Poster Image
$20
Item#: 2005SYR16
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
Fishermen Gone Home
poster information
Description
Fishermen gone home
Lights cast their lines in the lake—
Catch a quarter moon
I live in Solvay, and when I'm driving home from town, especially in the summer, I often notice the lights from Liverpool casting reflections in Onondaga Lake. When the lake is still the reflections can be very long.
This haiku came out of that observation. The quarter moon is there, as a reflection, and the long reflections are fishing lines, going after it.
Come to think of it, this haiku “re-tells” a tired old cliché: we often say a shadow or reflection is “cast” without examining the metaphorical world of fishing where that verb comes from.
Lately this is how I tend to work, in mixed media and sculpture. I like to manipulate the material with my hands, as opposed to just using a brush or a pencil. In this case, I sculpted the figure, photographed it, and then manipulated it in Photoshop.
I think the subject of this poem appealed to me because fishing is huge in my family. It reminded me of watching my dad and brother fish.
It was nice going to the lake to take my reference photographs for this piece. I went close to sunset, when the lighting was beautiful and there was a great sense of solitude outside. I was then able to bring those elements into my final illustration.