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Apollinaire, Captain Lavender, cubism, cubist, ee cummings, ekphrastic poem, Gertrude Stein, Grace Nichols, Gwendolyn Brooks, Jimmie's Squidoo Picasso, Majorie Evasco, Mary Ann Caws, Mary Jo Bang, Maya Picasso, Medbh McGuckian, Musee Picasso Paris, National Poetry Month 2014, Pablo Picasso, Picasso at the Bus Stop, Picasso Coloring Pages, Picasso inspired poems, Picasso news, Picassoheads, poetry lab, Shuzo Takiguchi, Stephen Gibson, The Blue Room, The Old Guitarist, Wallace Stevens, Woman Sitting in Armchair
Woman Sitting in Armchair (1939)
There has been much in the news recently about the great master painter Pablo Picasso. Musée Picasso Paris today announced that its October 25th reopening will celebrate new work donated by his eldest daughter Maya Widmaier Picasso (78) along with the 133th anniversary of the artist’s death.
According to The Guardian article, the donation consists of a drawing of a woman’s face from his Cubist period and a notebook containing nude studies done in 1960.
Interesting to note, that the drawing’s reverse features the bottom half of a partial sketch of the Picasso-smitten, French poet Guillaume Apollinaire. The top half of which is already in the museum’s collection. With some 5,000 of Picasso’s works on hand, including over 300 paintings, only a small fraction can be displa
yed at any one time. How lovely to have even a taste, and what fun it would be to sneak into those storage alcoves!
This past month, we also learned that the painter’s “The Blue Room” hides a mystery man (in a bow-tie no less) behind the surface painting. Look out Doctor Who #11. You may have a rival.
This was, of course, on the heels of last year’s scandal when Picasso’s stepdaughter accused her handyman of stealing over 400 of the artist’s sketches and watercolors. While a few months prior to this astonishing news, an Ohio man stumbled upon the find of a lifetime, snatching up a rare print (worth a tidy sum) for less than $20 at a thrift store.
So it seems, that the celebrated artist’s face has been popping up everywhere. Even here on this blog!! Back in the spring, I wrote a piece on Literary Rub-offs that introduced you to the Picasso/Gertrude Stein connection. That particular association fascinates me to no end, and other poets seem a bit stuck on the Cubist painter as well.
Here are just a handful of poems inspired by his groundbreaking artwork:
If I Were Told, A Completed Potrait of Picasso by Gertrude Stein (with audio)
Picasso XXIII by e.e. cummings
The Old Guitarist
The Chicago Picasso by Gwendolyn Brooks
excerpts from The Man With the Blue Guitar by Wallace Stevens
Solsequiem (after Pablo Picasso’s Maternidad, 1905) by Marjorie Evasco
Pablo Picasso from Seven Poems by Shuzo Takiguchi (translated by Yuki Tanaka &Mary Jo Bang)
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon by Stephen Gibson
Picasso at the Bus Stop by Kayla Cagan (for National Poetry Month ’14)
And if your looking for a whole collection that sprung from Picasso-watered earth,: Captain Lavender by Medbh McGuckian is for you.
You might also like to explore some of Picasso’s (Own) Poetry with Mary Ann Caws or try your hand at some of the FUN art activities at Jimmie’s Squidoo.
===>Once you have thoroughly immersed yourself in the Cubist zone, your assignment is to write your own Picasso-inspired poem on the back of one of these nifty coloring pages. A small gallery below for color reference and inspiration:
Bonespark~ 
From my first collection, The Chapbook:
Picasso’s Guitar
is disassembled and rebuilt
on canvas when figs are sugared
and clustered in the heavens and the studio
is silent; he makes short work of it,
and in the morning gives it only a passing
glance as it lays under a window and a dovecot.
He reaches instead to paint horses yellow and blue
that are streaming up a hillside like smoke, and when he
stops to look past the guitar and through the window
the fruit and birds are one.
Excellent share. Thank you!!!
Thank you for linking to my poem!