By Nitin George
On a somber dusky morning,
The sun’s red glow sprawling
over the large marbled sea,
shadows scattered like leaves of tea.
Giant monsters tower scarily in the fog behind
the wooden figures and their shapes, barely outlined.
A lone tiny ship stays anchored in the center,
alone, two people say words of love to each other.
Perhaps they’ve snuck off together to hide their love,
To hide from the disapproval of the powers that be.
Maybe they wish to fly away with the doves,
To fly where they can show their love for no one else to see.
The painting I chose was Impression, Sunrise by Claude Monet. I chose this panting just because it is very visually appealing. Something about this type of impressionist artstyle draws me in every time. When I was writing this poem, I was thinking more of the modern song format with similar syllable numbers for certain verses and rhyme schemes with perfect rhymes and feminine rhymes (I recently found out what these means) I didn’t want to exactly describe the painting since I felt it was boring and wanted to something similar to what W.H. Auden did in “Musée des Beaux Arts” and imagine a story to the painting and describe that instead. Word choice wise, I enjoy rhyme schemes where a lot of words within verses rhyme, but the meaning of the sentence is still cohesive and tells a story. I could not rhyme as much as I wanted because my vocabulary is sometimes iffy but I tried to insert them where I could. I did not focus on the artist but that is because I know nothing about Monet and I didn’t want to insert that in this poem as it didn’t feel right.
This was a lovely poem to read. I really enjoyed how you deeply analyzed the poem on the surface, and through the deeper hidden meanings. I thought that your interpretation of what might be going on in the painting was very creative yet believable, and can tell you really took your time with examining it all. The poem also had a nice flow to it.
I loved this poem and painting so much. I really like how the painting is vague and it’s up to the viewer. I like your choice to make the two people on the boat say they love each other. The poem and the painting are very intimate, letting us see a side of strangers we don’t usually get to see.