Saturday, May 30, 2009

On Making Art


I have always loved words, books, and poetry. Somehow, they have always seemed to be another side of music and art. When I was a struggling young mother of three small children, writing poetry or reading books always eased my desire to paint, which was not always practical to do considering the circumstances. Authors and poets such as Carson McCullers, Jack London, William Shakespeare and Maya Angelou wrote in ways that sparked my visual imagination.
My current volumes of poetry were inspired and informed by my bodies of paintings, as well as by my having found and read with awe several personal poems from those younger, leaner years. The contemporary style of those poems were left in the past, after having read "Savage Beauty," the biography of famous poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay. I favored her use of the double rhyme, while preferring other standard forms of poetry, as well.

As a poet, I tend to break many rules in order to retain my own voice in expressing a mostly philosophical style of writing based on my own experiences and vision. In choosing verse, rather than a more contemporary style of writing, I seek the entertainment factor, which I feel is vital to all art forms in order to reach and hold a diverse audience.
I choose to be somewhat clever while employing verse that is literary, a manner that is simplistic but not trite, and words that rhyme in the manner of colors in visual art. This reflects who I am.



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