More Art, More Poets, More New Poems at Tang Museum

Collaborations and collisions between visual art and poetry will continue Thursday, Nov. 19, at 6 p.m., with the second round of Poets in the Museum, a joint venture of Skidmore College’s Tang Museum and the Laureate Poetry Project.

Ten area published poets visited “A Feeling of With,” the current show chosen from the permanent collection by Rachel Seligman, the Tang’s Molloy Curator, in consultation with Skidmore professors from several disciplines. Each poet selected one of the show’s art works as inspiration for a new poem to read at the event, which takes place in the Tang’s upstairs Molloy Wing and is free and open to the public. Portable seating will be available.

Saratoga Springs poet laureate Jay Rogoff will host the event, featuring poets Andy Fogle, Maggie Greaves, Elaine Handley, Hajar Hussaini, Kathleen McCoy, Suzanne S. Rancourt, Jordan Smith, Natalya Sukhonos, Barbara Ungar, and Nancy White, a group with over forty published books among them.

The art inspiring the poets employs painting, sculpture, construction, video, and ceramics by artists including Porfirio DiDonna, William Kentridge, Anya Kielar, Lenore Tawney, Whiting Tennis, Johannes VanDerBeek, and unrecorded artists from China and the Amazon.

“Poetry about visual art,” says Rogoff, “goes back as far as the ancient Greeks, who called it ‘ekphrasis.’ Most poetry reveals a mind at work, but ekphrastic poetry offers the poet’s mind engaging another artist’s imagination. A poet might enter imaginatively into the work, describing it, interpreting it, or interacting with it in any number of ways. The fine arts enlarge the possibilities for poetry.”