Commentary

One of the lessons I learned early in my career is not to explain my poetry to others. If I had to explain it, then either I did not succeed or the reader failed to understand. I would attend writer's groups where we would share our work and then the group would critique it. Some writers would keep trying to explain their poems if they didn't feel the group grasped the meaning of the poem. If you feel you have to explain your poem to the reader, then you failed to write a successful poem.

I think the same is true of any art form. You don't need to explain your work. A painter shouldn't explain the meaning of his painting. The viewer has the responsibility in the communication exchange to study the work to the best of his ability just as the reader also has some responsibility. It is a two way street.

Biography

Charles Demuth was born in Lancaster, PA where he lived and worked for much of his life. He suffered from both lameness and severe diabetes for most of his life. He graduated from the Franklin and Marshall Academy, an all-male prep school, and studied art at the Drexel Institute and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. While Demuth studied and painted in Philadelphia, New York, Paris and Bermuda, he created most of his mature work in a second floor studio in the house he shared with his mother in Lancaster. The house is now the Demuth Museum.

Cross-Pollination

Artists often influence each other. In this case, the painter, Charles Demuth, was inspired by a poem of his friend, William Carlos Williams.

The Figure 5 In Gold (1928)

Inspired by a poem of

William Carlos Williams:

The Great Figure

The Great Figure

by William Carlos Williams

Among the rain

and lights

I saw the figure 5

in gold

on a red

firetruck

moving

tense

unheeded

to gong clangs

siren howls

and wheels rumbling

through the dark city.