Michael Enright has been conversing with Bruce Myer (a professor of English at the Laurentian University BA program at Georgian College and an instructor of literature at St.Michael's college at the University of Toronto and author of six volumes of poetry) in a series about poetry on his Sunday morning program. The final installment was about how poems read. Myer said that poetry is “the art of the impossible.” It has a sense of transformation: one thing can become another with hidden meanings (or, I might add, hidden meetings). You fill it out according to your own personal experience. You meet new experiences with your own history.
As I was listening I kept relating what he was saying to painting. How we bring to our world, see it, through what we know, our own personal experiences. Painting, like poetry, is a conversation: we pick up threads of thoughts, take it into our hearts, and transform it through our own point of view.
Something is like (or as) something else. The same in painting. A red line becomes (a bird/a circle/a luscious/severe or harsh red line) something more than just a red line as it is played off against something else (a blue field/a sunset/a green square).
I’m thinking of ordering the Poetry is Life, and Vice Versa CD (as of mid-april from the CBC Shop at 1-800-955-7711 or on the internet on the CBC.ca website under the title Poetry is Life). It was a very interesting series.
Posted by leya at March 17, 2006 10:45 AM