Monday, April 6, 2020

EKPHRASTICS-- they're poems that are elastics!!

ART + POETRY = EKPHRASTICS


"Poetry is painting with the gift of speech." --Simonides




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Ekphrastic poems - are POEMS written in response to art: dance, music-- any art, but the vast majority today are written in response to visual arts, especially painting, which we will focus on here. 

If you write a poem and would like to share it on the blog, email it to me at dianekendig (at) gmail (dot) com, using @ for at and . for dot.

Here is one painting to write about. Right click to see it large.
Artwork by Maria Blanchard, "The Ice Cream Cart"


Here are two types of supplementary materials for today's lesson in writing Ekphrasis.

*** Online art from art museums around the state of Ohio
***Online sources for reading ekphrastic poems and learning about them

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Online art from art museums in Ohio

For young children & those who love picture books


This wonderful museum at The University of Findlay in Findlay, Ohio houses original artwork from children's books. If you visit, you can find the original drawings for classics and new work by authors such as Denise Fleming and Tomie dePaola. In the meangtime, while we can visit, you can click on several exhibitions at this link and find many exciting pictures to write about:


For older children and adults

We are fortunate to have this fine museum in our town, and anyone under 12 years old can visit it for free when it reopens. It is also free for everyone on Thursdays and the First Friday of every month, the day that Canton has a party downtown. We'll hope to see you all there when we have finished sheltering in place, and meantime, Here are some great exhibitions you can tour online and choose an
artwork to write about.
Exhibitions: https://www.cantonart.org/exhibits/virtual-gallery
Permanent collection: https://www.cantonart.org/exhibits/permanent-collection

There is one stunning group of artworks from amuseument parks, including several wonderful horses, like this one:
https://www.cantonartcollection.com/itemdetail.php?work_id=2117&fbclid=IwAR04ZwTIskpWbLrCzZlDSoVCwqqz-2BY6a6rCTmqSvXPq-Vpfk1s2XEO0YA

Most museums around the world have collections up that you can use also.


A poem by Stark County middle schooler about a painting at the Cleveland Museum of Art:

 St. George

A great leader spears the monstrosity of the dragon.
A woman waits, hoping for the saint.
He thrusts his weapon strongly into the dragon’s deep cavity of a mouth.

The tamed beast rears up in fright, anger?
The fan-like tail flies up from the strong, muscular abdomen.
On a gray medium, with splotches of radiant, glowing, beautiful orange; as on the woman’s dress.

A majestic background of hill and town,
with a castle standing royally like a great monument.
The knight is clad in a great silver sheath of metal, protecting him from harm.
The dragon dies, in its eyes, grandly to a great foe.

Hurrah for St. George.


Here is a poem by a Stark County student, based on a Canton Museum exhibit on kimonos:

The Golden Kimono


Unique and beautiful in every

Golden piece of thread


Like putting pieces of a puzzle together

to make a work of art-exhibitions


A brush and Aibana creating the pieces

Tying and dying making each small bulge


A perfect fit fill with detail and flush

Fixing and steaming creating


Layers and depth of colorful 

Stretching and drying on shinshi


Repeating itself to make itself

Like a flawless, elegant swan in a


Pond of lilies

Finishing with


Hand-painting, gilding, and embroidering

To make it utsukushii and sensai na


Golden is the sunset

In the sky being shadowed


By the clouds above it

As the warm colors mix


Together to create a mystery

Of colorful, amazing light.



This is the broadside she made of it



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Online sources

Ekphrastic poem by a student and teacher info are at Scholastic (click here) 





Ekphrastic poems at the Poetry Foundation


Ekphrastic poems by adults at Ekphrastic Review

One of mine at this site, "Two Sisters" on this Maria Blanchard painting













And here are photos of me and my sister that inspired me as well.





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One last note, Columbus, Ohio poet Steve Abbott has a new book of ekphrastic poetry, A Language the Image Speaks. It is exciting because every poem appears with the art it is about. It is one of my favorite books of the year. You can find a story about the poet and how to order his book here
STEVE ABBOTT EXAMINES THE ART....
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Monday, March 30, 2020

JOURNALING; Now Is a Great Time to Be Journaling


These materials are meant to be supplementary to the 30-minute video available at the Facebook page of Arts in Stark, the sponsoring organization, and of Diane Kendig, the author. 
We are thinking that this period of "Sheltering in Place" is a historic time that we might all use to create our own record. Let us be the Samuel Pepyses of COVID-19!!

 If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email her at dianekendig (at) gmail (dot) com.
Photo Credit: Lisa Nardi
Writing Exercises for getting started on a journal

 If you are a seasoned journal writer, you may not need these-- just write. But if you are just starting, you might use the first exercise, which we used in the workshop. And if you get stuck, use some of these other tactics. Please keep in mind that while this is a difficult time for many people, most of us are not being personally persecuted as Anne Frank and her family were. We are not comparing ourselves to her but are using her courage and ability to help us write. 

 1) 10 steps in Anne Frank's beginning diary (June 20, 1942)
  • What are your thoughts about writing a diary today or generally
  • Why are you writing this diary entry? (Anne is using it as a sort of friend)
  • Can you say more about why you are writing this diary?
  • Do you want to name your diary? If so, what? If not, say why not.
  • Brief story of your life: who is your father, mother and name your siblings and tell where you have lived and live now.
  • How is your family being effected by "Shelter in Plavce?
  • What are the rules we have for sheltering in place in our country/state right now?
  • Tell what your grandparents are doing, if they are alive right now.
  • What do you remember of your last day of school before we left for the shelter in place?
  • How do you feel your family is doing?
2) Other journal- writing exercises

***Five W's - on the day you are writing tell 
WHO you are with, who you are today, who is not there?
WHAT you are doing, what others are doing, what is going on in the world (What did you do earlier in the day or week?)?
WHEN do you think things will change, when will you be doing something else later in the day?
WHERE are you now? Where have you been today? Inside/outside? Where does your mind go?
WHY do you think you feel the way you do? Why are people acting the way they are? 

***Burke's Pentad (sort of, hoping G Nakagawa doesn't see this)
Imagine today is a play or movie you are writing about COVID19:
 Scene- Where is the action taking place?
Action- What is happening?
Actors- Who is doing the acting? What are they like?
Agent- How did the actors do what they were doing? What did they use? Any tools.weapons (even words), tricks?
Purpose - Why are the actors doing what they are doing?

***Description
Take a scene from your life these days and try to describe it as fully as you can, without giving any opinions. Try to use as many details from your five sense as you can: sight, touch, smell, taste, and hearing.

***Feelings only
Try to describe your feelings from the past 24 hours without telling what happened, just what you felt. 

***Interview
In person or by phone or messaging of Facetime, interview someone. Ask them questions about this age of COVID-19 to see if you can get down more history from someone else's point of view.

EXTRA MATERIALS FOR READERS, WRITERS,  PARENTS & TEACHERS

WEBSITES YOU MIGHT ENJOY


History’s Greatest Diaries (there are seven here)
https://www.panmacmillan.com/blogs/history/historical-diaries-war-history-journal

David Sedaris: “Keeping a Diary in the Age of Over-Sharing” (video, 2:19 minutes: Thanks to Geoff Polk for this!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6a7p6SyPSM

Dear Diary: Fifteen Noteworthy Journal-Keepers
https://www.livescience.com/59430-history-noteworthy-diarists.html

The Diary of Frida Kahlo (downloadable pdf, with drawings)
https://sites.google.com/site/icikiwri29kjs9s6j9a2fgs/-pdf-download-the-diary-of-frida-kahlo-an-intimate-self-portrait-book-pdf

Free Online Diary: for if you want to keep a private internet diary
https://www.my-diary.org/hl/en

Blogger: one of the many free sites for creating a blog, if you are ready to go public
https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g#welcome 



READINGS (* for kids and Adults, otherwise, for adults)


Some Famous Diaries (See above websites for more)

*Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl

Diary of Anne Frank: Critical Edition

 The Diaries of Virginia Woolf (5 volume)

 The Diary of Anais Nin (4 volumes)

 The Diary of Frida Kahlo - see download, above

 The Diary of Samuel Pepys (1659-1668)
          The Complete: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4200
          Plague extracts: http://www.pepys.info/1665/plague.html

 *Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Wartime Sarajevo

 Anthologies of Diaries

 A Book of One's Own: People and their Diaries by Thomas Mallon

 The Book of American Diaries: From Heart and Mind to Pen and Paper--Day by Day Personal 
Accounts Through the Centuries by Randall M. Miller & Linda Patterson Miller

The Hidden Writer: Diaries and the Creative Life: Alexander Johnson

Fictional Diaries

*Dork Diaries  by Rachel Renee Russell

 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

*Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney

 The Plague by Albert Camus

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Diane Kendig - Published Diaries & Journals

Ariadne's Thread: A Collection of Contemporary Women's Journals, ed. Lyn Lifshin (Harper&Row, 1982), pp 92-96
In these passages, you can read about the night a man climbed in my bedroom window, and not with romance in mind, the night I blew an oven up on myself, the night my heart was broken-- ah, life in Cleveland Heights in the 1970s! The book is out of print, but you can get used copies or find it in libraries, like the Cleveland Public Library.


"Me and Thoreau and the Cuyahoga Valley National Park:
My Life in the Woods with the Kids"
This is a collection of journals I kept when I was a visiting artist in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Each day, I read about what Thoreau was doing that day and thought about it in the context of my work in the woods. I am grateful to the journal About Place for publishing these.


Diane Kendig: HOME AGAIN
While not my personal journal, this is an occasional blog that I began when I moved home to Canton, Ohio from the Boston area in
Sippo Lake
2011 to buy my father's house, which he built with his own hands when he came home from WWII. I was able to bring him home from assisted living about two days a week until he died in 2019. In my blog, I write about coming home, about Dad, about my writing and the world of poetry, about life with Paul, who made it all possible, and Robbie, who kept it all...dogged.

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Many many thanks for the people who helped with this: to Stark Arts, which sponsored me, to Paul for everything as always, to my 25 friends who responded about their diary-keeping on FB, and to the diarists who inspired me, going all the way back to Samuel Pepys, especially Anne Frank, and Zlata and Virginia Woolf.
 ***
In memory of my mom, Gladys Kendig, who got me my first diary and my first library card.
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Tuesday, March 24, 2020

ODES: Viewers respond to March 23rd

The first poem to come in is by a fourth grader in Atlanta, GA

 Please, send YOUR odes to Diane Kendig 
[dianekendig at gmail dot com - - -use @ and . when sending]
Ode to a puzzle
By Madeleine 

Oh puzzle, why must you be so hard and as challenging as an algebra equation?
So many problems one after another that I must solve in order to see the big picture.
Not even a baby would want to solve you.
Why must you be so shapey?
As uncomfortable as wearing an itchy sweater.
Yet, relaxing as a bike ride with your many colorful pieces.
But, like removing that itchy sweater, I’m relieved and at ease
when I complete you.






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Sunday, March 22, 2020

WRITING ODES

The materials below are supplementary to the video produced by the writer Diane Kendig at the Arts in Stark Facebook page to delight and instruct during the COVID19 slowdown. 

As a thank you for your attendance today, I am attaching a broadsides of two of my odes for you to download. You can right click on it to save and print out on your printer:
Week three, I will be showing you the tradition of broadsides and how you can make your own


Notes on and examples of the ode
For children:

Houston Writers in the Schools


For older students (high school, college, Moms & Dads)

"Ode" at the Academy of American Poetry 



For everyone

Quincy Troupe's poem, "A Poem for Magic" (on Magic Johnson)



Pablo Neruda odes
"The Watermelon" (in Spanish, "Oda a la Sandia")

"Ode to My Socks"


Example odes by children

By Ohio kids:

ODE TO A DEER I HAVE NOT SEEN

O, I’m wishing, hoping
waiting to see
the light, soft deer

I’m wanting, needing
waiting to spot
the sweet cute face.

I’m thinking, imaginating
waiting to see
the furry doe
as cute as a teddy bear

O, I’m wishing, hoping
waiting to spot
the deer in the forest.
                -- Fifth Grader


ODE TO PANDAS

Pandas, you are 
very cool
and you
like to
eat bamboo
and
like to
climb trees
and live in
the mountain.
You are
soft as 
a marshmallow.
I love 
Pandas.
            --Third Grader


ODE TO POINTE SHOES

You are pretty and pink as a tourmaline
The ribbons you have, so smooth and silky

The way you make my feet look pretty when I go up on pointe
You are inexplicable-- how great and wonderful you are

Your look of delicacy makes me grateful, but you are strong
Thought you rip and tear when I wear you a lot

You glittered and glistened when I first got you
When I am on stage you help me dance like a prima ballerina.
                                                                               --Fifth Grader

ODE TO THE BELL

Oh bell, hurry up
Go ring, ring ring
I like your sound
And you look like a party hat
You feel like a steel plate
Oh, bell, hurry up
                         --Third Grader



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TWO FINAL NOTES:

1) I usually like to write in silence, but if you like music, considered listening to this inspiring version of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy," yet another kind of ode. This version is exciting because it comes to us from Europe, which is living through the virus also. The musicians could not get together to perform as usual, so they each play their part from home and technicians put it all together. You can see them as they play from home, making inspiring music together:
https://slippedisc.com/2020/03/believe-it-orchestra-plays-beethoven-9th-from-their-homes/

2) If you write an ode you are especially proud of and want to share, send it to me at dianekendig(at)gmail(dot)com [use @ for "at" and . for "dot). I will post and/or respond to as many odes as possible, so keep watching here for yours!








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