Monday, April 30, 2012

Charlotte and Poetry in Motion ( A Recent Adventure)

We took Charlotte to Salem last weekend. The intent was to spend a day in Marblehead looking at beaches and boats and spend the next day at the Salem Witch Museum and the Peabody Essex.

We went to the Peabody Essex Museum first and were all so enthralled that the witches will just have to wait for another day. If you know Charlotte, you know that missing witches is a big deal, so I was pretty thrilled.

Charlotte wanted most of all to explore the Maritime Art collection. She was mesmerized by paintings of boats on the ocean, pictures of pirates, and questions of attribution.  Charlotte has been learning about perspective and volume in art class this year, and especially the notion of making things look real.  She was particularly impressed by this painting:

Thomas M. Hoyne, New Ways on Banquereau, 1981, Peabody Essex Museum


She talked about how glassy the water looked and we discussed how the artist might have used different colors to get the boaters' reflection.  We were all tickled that the artist's name was the same as our old street in Chicago.


While we were in Salem, MassPoetry was sponsoring its fourth festival of poetry in honor of National Poetry Month.  We were mesmerized by the poetry performance of David Zucker.  You can read more about that performance over at Culture Bean.  Here I want to share Charlotte's enthusiasm for the performance in the pictures Philippe snapped and in her haiku inspired, on the spot, by Zucker's performance of haikus:

A Haiku by Charlotte
I love summer its
so fun! You get to play out-
side. I see fairies!

It may be the last day of National Poetry Month, but it certainly isn't the last day to enjoy poetry.  We'll be reading more and more of it.

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