Words that Inspire
By John W. Healy

Which comes first, the poem or the image? For the artist or poet it may be either, since words can generate images and images can generate words. Closing one's eyes and listening to a descriptive poem helps us to understand the power of well-chosen words. Like the paints of an artist, it's the way the words are mixed and applied that is valuable. On the other hand, looking at a subject or experiencing an event may crystallize the words of a poet or motivate an artist to capture a moment in paint.

Unfolding Bud

One is amazed
By a water-lily bud
Unfolding
With each passing day,
Taking on a richer color
And new dimensions.

One is not amazed,
At a first glance,
By a poem,
Which is as tight-closed
As a tiny bud.

Yet one is surprised
To see the poem
Gradually unfolding,
Revealing its rich inner self,
As one reads it
Again
And over again.

Naoshi Koriyama
©1957 The Christian Science Monitor.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced with permission

Unfolding meaning
In an effort to explore and comprehend the connections between poetry and art, I talked with my colleague, English teacher Stacy Moisa, and learned that she introduces her class to poetry with the poem "Unfolding Bud," by Naoshi Koriyama. The poem, which originally appeared in The Christian Science Monitor in 1957, can serve as a wonderful model to help students begin to enjoy and understand a poem as well as a work of art.

A great poem, like a great painting, is not a "fast read." It's an accomplishment of creative human endeavor that engages our interest over and over again. Because of our universal human needs and feelings – love, hate, triumph, failure – we're part of a shared experience.

Like the meaning of a poem or a painting, or the petals of a water-lily bud, the children in our classrooms also unfold with each day that goes by. Each child is a composite of his or her life experiences, and each child brings those experiences to his or her interpretation of a poem or a piece of artwork.

Freedom to create
On January 6, 1941, beloved American illustrator Norman Rockwell listened to the radio and heard President Franklin D. Roosevelt's State of the Union address, in which Roosevelt named the four fundamental freedoms of all Americans. Norman Rockwell was so moved that he created four oil paintings based on the Four Freedoms: "Freedom to Worship," "Freedom from Fear," "Freedom from Want" and "Freedom of Speech."

Exhibit posters of Norman Rockwell's "The Four Freedoms." Posters of these paintings are easily found online or at art stores. Next to the paintings, post the closing remarks of Franklin D. Roosevelt's January 6, 1941 State of the Union address, in which he named the Four Freedoms. The entire speech can be found at www.libertynet.org/edcivic/fdr.html Ask the students which came first – the words or the images.

Give copies of "Unfolding Bud" to the class. Ask a student to read it aloud, then ask the children to read it silently to themselves. Invite each student to create a small drawing based on what they read and heard. Each drawing will be different as the children bring their own experiences and artistic style to their interpretations of the images the poem evokes.

Illustrated wordplay
The natural continuum of this lesson is for the students, in the days ahead, to write a short poem and accompany it with a related illustration. The groundwork for this lesson, using Rockwell's paintings and Koriyama's poem, is essential in demonstrating that images can create expressive dialogue and poems can inspire rich images. As a result of this lesson, one of Stacy Moisa's students, Jason, wrote a poem about lacrosse that reads as follows:

Lacrosse
Lacrosse is a sport I like to play
I can cradle the ball all day.
I have a stick that's shiny and new
The bottom of the bar is bright blue.
I can do lots of tricks
Sometimes I even get new sticks.
I score a lot of goals in the net
One time I even won a bet.
Lacrosse is my favorite sport to do
Come and try and it can be
your favorite too.

Jason's accompanying illustration (right) for the poem depicted that bright blue bar just as he described it, along with the ball cradled at the end of the stick and the net in which he scores his goals.

I hope you'll try pairing art and poetry in your classroom. The combination of these two art forms opens up endless possibilities. The works your students produce will amaze you – and they'll probably amaze themselves as well.

Dr. John W. Healy teaches art at Woodland Middle School, East Meadow, NY.

April, 2004, Vol.34, No.7