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Website editor Jennette Mullaney reflects upon the intermingling of poetry and art.
My name is Jennette Mullaney. I write and edit emails for The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
I was raised in a household where poetry was recited and read aloud, so I've
always had a very great love of poetry. There are plenty of people who find poetry very snooty in the same way that they do
visual art, but there are plenty of poems and there are plenty of works of visual art that are really accessible to everyone, you don't have to know anything about
either art form to really get something out of it, even if it's just an emotion, an impression.
What really I consider to be a perfect marriage of visual art and poetry, we have this wonderful collection of
East Asian works of art, where the poetry is written on the painting
and the calligraphy they use is also a visual art form, so right there you have this great connection between these two art forms. It's immediate you can see it.
Eight Planked Bridge, although it's very opulent, I had always wondered about this sort of melancholy quality. I was very gratified to learn that it's an episode from a famous Japanese poem about a lover who misses his beloved.
There are no figures, there are no people, and even though he didn't represent it realistically, Ogata Korin managed to capture the sense of longing and the sense of emptiness in this incredibly lush, beautiful work.
Ekphrastic poetry is a poem that is inspired by a work of art, such as The Great Wave at Kanagawa by Hokusai. The poems that have been written about this woodcut tend to focus on the tension. You have this tiny mountain and this huge towering wave and it's always poised to strike, it's always poised to crash. Even though it's never going to, it still frightens me a little bit and makes me sort of want to run away from it.
Most people believe this work is a representation of "The Great Figure" by William Carlos Williams, and although it certainly represents part of that poem it is actually an abstract portrait of the poet, William Carlos Williams. The number five is coming closer and closer and closer and getting louder and louder and louder and the poem sort of works in the same way.
When I wander the galleries and I look at different works of art, I do sort of have these poets with me speaking to me.
Penelope Unraveling Her Work at Night, of course, this is based on the epic poem "The Odyssey" by Homer. She's taking apart her weaving so that she can keep these suitors at bay as she waits for the return of her husband. I thought of Carol Ann Duffy's "Penelope" because she very aptly describes Penelope's love for this work. "I sorted cloth and scissors, needle, thread
thinking to amuse myself, but found a lifetime's industry instead." And, I actually really happen to love the fact that it's coming apart, the work itself is unraveling.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan" has this fantastic imagery, very trippy, absolutely unforgettable. He's imagining things that could not exist in real life. When I first saw Self-Portrait by Egon Schiele, I was immediately reminded of the last stanza of that poem which describes a poet. "His flashing eyes, his floating hair!"
"Beware! Beware!...Weave a circle round him thrice...close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the milk of Paradise."
I feel like these two art forms have been inextricably linked for as long as they've both been in existence. They inspire
one another. They have this immediate effect of being able to take you away from where you are, or, bring everything together
in a sense.
Works of art in order of appearanceLast Updated: June 22, 2015. Not all works of art in the Museum's collection may be on view on a particular day. For the most accurate location information, please check this page on the day of your visit. |
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Songs of Innocence and of Experience: The Tyger (Plate 42) 1794 / ca. 1825 William Blake (British) Copy Y, ca. 1825 Relief etchings printed in orange-brown ink, heightened with watercolor and shell gold, with hand-painted decorative borders Rogers Fund, 1917 (17.10.42) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Drawings and PrintsSecond Floor | |
Returning Home Qing dynasty, ca. 1695 Shitao (Zhu Ruoji) (Chinese) Album of twelve paintings; ink and color on paper Facing pages inscribed by the artist From the P. Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Family Collection, Gift of Wen and Constance Fong, in honor of Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Dillon, 1976 (1976.280) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Asian ArtSecond Floor | |
Joan of Arc 1879 Jules Bastien-Lepage (French) Oil on canvas Signed, dated, and inscribed (lower right): J.BASTIEN-LEPAGE / DAMVILLERS Meuse / 1879 Gift of Erwin Davis, 1889 (89.21.1) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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European PaintingsSecond Floor | |
Woods and Valleys of Mount Yu Yuan dynasty, dated 1372 Ni Zan (Chinese) Hanging scroll; ink on paper Inscribed by the artist (upper right) and by the Qianlong emperor Ex coll.: C.C. Wang Family, Gift of the Dillon Fund, 1973 (1973.120.8) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Asian ArtSecond Floor | |
Poem page mounted as a hanging scroll Momoyama period, dated 1606 Painting by Tawaraya Sotatsu (Japanese); Calligraphy by Hon'ami Koetsu (Japanese) Ink on paper decorated with gold and silver The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick, and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975 (1975.268.59) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Asian ArtSecond Floor | |
Eight-Planked Bridge (Yatsuhashi) Ogata Korin (Japanese) Pair of six-panel folding screens; ink and color on gilded paper Purchase, Louisa Eldridge McBurney Gift, 1953 (53.7.1–2) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Asian ArtSecond Floor | |
The Great Wave at Kanagawa (from a Series of Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji) Edo period (1615–1868), ca. 1831–33 Katsushika Hokusai (Japanese); Published by Eijudo Polychrome ink and color on paper H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929 (JP1847) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Asian ArtSecond Floor | |
I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold 1928 Charles Demuth (American) Oil on cardboard Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949 (49.59.1) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Modern and Contemporary ArtSecond Floor | |
Mezzetin ca. 1718–20 Jean Antoine Watteau (French) Oil on canvas Munsey Fund, 1934 (34.138) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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European PaintingsSecond Floor | |
Penelope Unraveling Her Work at Night 1886 Dora Wheeler (American), for Associated Artists (New York City) Silk embroidered with silk thread Purchase, Sylvia and Leonard Marx Gift and funds from various donors, 2002 (2002.230) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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American Decorative ArtsFirst and Second Floors | |
Self-Portrait 1911 Egon Schiele (Austrian) Watercolor, gouache, and pencil on paper Bequest of Scofield Thayer, 1982 (1984.433.298a) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Modern and Contemporary ArtSecond Floor | |
Leaf of calligraphy: Leaf from the Shah Jahan Album Mughal; calligraphy, ca. 1500; margin, early 17th century Sultan cAli Mashhadi (calligraphy), Possibly Daulat (illumination) Iran (calligraphy), India (illumination) Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper Purchase, Rogers Fund and The Kevorkian Foundation Gift, 1955 (55.121.10.32) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Islamic ArtSecond Floor | |
Parallèlement 1900 Pierre Bonnard (French) From Paul Verlaine's Parallèlement, Paris, A. Vollard, 1900 Color lithograph The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1970 (1970.713) © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Drawings and PrintsSecond Floor | |
© 2011 The Metropolitan Museum of Art |