I dwell in Possibility -

[osprey_archer]

A poem, because it's been ages since I've posted one, and I love the concept of this poem: climbing into a painting to explore it - wouldn't it be a lovely story?

The Brooklyn Museum of Art
by Billy Collins

I will now step over the soft velvet rope
and walk directly into this massive Hudson River
painting and pick my way along the Palisades
with this stick I snapped off a dead tree.

I will skirt the smoky, nestled towns
and seek the path that leads always outward
until I become lost, without a hope
of ever finding the way back to the museum.

I will stand on the bluffs in nineteenth-century clothes,
a dwarf among rock, hills, and flowing water,
and I will fish from the banks in a straw hat
which will feel like a brush stroke on my head.

And I will hide in the green covers of forests
so no appreciator of Frederick Edwin Church,
leaning over the soft velvet rope,
will spot my tiny figure moving in the stillness
and cry out, pointing for the others to see,

and be thought mad and led away to a cell
where there is no vaulting landscape to explore,
none of this birdsong that halts me in my tracks,
and no wide curving of this river that draws
my steps toward the misty vanishing point.

Comments

[radio-silent.livejournal.com]

i love this poem. a lot. also i love the brooklyn museum of art very very much. there's this room with a painting of a giant waterfall, and then a small pollack interpretive waterfall nearby, and then a bunch of chairs so you can sit and look at the waterfall...i know it doesn't sound like much, but the way they arrange it is almost like a movie theatre (with nicer seats) for the painting. it's just one of my favorite museums ever.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

It sounds like my art history class, which took place in a little auditorium with the paintings projected on the screen. Obviously more removed from the reality of the art than seats right in front of an actual painting - but still, sometimes the paintings would just about pop of the screen, they seemed so alive.

[visualthinker11.livejournal.com]

That sounds great-for all its strengths, my art history class was taught in a large classroom that was always cold and had stadium seating so you weren't particularly near the people above or below you. and there was the big screen...but it definitely felt distancing, because you were more removed from the art than connected to it, even with the giant screen.
So it's neat to hear that art history slide shows can make you feel closer to the art. : )