Picturing America

Explore American history through poems and visual art!

The American Library Association's Public Programs Office asked Poets.org to compile supplementary resources for Picturing America, the National Endowment for the Humanities's initiative to incorporate visual arts in library and classroom activities involving literature and social studies.

The ongoing program operates on the premise that "the nation's artistic heritage—our paintings, sculpture, architecture, fine crafts, and photography—offers unique insights into the character, ideals, and aspirations of our country."

American poets have always engaged with the ever-changing landscape of their fellow artists. Collected here is a sample of that rich dialogue in which poetry has tweaked, stolen from, and inspired these historical works of art.

3-A: "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" by Grant Wood

Paul Revere's Ride
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Concord Hymn
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

3-B: "George Washington" by Gilbert Stuart

Washington's Monument, February, 1885
by Walt Whitman

Occasioned by General Washington's Arrival in Philadelphia, On His Way to His Residence in Virginia
by Philip Freneau

The Father of My Country
by Diane Wakoski

4-A: "Washington Crossing the Delaware" by Emanuel Leutze

On Seeing Larry Rivers' Washington Crossing the Delaware at the Museum of Modern Art
by Frank O'Hara

George Washington Crossing the Delaware
by Kenneth Koch

4-B: "Benjamin Franklin" by Hiram Powers

How to get Riches
The Busy-man's Picture
by Benjamin Franklin

5-A: "View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow" by Gilbert Stuart

Above the Oxbow
by Sylvia Plath

<a data-cke-saved-href="http://picturingamerica.neh.gov/show_fullscreen.php?item=5b_1&desc=Cover%20illustration%20for%20The%20Last%20of%20the%20Mohicans" href="http://picturingamerica.neh.gov/show_fullscreen.php?item=5b_1&desc=Cover%20illustration%20for%20The%20Last%20of%20the%20Mohicans" "="" target="_blank">5-B: "The Last of the Mohicans" by N. C. Wyeth

The Song of Hiawatha
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

6-A: "American Flamingo" by John James Audubon

John James Audubon
by Stephen Vincent Benét

Audubon: a Vision
by Robert Penn Warren

Flamingo Watching
by Kay Ryan

6-B: "Catlin Painting the Portrait of Mah-to-toh-pa—Mandan" by George Catlin

I Will Fight No More Forever
by Chief Joseph

8-A: "Looking Down Yosemite Valley" by Albert Bierstadt

Exit, Pursued by a Sierra Meadow
by Robert Hass

9-A: "The Veteran in a New Field" by Winslow Homer

Haymaking
by John Clare

Mowing
by Robert Frost

Haymaking
by William Carlos Williams

9-B: "Abraham Lincoln" by Alexander Gardner

When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom'd
by Walt Whitman

10-A: "Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Regiment Memorial" by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Boston Common
by John Berryman

For the Union Dead
by Robert Lowell

An Ode in Time of Hesitation
by William Vaughn Moody

10-B: Quilts: 19th through 20th Centuries

Quilts
by Nikki Giovanni

11-B: "Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room" by James McNeill Whistler

The Peacock Room
by Robert Hayden

12-B: "Allies Day, May 1917" by Childe Hassam

The Waste Land
by T. S. Eliot

13-A: "Brooklyn Bridge" by Walker Evans

To Brooklyn Bridge
by Hart Crane

Granite and Steel
by Marianne Moore

14-B: "Brooklyn Bridge" by Joseph Stella

Brooklyn Bridge
by Vladimir Mayakovsky

The New Colossus
by Emma Lazarus

15-A: "American Landscape" by Charles Sheeler

Chicago
by Carl Sandburg

17-A: "The Migration of the Negro Panel no. 57" by Jacob Lawrence

Theme for English B
by Langston Hughes

19-A: "Freedom of Speech" by Norman Rockwell

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
by Randall Jarrell

20-B: "Ladder for Booker T. Washington" by Dudley Randall

Booker T. and W.E.B.
by Dudley Randall
 

Notes on Ekphrasis
by Alfred Corn
"Ekphrasis (also spelled "ecphrasis") is a direct transcription from the Greek ... and seems originally to have been used as a rhetorical term designating a passage in prose or poetry that describes something."

	Ekphrasis: Poetry Confronting Art Discover the history of early ekphrastic poems, including works by Homer and Virgil.
	Writing Exercise: Write an Ekphrastic Poem A generative writing exercise to inspire engagement with ekphrastic poetry.
	Explore Poetry & Art Browse articles exploring the overlaps between poetry and the visual arts.
	Free Verse Project Hundreds of participants recast their favorite lines of poetry in the most unusual places.

The Shield of Achilles by W. H. Auden

The Painting by Jon Balaban

War Photograph by Kate Daniels

The Family Photograph by Vona Groarke

Museum Guard by David Hernandez

The Mad Potter by John Hollander

Messieur Degas Teaches Art and Science at Durfy Intermediate School, Detroit 1942
by Philip Levine

Ode to a Grecian Urn by John Keats

Die Muhle Brennt—Richard
by Richard Matthews

Photograph of People Dancing in France
by Leslie Adrienne Miller

Why knowing is (& Matisse's Woman with a Hat) by Martha Ronk

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
by William Carlos Williams

Stealing The Scream by Monica Youn

Joseph Cornell, with Box by Michael Dumanis