I Illuminated the Poem Author S Prayer by Ilya Kaminski

I memorized, recited, and illuminated the poem "Author's Prayer" by Ilya Kaminski. Honestly, I’m having a little trouble getting started reflecting on this poem because it’s just so unreflectable. This poem is the literary equivalent of an abstract painting. A wise man once told me that abstract paintings are good because they remind people that sometimes painting is really just about the paint. There is no clear picture, no direct message, but that doesn't mean it has no meaning. It's just all about the images and the mood and all that good stuff. Some images are given to you directly, but others are implied, so no two people who read (or hear) it take away the same mental picture or draw the same meaning from it. Because of this, I thoroughly despised illuminating this poem.

The author already gave his poem just the right amount of light. We can see enough of the poem to get a somewhat vague picture in our minds, forcing us to add the details ourselves, making it our own, drawing from our own memories to give the poem meaning. Turning another lamp on in the room by 'illuminating' this poem completely ruins the effect. Putting a picture with every line ensures that the audience takes only those pictures with them, which makes it impersonal, incomprehensible, and easily forgettable. Explain w/ details from the poem how this happens vs. commenting on the difficulty of illumination.

That being said, because of the imagery in the poem, finding pictures to put into the photo story wasn’t hard. Some were stated outright, like the images of the blank paper or crossing the street. Others were required a tiny bit more imagination, like the picture of someone walking on a tightrope used for the line ‘I must walk on the edge of myself,’ but it still wasn’t hard. I simply recited the line in my head to see what mental picture it made me think of, and found something to match.

Adding music that matched was a little harder because none of the choices on photo story were exactly perfect, and I didn’t dare try to add my own because I knew it would make me go crazy to have so many thousands of songs to look through to try to find something perfect. I just can’t deal with that many options. At least photo story is more limited. Oddly enough, the music I chose was labeled as having a somber tone, which is not at all the tone of the poem, in my opinion. I find the poem to be lighthearted and carefree. Maybe the first line or two is a little dark, but despite the references to death, reading it leaves me with picture of a little girl spinning with her arms spread out wide.

Anyway, I’m pretty much done. I apologize for that first paragraph or two, I was drawing blanks on anything to say with regard to ‘the choices made in the creation of the illuminated poem’ so I needed something to get me going. Not that I didn’t mean it, though. Also, it’s occurred to me that my tone’s been very conversational, so I hope this wasn’t supposed to be a formal essay or anything. Tone is fine for your audience. For your purpose, however, stick to an explanation of the poem and your process vs. an evaluation of either. If so, tell me and I can go back and cut out everything but the two actually relevant paragraphs.