initially wanted to comment upon. If you're trying to create/pay homage to the same emotional tone that Rockwell had start by writing a couple of poems about the paintings where you feel like you are synched up with his view of the scene. I certainly couldn't/ am not interested in writing a bunch of Rockwell inspired stuff but that one piece gave me a verse (actually two lines in a verse) that I love. Out of 322 you must be able to find something that you can match up with start there and if you only write one poem then hey you got one poem you like out of it.

[wonderdave]

http://www.abbeville.com/interiors.asp?ISBN=0896600661&CaptionNumber=01 Here's the painting I was talking about which was a post cover apparently.

[scottwoods]

I'd be curious to hear how you came to incorporate this piece into your process.

[wonderdave]

Well the poem it's in a is essentially a series of images a lot of which are about American culture. I'd seen the painting and loved it and the girl in the painting just was the right character to have a snapshot of. Rockwell's American love affair fit tonally (at least in this instance) with what I wanted to create an image of: a very banged up sort of glee or a glee that you had to get banged up to achieve. The image was perfect; youthful, scrappy, feminine, it was exactly what I wanted. It was just natural fit for the poem. Is that the insight you're looking for?