Coming to Our Senses: Sight and Touch Aug. 29

Today we continued our exploration of poetry as sensation-rich experience by looking specifically at the senses of sight and touch.

We wrote words to describe details in the following picture:

Then we considered the painting entitled "Starry Night" by Van Gogh:

Why is Van Gogh's painting so popular? It helps us see the night sky with new eyes, a sky we've grown used to seeing in a cliché way has become real and vivid to us anew. Although his painting is not true in the sense of being photorealistic, it is truthful in how it helps us to see aspects of the sky as they really are and not according to preconceived notions of what the sky looks like that blind us from seeing more.

Whether we are talking about painting or creative writing, the same principles apply. Our medium simply changes from oil paints to word images.

Next, we considered a clip from the Iranian film The Color of Paradise (minutes 31:00-32:00):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gddtjBAVVQk.

We used our sense of touch to experience some textures outdoors and then tried to recreate the experience with words.

Homework:
You are invited to sit somewhere (your backyard, a mall, in your home, by the road, etc.) and write words and phrases that capture the moment using your senses of sight and touch.