Abstraction & The Poem as Compositional Plane

What you will need: 2 sheets of blank paper; a few sheets of lined paper; a pen or pencil; crayons, markers, water colors, or colored pencils.

1. Focus on a memory that you return to often. It can be any kind of memory, but should be one that is meaningful to you and that you want to spend some time exploring.
2. Select and define one scene from this memory, as if you were to take a photograph with your mind. You can be a part of this scene, or the observer behind the camera.
3. Take one of the blank pieces of paper and sketch the entire scene of your memory. take no longer than 3 minutes. This sketch is just for you, so no need to worry about your drawing “skills.”
4. Taking a separate sheet of lined paper, write for 6 minutes, without stopping, about this memory.
5. When you finish, set aside.
6. View the slide show A.R. Ammons: Watercolors, an exhibition at the Poetry Foundation.

Questions to consider in writing, or in discussion with others:

• How would you describe these paintings?
• What shapes do you notice? Colors?
• How would you describe the feeling behind these paintings?

7. Take a piece of blank paper and compose another iteration of your memory scene. Keep the same frame and moment, but this time compose an abstract version using lines, textures, shapes, forms, and colors. When you finish, set aside.

Read the following poems by A. R. Ammons:

• The Brook Has Worked out the Prominences of a Bend
• Emerging Curves

Questions to consider in writing, or in discussion with others:

• How do these poems resemble Ammons’ watercolors? How are the two different?
• In all of these poems, Ammons describes landscapes. What are the significant features of each landscape? Do you notice lines, textures, shapes, forms, and colors?

8. Return to your abstract version of your memory. Write a poem based on this composition of your memory, that focuses on what is contained within the parameters of the page of your abstract version. The poem does not need to be wholly abstract, but the focus should be on the lines, textures, shapes, forms, and colors of the memory. Write this memory as you would present a painting, without background information or story surrounding the memory.