Poster Image
$20
Item#: 2020SYR16
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
Yellow Rounds Of Hay
poster information
Description
yellow rounds of hay
cast shadows in stubbled field
sun slips behind hills
I've lived in an old farmhouse on a hill outside Manlius for almost twenty years. Much of the land around me is woods or pasture. There are few houses. From the hilltop, I can see things I never saw when I lived in town: the sun break through storm clouds, an approaching squall, windrows after a hayfield is cut.
One day, I passed a field after dry hay had been rolled. The big round bales and the shorn field they lay in were gold in the late afternoon light. I took photos, but the photos included details I considered superfluous and distracting. I was disappointed. This haiku is the essence of what I saw.
When I think of Syracuse, I picture the skyline of buildings and the Syracuse University Dome. But when I read Nast's haiku, I immediately pictured the view of the city from a distance, from the beautiful farmland and open fields surrounding the city. I also thought about Monet's Impressionistic hay bales and the sparking reflections on the water.
In my painting, I wanted to combine the geometric edges of the cityscape along the water as they played against the circular disks of the hay in the outlying landscape.
The silhouettes in the field and tiny airplane banner in the sky bring humanity into the equation of concrete plus farmland equals the Syracuse we love.