Kate Farrell (1)

If you ever want young people to become fascinated with poetry and art, this is the book for them. The poems, mostly short, wander through the world, gathering specimens from China, Japan, India, Africa and Native American and other cultures, while also including western voices from Dante and Shakespeare to Frank O'Hara and Gary Snyder. Typical for 1985, only 8 women poets are represented (minus one-half star). The poems are evocatively and exquisitely paired with works from the Met's show more collection, including sculpture and ceramics as well as painting, drawing and collage. Kenneth Koch was a great poetry teacher: his enthusiastic sensibility is on display here. I love this book! show less

This intriguing little book does something I've always loved doing, which is to pair visual art with poetry, here using works from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collections. So the title works in several ways: first, the work envisions, on some level, the poems chosen. Second, visionary poetry is used in the Blakeian sense; this is poetry that dreams of other worlds, other ways of being. That said, the poems are mostly from the classical canon, and rather relentlessly optimistic. Here show more you'll find Whitman, Yeats, Rimbaud, Lorca, Coleridge (guess which poem?)...One positive is that many poems are translated, from other cultures. There are some good, unusual poems--Mary Oliver's Sleeping in the Forest, and Rilke's The Angels come to mind.

Yet the book is wonderful for the art alone, reproduced on glossy paper. Favorite pairings; Chana Bloch's poem Day-Blind with Edward Hopper's From Williamsburg Bridge, Dickinson's "As if the sea should part" with Arthur B. Davies's Unicorns, and Herbert's echo poem Heaven with Joachim Patiner's The Penitance of St. Jerome. show less

A beautiful collection of poems paired with paintings that is as satisfying as fine wine paired with great food.

The poems and paintings are drawn from many cultures and across many centuries. Farrell's selections are wonderful and while I have my favorites, I never tire of picking this book up and turning to a random page. These works and their grouping into four sections (Childhood, Young Adulthood, Maturity, Old Age) are profound and beautiful; they remind me of the timelessness of art, show more and that the human struggle has and always will be the same.

As Bob Dylan put it:
"...she opened up a book of poems, and handed it to me; written by an Italian poet rom the thirteenth century; and every one of them words rang true and glowed like burnin' coal; pourin' off of every page like it was written in my soul from me to you, tangled up in blue...."

This book glows like burnin' coal; I highly recommend it. show less

Don't underestimate children. Good poetry isn't meant to be consumed in one go, nor art to be looked at just one time.

Maybe the first time you read this together with your seven-year old, pick out a few neat animal or nature pictures and read (out loud!) the poems that accompany them. Pick the one that is most fun to say, even if you don't understand it. Memorize it, or a few lines from it. Read it again a few months later. Read some of the other poems in that section.

Maybe memorize Little show more Fish" by D.H. Lawrence:

The tiny fish enjoy themselves
in the sea.
Quick little splinters of life,
their little lives are fun to them
in the sea.

Try to figure out the connections between the art and the poems - sometimes they're easy to spot, and sometimes you'll have to be a detective, or use your imagination to interpret a commonality. Maybe some will stump you and your child, until the child is a little older and has an 'ah-hah' moment.

Sometimes you and your child can have fun imagining yourselves in a scene, and sometimes you have to work your brains to make a guess why someone would paint or make something that seems boring, or scary, or weird. Try to figure out why the artist felt motivated to create each work. Who was the intended audience; what idea was she trying to share; what point was he trying to make?

Consider, from 1870, 'The Bathers' - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Winslow_Homer_-_Eagle_Head,_Manchester,_M... by Winslow Homer. Can you imagine wearing all those clothes in the water? Maybe not. But look at the women - do they make you think that the people in the 'olden days' were weird? I don't think so....

There are brief commentaries attached to many of the works to help with appreciation.

There is an index of titles and authors, and another of first lines. There are also short essays at the beginning and end that give some gentle guidance. Unfortunately, there is no way to search for works of art or artists - for example if you wanted to quickly find which page the painting by Winslow Homer is on, or whether he has any other works included.

This is a beautiful book, and I wish I could find a good home for it.

" show less