Poster Image
$20
Item#: 2006SYR09
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.
Snow Sweeps the Sidewalk
poster information
Description
Snow sweeps the sidewalk
Piles fluff onto bare branches
Turns gray to glisten
I've lived in the Syracuse area my entire life. I've always liked winter and snow, and enjoyed winter activities—building snow forts when I was a kid, and now cross country skiing, snow-shoeing, or snowboarding.
With this poem I was thinking about how pretty things look downtown when there's fresh snow. I had seen a performance at the Civic Center, and I was walking across the plaza by the Everson Museum. The built environment there is very gray and geometric—lots of right angles. You get fresh snow, and those corners become curves, and you've got white glistening snow.
When people talk about snow, they think of the country. But downtown is beautiful in snow, too—unexpectedly beautiful.
I was drawn to this haiku because it conjured up Syracuse weather and the feel of this sleeping, gray beauty. It was pretty clear to me how I was going to create the image. I thought of the snow first. I wanted to have these veils of different densities of snow falling over a skyline. Not the grand skyline of Syracuse—I tried that. There was something nicer about this simple, nondescript corner.
Then the tree comes in as a bit of life. Even though Syracuse is a post-industrial city with a lot of concrete, street lights and telephone wires, it also has an abundance of green and natural beauty. So that sprig of tree is to hint at what lies beyond.
Because that's what I enjoy about living here—all the wonder of spring and summer.