The Poetry of Art

By Wallace Stevens, William Shakespeare and Rainer Maria Rilke

Art comes in many shapes and sizes and many different forms. And one person’s art is often someone else’s object of derision.

But what we can all agree on is that Art exists, that it’s something perhaps unique to humankind but very definitely evokes a deep reaction whether of ‘wow!’ or ‘what?’

In this volume we take Art as our subject and have it reviewed and explored by other Artists, by Classic Poets.

True Art ignites an individual response or a collective awareness. Our DNA seems to cultivate that. When we engage with Art the results are at times as surprising as they are interesting.

In the words of Keats, Shakespeare, Wharton, Chatterton and very many others Art is seen and understood both as that individual reaction and a collective experience. Art is where it’s at.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Portable Poetry
• Release date: Nov 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781835470381

Book preview

The Poetry of Art

An Introduction

Art comes in many shapes and sizes and many different forms.  And one person’s art is often someone else’s object of derision.

But what we can all agree on is that Art exists, that it’s something perhaps unique to humankind but very definitely evokes a deep reaction whether of ‘wow!’ or ‘what?’ 

In this volume we take Art as our subject and have it reviewed and explored by other Artists, by Classic Poets.

True Art ignites an individual response or a collective awareness.  Our DNA seems to cultivate that.  When we engage with Art the results are at times as surprising as they are interesting.

In the words of Keats, Shakespeare, Wharton, Chatterton and very many others Art is seen and understood both as that individual reaction and a collective experience.  Art is where it’s at.

Index of Contents

The Man With the Blue Guitar by Wallace Stevens

Botticlelli’s Madonna in the Louvre by Edith Wharton

Before a Painting by James Weldon Johnson

Sonnet 20 - A Woman's Face with Nature's Own Hand Painted by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 24 - Mine Eye Hath Played the Painter and Hath Steeled by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 83 - I Never Saw That You Did Painting Need by William Shakespeare

Art and Heart by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Colors by Stephen Vincent Benét

I Have Colours in My Head by Daniel Sheehan

I Would Not Paint a Picture by Emily Dickinson

To the Painter, To Draw Him a Picture by Robert Herrick

On Mr Alcock of Bristol, an Excellent Miniature Painter by Thomas Chatterton

On the Portrait of Two Beautiful Young People by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Portrait d'une Femme by Ezra Pound

To a Beautiful Female Portrait by Henry Alford

The Portrait by Ford Madox Ford

Her Portrait Immortal by Richard Le Gallienne

My Last Duchess by Robert Browning

Portrait of My Father As a Young Man by Rainer Maria Rilke

On a Portrait of Dante by Giotto by James Russell Lowell

Written Under a Portrait of Keats by John Boyle O'Reily

On Seeing the Elgin Marbles For the First Time by John Keats

Jade by Edith Wharton

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

An Inscription for Zheng Shujin's Painting by Qiu Jin

The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus

Rome - Building a New Street in the Ancient Quarter, April 1887 by Thomas Hardy

How Many Paltry Foolish Painted Things by Michael Drayton

To the Painter of an Ill Drawn Picture of Cleone by Anne Kingsmill-Finch

An Art Critic by Ambrose Bierce

A Portrait by Richard Brinsley Sheridan

The Man with the Blue Guitar by Wallace Stevens

I

The man bent over his guitar,

A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, "You have a blue guitar,