Poster Image
$20
Item#: 2003SYR16
Purchase Details
11x17-inches, printed on heavy weight (100-pound) Hammermill cover paper. We package each print with a piece of chipboard in a clear plastic sleeve.
You also receive…
An information page with photos of the artist and poet, and hand-written comments from each.
Medium- and large-format posters are available by custom order. Contact us for details.
Poem Inspiration Location
Emptiness Echoes
poster information
Description
Emptiness echoes
around monuments. A man
remembers shadows.
This poem occurred to me in summertime. But it's also a vision of numerous experiences. I stand at Clinton Square now and feel the same thing. It's a spiritual presence.
I'm amazed to hear about Frederick Douglass coming to Syracuse to speak about the abolition of slavery. Five thousand people came to hear him. Five thousand! There couldn't have been much more than that in the whole county. Not in the 1840s.
I just try to write what I feel.
Shadows.
I felt that the haiku was great. It has a very patriotic feel, as well as a great location. The war memorial statues at Clinton Square fall right into the genre of work that I normally enjoy working on.
My personal work that I enjoy is cityscape paintings of European cities like Venice, Rome and Tuscany. This haiku gave me the opportunity to paint a landscape and I was able to include a human figure, which gave it a narrative quality.
As far as the figure is concerned, I felt that the haiku was explaining a man paying his respect to the soldier who fought in the war. I also portrayed one of the “fallen soldiers” returning the respect with a salute in the cast shadow of the figure.