Heart to Heart: New Poems Inspired by Twentieth-Century American Art

by Jan Greenberg

Teens with an interest in either poetry or the visual arts will find much to contemplate... read more

Teens with an interest in either poetry or the visual arts will find much to contemplate in this singular collection of paired poems and artworks. Jan Greenberg, author of a number of fine books about art for young adults with Sandra Jordan, invited contemporary writers to choose a painting, a photograph, or another work of 20th-century American art and write a poem inspired or “stimulated” by it. The result is a series of intriguing pairings that offers young-adult readers a glimpse of the genesis and creative processes behind the original poems in this volume. It also affirms that the inspiration for poems can be found everywhere, and that what a poem or painting means does not begin with some secret and sophisticated knowledge but rather draws its strength from the mind of each individual who takes time to consider the work. As one of the poets, X. J. Kennedy, says in Greenberg’s introduction, “Perhaps you can imagine a different story inspired by this painting. Look at the picture long and I think that you too will find it overflowing with possibilities.”

© Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2002

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