Famous Poems about Famous Paintings

Directions: Pick at least one of the poems below and identify any use of imagery that catches your eye by
highlighting them. Use a different color highlight for each of the following: personification, metaphor,
simile, and in general, imagery. You have the choice to work in pairs or independently. Please be sure to
turn this in, it will be graded for class participation today.

“Starry Night,” Vincent Van Gogh (1889)

THE STARRY NIGHT BY ANNE SEXTON

The town does not exist

except where one black-haired tree slips

up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.

The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.

Oh starry starry night! This is how

I want to die.

It moves. They are all alive.

Even the moon bulges in its orange irons

to push children, like a god, from its eye.

The old unseen serpent swallows up the stars.

Oh starry starry night! This is how

I want to die:

into that rushing beast of the night,

sucked up by that great dragon, to split

from my life with no flag,

no belly,

no cry.

“The Gulf of Marseilles Seen from L'Estaque,” Paul Cézanne (1880-1885)

CÉZANNE’S PORTS BY ALLEN GINSBERG

In the foreground we see time and life

swept in a race

toward the left hand side of the picture

where shore meets shore.

But that meeting place

isn’t represented;

it doesn’t occur on the canvas.

For the other side of the bay

is Heaven and Eternity,

with a bleak white haze over its mountains.

And the immense water of L’Estaque is a go-between

for minute rowboats.

 “Number One, 1948,” Jackson Pollock (1948)

DIGRESSION ON NUMBER 1, 1948 BY FRANK O’HARA

I am ill today but I am not

too ill. I am not ill at all.

It is a perfect day, warm

for winter, cold for fall.

A fine day for seeing. I see

ceramics, during lunch hour, by

Miro, and I see the sea by Leger;

light, complicated Metzingers

and a rude awakening by Brauner,

a little table by Picasso, pink.

I am tired today but I am not

too tired. I am not tired at all.

There is the Pollock, white, harm

will not fall, his perfect hand

and the many short voyages. They'll

never fence the silver range.

Stars are out and there is sea

enough beneath the glistening earth

to bear me toward the future

which is not so dark. I see.