The Ants Escaped

You’ve heard the old saying, “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” Well, I took this quote one step further and added two eyes and two hands to the mix. Which gives me the perfect excuse to spend more time creating things.

My husband has told me on several occasions, “You can’t turn off those creative juices. Can you?” He’s right! However, I’ve had help along the way. It doesn’t matter if I’m painting, sculpting, or writing, these ideas, all come from real life experiences. Thank goodness the world is opening up again. Because it seems, the more I’m around others, the more creative I become.

The idea for these two poems in this blog, came to me after listening to a friend tell me of a dilemma, he faced in a poetry class. He described how he had toiled over critiquing a short four-line poem about a bunch of ants escaping a box. The assignment was to decipher the meaning of the poem. To better understand it, my friend studied the period in which the piece had been written. But his research and hard work was all to no avail, because it was word art. He admitted, “I never thought about arranging words to create a picture, a second level of meaning. And I was so surprised by how that structure was just sitting in plain sight, just a simple shift in the organization of the lines.”

Well, I guess you could say a visual poem is a mixture of poetry and art. And since I love art and poetry so much, I decided to grab my pencil and give it a try.

A Frame Of Mind

Coming up with word patterns for visual poetry, is a lot like working on a crossword puzzle. Instead of filling in designs of coloring books, I doodle. And I love sharing ideas with others.

So, please drop me a line in the comments. Let me know if this blog has inspired you to make a visual poem, or a painting, or maybe create a new cookie recipe. Whatever it is, I’d love to hear what you are doing.  Thanks for stopping by.