Poems About Sculpture is a unique anthology of poems from around the world and across the ages about our most enduring art form. Sculpture has the longest memory of the arts: from the Paleolithic era, we find stone carvings and clay figures embedded with human longing. And poets have long been fascinated by the idea of eternity embodied by the monumental temples and fragmented statues of ancient civilizations. From Keats’s Grecian urn and Shelley’s “Ozymandias” to contemporary verse about Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Janet Echelman’s wind-borne hovering nets, the pieces in this collection convert the physical materials of the plastic arts—clay, wood, glass, marble, granite, bronze, and more—into lapidary lines of poetry. Whether the sculptures celebrated here commemorate love or war, objects or apparitions, forms human or divine, they have called forth evocative responses from a wide range of poets, including Homer, Ovid, Shakespeare, Baudelaire, Rilke, Dickinson, Yeats, Auden, and Plath. A compendium of dazzling examples of one art form reflecting on another, Poems About Sculpture is a treat for art lovers of all kinds.

“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.” —Leonardo da Vinci Based on this simple statement by Leonardo, eighteen poets have written new poems inspired by some of the most popular works in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum. The collection represents a wide range of poets and artists, including acclaimed children’s poets Marilyn Singer, Alma Flor Alda, and Carole Boston Weatherford and popular artists such as Mary Cassatt, Fernando Botero, Winslow Homer, and Utagawa Hiroshige. Accompanying the artwork and specially commissioned poems is an introduction, biographies of each poet and artist, and an index.

A renowned sculptor from China, Professor Wu Weishan stands out in China's art arena — indeed, in the entire cultural fraternity — with his unique sculpting styles and original theoretical views. His series of creative works that feature China's historical and cultural celebrities showcase his freehand sculpting technique and his concept of the “eight major styles of Chinese sculpture”, which directly challenge the phenomenon of contemporary art steeped so heavily in values derived from Western popular art and Russian realism.This book documents the different stages of Wu Weishan's pursuits, struggles, and creations. It records his dealings with eminent figures in the science, cultural, and art arenas, such as Yang Zhenning, Ji Xianlin, Wu Guanzhong, and Xiong Bingming. His art notes, excerpts from his theoretical essays, and images of some selected sculptures are also included. From here, readers can get a glimpse of an artist's inner world during his growing years — how he devoutly approached life and art against the backdrop of contemporary society and culture./a

Art and Artists: Poems is a sumptuous collection of visions in verse—the work of centuries of poets who have used their own art form to illuminate art created by others. A wide variety of visual art forms have inspired great poetry, from painting, sculpture, and photography to tapestry, folk art, and calligraphy. Included here are poems that celebrate Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Claude Monet’s Water Lilies, and Grant Wood’s American Gothic. Here are such well-known poems as John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and W. H. Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts,” Homer’s immortal account of the forging of the shield of Achilles, and Federico García Lorca’s breathtaking ode to the surreal paintings of Salvador Dalí. Allen Ginsberg writes about Cezanne, Anne Sexton about van Gogh, Billy Collins about Hieronymus Bosch, and Kevin Young about Jean-Michel Basquiat. Here too are poems that take on the artists themselves, from Michelangelo and Rembrandt to Frida Kahlo and Georgia O’Keeffe. Altogether, this brilliantly curated anthology proves that a picture can be worth a thousand words—or a few very well-chosen ones.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INTRODUCTION: TWOMBLY'S BOOKS -- 1 MEDITERRANEAN PASSAGES: RETROSPECT -- 2 PSYCHOGRAM AND PARNASSUS: HOW (NOT) TO READ A TWOMBLY -- 3 TWOMBLY'S VAGUENESS: THE POETICS OF ABSTRACTION -- 4 ACHILLES' HORSES, TWOMBLY'S WAR -- 5 ROMANTIC TWOMBLY -- 6 THE PASTORAL STAIN -- 7 PSYCHE: THE DOUBLE DOOR -- 8 TWOMBLY'S LAPSE -- POSTSCRIPT: WRITING IN LIGHT -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX

Ama Codjoe’s highly anticipated debut collection brings generous light to the inner dialogues of women as they bathe, create art, make and lose love. Each poem rises with the urgency of a fully awakened sensual life. Codjoe’s poems explore how the archetype of the artist complicates the typical expectations of women: be gazed upon, be silent, be selfless, reproduce. Dialoguing with and through art, Bluest Nude considers alternative ways of holding and constructing the self. From Lorna Simpson to Gwendolyn Brooks to Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, contemporary and ancestral artists populate Bluest Nude in a choreography of Codjoe’s making. Precise and halting, this finely wrought, riveting collection is marked by an acute rendering of highly charged emotional spaces. Purposefully shifting between the role of artist and subject, seer and seen, Codjoe’s poems ask what the act of looking does to a person—public looking, private looking, and that most intimate, singular spectacle of looking at one’s self. What does it mean to see while being seen? In poems that illuminate the tension between the possibilities of openness and and its impediments, Bluest Nude offers vulnerability as a medium to be immersed in and, ultimately, shared as a kind of power: “There are as many walls inside me / as there are bones at the bottom of the sea,” Codjoe writes in the masterful titular poem. “I want to be seen clearly or not at all.” “The end of the world has ended,” Codjoe’s speaker announces, “and desire is still / all I crave.” Startling and seductive in equal measure, this formally ambitious collection represents a powerful, luminous beginning.

A compilation of poems by Americans writing about American art in the twentieth century, including such writers as Nancy Willard, Jane Yolen, and X.J. Kennedy.

Poetry. DAYS OF BLUE AND FLAME by 101-year-old Sarah Yerkes investigates subjects closest to the author's heart--childhood, family, travel, aging, art. After a career as a sculptor and a landscape architect, Yerkes began writing poetry at age 97. "I never fully understood how satisfying it could be to shape, build and form a piece with words rather than with wood, aluminum, stone and iron pipe," she said. A hard-working artist, Yerkes strives to write sometimes difficult poems with courage. Poet David Keplinger, winner of the 2019 UNT Rilke Award, said, "Yerkes sews a pre-nuclear America to the computer age, and she leaves space enough for our own pages, and our children's pages, all the stories yet to come."

The first study to offer an integral theory of love poetry, examining why it is that poetry, even more than other arts, is so consistently associated with romantic love.

This is the first book to showcase the work of acclaimed ceramic artist Jennifer McCurdy. Collectors and art enthusiasts will be delighted to gaze at these luminescent forms, lyrically accompanied by the poetry of Jennifer's sister, Wendy Mulhern. Dozens of color photographs, plus a section on evolution and process that's illustrated with forty-five color images, clearly show the depth and brilliance of Jennifer's work. In this collaboration Jennifer and Wendy celebrate art and how it holds things that can't be contained in any other way. These vessels, of porcelain and poetry, resonate with each other, engaging an intimate conversation. The evolution and process section provides insight into both the internal process of artistry and the physical and temporal dedication essential to bringing forth a life's body of work.