Portrait Poetry
Portraits aren’t only for the visual arts. Literary arts have long been telling us about people whether in fiction or non-fiction. While biographical works certainly tell the events of a person’s life, portrait poetry can give a deeper glimpse into who a person is or who a person aspires to be. Some portrait poems describe a person’s physical presence, some describe a person’s character, and others tell about the experience of being. In this creative prompt, we will be exploring portrait poetry as a means of capturing the essence of someone, perhaps even of ourselves. We will be looking at different ways to approach a person, with examples of portrait poems for each approach.
On The Physical Form
When choosing to describe the physical form in poetry, consider eliciting the feeling of gazing upon those features. Then, expand upon that feeling to what lies beneath what the eyes can see. What do these features hold for a person? Have eyes carried innocence, naivety, pain, understanding? Are shoulders proud or cowering? Do legs glide effortlessly or trample with considerable weight? And what does this tell us about a person? What is it that you are trying to say about your person?
Self-Portrait
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Portrait of Edna St. Vincent Millay, William Zorach (1923)
Hair which she still devoutly trusts is red.
Colorless eyes, employing
A childish wonder
To which they have no statistic
Title.
A large mouth,
Lascivious,
Aceticized by blasphemies.
A long throat,
Which will someday
Be strangled.
Thin arms,
In the summertime leopard
With freckles.
A small body,
Unexclamatory,
But which,
Were it the fashion to wear no clothes,
Would be as well-dressed
As any.
On Expectations Versus Reality
Whether from society, family, friends, or ourselves, expectations abound for who and how a person should be. And yet reality is what it is. Even when we become exactly who we are expected to be, what does the realization of this fact elicit? It it who we would have been all along or have our choices not been our own? The experience of grappling with who we are and what is expected of us can have many stages, each of which is a worthy exploration in poetry.
Self-Portrait as So Much Potential
by Chen Chen
Dreaming of one day being as fearless as a mango.
As friendly as a tomato. Merciless to chin & shirtfront.
Realizing I hate the word “sip.”
But that’s all I do.
I drink. So slowly.
& say I’m tasting it. When I’m just bad at taking in liquid.
I’m no mango or tomato. I’m a rusty yawn in a rumored year. I’m an arctic attic.
Come amble & ampersand in the slippery polar clutter.
I am not the heterosexual neat freak my mother raised me to be.
I am a gay sipper, & my mother has placed what’s left of her hope on my brothers.
She wants them to gulp up the world, spit out solid degrees, responsible grandchildren ready to gobble.
They will be better than mangoes, my brothers.
Though I have trouble imagining what that could be.
Flying mangoes, perhaps. Flying mango-tomato hybrids. Beautiful sons.
On Connection And Spirituality
Spirituality is a complex relationship. It is one that evolves, and one that we don’t always know how to feel much less how to describe in words. And yet if we can pinpoint those moments, those feelings of connection, what have they held? When did they strike us? And what have we seen and experienced that brings us to those same feelings? What can we see of ourselves in these moments? Do we still see ourselves at all when we become a part of something greater?
The Delight Song of Tsoai-Talee
by N. Scott Momaday
I am a feather on the bright sky
I am the blue horse that runs on the plain
I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water
I am the shadow that follows a child
I am the evening light, the lustre of meadows
I am an eagle playing with the wind
I am a cluster of bright beads
I am the farthest star
I am the cold of dawn
I am the roaring of the rain
I am the glitter of the crust of the snow
I am the long track of the moon in a lake
I am a flame of four colors
I am a deer standing away in the dusk
I am a field of sumac and the pomme blanche
I am an angle of geese in the winter sky
I am the hunger of a young wolf
I am the whole dream of these things
You see, I am alive, I am alive
I stand in good relation to the earth
I stand in good relation to the gods
I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful
I stand in good relation to the daughter of Tsen-tainte
You see, I am alive, I am alive
On Aging
Aging comes in many stages. There is the change from a young child to an older one. The coming of age of a young adult. Losing the “young” and becoming an adult. Entering middle age. Becoming older still. An elder. And throughout it all we are ourselves. Even in our new versions. Even when advanced age is old to everyone else and new to us. What has age brought us? Is it wisdom? Confidence? Regret? Acceptance? What is it about our ever-changing selves that holds fast and threads through each stage with us? Which threads are we desperate to hold on to, and which are we desperate to leave behind? What parts of ourselves did we lose, only to find them again?
Rembrandt’s Late Self-Portraits
by Elizabeth Jennings
Self-Portrait, Rembrandt van Rijn (1659)
You are confronted with yourself. Each year
The pouches fill, the skin is uglier.
You give it all unflinchingly. You stare
Into yourself, beyond. Your brush’s care
Runs with self-knowledge. Here
Is a humility at one with craft.
There is no arrogance. Pride is apart
From this self-scrutiny. You make light drift
The way you want. Your face is bruised and hurt
But there is still love left.
Love of the art and others. To the last
Experiment went on. You stared beyond
Your age, the times. You also plucked the past
And tempered it. Self-portraits understand,
And old age can divest,
With truthful changes, us of fear of death.
Look, a new anguish. There, the bloated nose,
The sadness and the joy. To paint’s to breathe,
And all the darknesses are dared. You chose
What each must reckon with.
Self-Portrait
by Mary Oliver
I wish I was twenty and in love with life
and still full of beans.
Onward, old legs!
There are the long, pale dunes; on the other side
the roses are blooming and finding their labor
no adversity to the spirit.
Upward, old legs! There are the roses, and there is the sea
shining like a song, like a body
I want to touch
though I’m not twenty
and won’t be again but ah! seventy. And still
in love with life. And still
full of beans.
My Own Exploration
Getting a bit vulnerable here. What self-portrait isn’t? This exercise had me asking myself a lot of questions, and remembering the things I used to write when I was younger. And so my poem is the result of exploring the concepts of Aging and Expectations vs Reality. It’s correcting the poetry of my youth, specifically the self-portrait poetry that was confident when I was not.
Self-Portrait at 15
by Carly Maiorano
I wrote a poem.
A confident offering.
Because they see that I am smart.
Too smart.
They don’t see that I don’t sleep.
Learning all those things that makes me too smart
takes too long for such things as sleep.
Besides, the glitter of my snowglobe looks so nice,
so perfectly contained when overturned.
A right-sided globe is just water.
Not worth noticing. Even though
we’re all mostly just water anyway.
And they’re good at not noticing.
They won’t notice that the portrait is not of me.
It looks just like me.
Full of swirling glitter and too-much smartness.
It does not matter that I am not a confident person.
I am a confident writer.
That will be enough
to turn me upside down for long enough
to be who I wasn’t.
To be who I was.
I’m sure I’ll take some more time and explore some more portrait poems, perhaps even continue editing the one I just shared. I hope you’ll take some time to go through this poetry exercise, whether you decide to write a portrait or a self-portrait poem. I would love to hear your takeaways in the comments. And if you feel comfortable sharing, I would love to see your poems in the comments! If your poem feels like something dear that you’d like to keep for yourself, then I hope this exploration was a meaningful one as we continue to dive into the powerful world of portrature.
