Poets can have many muses, but for 22 poets who were educated at Yale, inspiration for a recent work came from a single source: the Yale University Art Gallery.
Each poet selected a work from the gallery's permanent collection to write a poem about. Their literary creations and the artworks that inspired them are paired together in the Yale Art Gallery's newest exhibition, "A Gallery of Poems."
The exhibition comprises 22 works of 20th-century visual art in a wide range of media that are displayed alongside the accompanying poem. Sixteen of the artworks are displayed in the exhibition on the fourth floor of the gallery, while the remaining six are in their usual spaces in the galleries. All of the artworks were drawn from the gallery's permanent collection.
Poet and critic John Hollander, Sterling Professor of English, and Joanna Weber, assistant curator of European and contemporary art at the gallery, conceived of the "poet's project" with the aim of encouraging poets to interact with objects in the art gallery's collections. The poets' choices range from a sculpted ivory head from the Democratic Republic of Congo to a Bauhaus-influenced tea and coffee service, and include masterpieces and lesser known works.
The Yale-trained poets represented in the exhibit, and the works they chose as their subjects, are Stephen Cushman -- "the Ploughmen" by Käthe Kollwitz; John Burt -- "The Knifegrinder" by Kasimir Malevich; Rachel Wetsteon -- "Spring (the Procession)" by Joseph Stella; Jonathan Aaron -- "Merzz 19" by Kurt Schwitters; William Logan -- "Kneeling Woman (Kniende)" by George Kolbe; Paul Kane -- "Tea and Coffee Service" by Ilonka Karasz; Robert B. Shaw -- "Cat" by Alexander Calder; Martha Hollander -- "The Phantom Cart" by Salvador Dalí; Karl Kirchwey -- "Hands Holding the Void" by Alberto Giacometti; Annie Finch -- "Squash" by Edward Weston; Tony Sanders -- "Turned Wood Sculpture" by Sophie Taeuber-Arp; Rosanna Warren -- "Interior at Le Cannet" by Pierre Bonnard; J.D. McClatchy -- "Lexington Avenue Subway" by Walker Evans; Peter Sacks -- "Lutumbo Iwa Kindi Image" by an unknown artist; George Bradley -- "In advance of the broken arm (Snow Shovel)" by Marcel Duchamp; David R. Slavitt -- "13A Arabesque" by Jackson Pollock; John Hollander -- "Rooms by the Sea" by Edward Hopper; Stephen Sandy -- "Untitled" by Mark Rothko; Elizabeth Alexander -- "Islands No. 4" by Agnes Martin; Stephen Burt -- "Ravenna" by Franz Kline; Craig Arnold -- "Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks" by Claes Thure Oldenburg; and Rika Lesser -- "Opposite Corners" by Sylvia Plimack Mangold.
Several of the poets will read their poems in front of their chosen works of art on four Thursday afternoons in the fall. The schedule follows: Sept. 6 at 3 p.m. -- Slavitt and Lesser, joined by artist Mangold; Sept. 20 at 2 p.m. -- Finch, Alexander and Martha Hollander; Oct. 4 at 3 p.m. -- Sandy, Burt, Cushman, Shaw and Logan; and Nov. 1 -- Alexander and Arnold.
Reproductions of the 22 images and poems are juxtaposed in a book, "Words for Images: A Gallery of Poems," which was published last spring. Each artwork and its related poem is followed by paired commentaries by Weber and John Hollander -- the gallery curator reflecting on the artworks and the Yale poet offering some thoughts on the poems.
"Just as a range of objects -- painting, print, sculpture, photograph, object of industrial design -- is addressed in these texts, the poems themselves exhibit a very wide range of formal modes and rhetorical stances," says Hollander. "They also display an even wider range of ways of dealing with the object in question."
"Words for Images: A Gallery of Poems" is available at the Yale University Art Gallery for $35. The exhibit will remain on view through Nov. 4.
The Yale University Art Gallery, located on the corner of Chapel and York streets, is open free of charge Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., and Sunday, 1-6 p.m. It is closed Mondays and major holidays. An entrance for persons using wheelchairs is located at 201 York St., with an unmetered parking space nearby on York St. For further information, call (203) 432-0600 or visit the gallery's website at www.yale.edu/artgallery.
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