Cross-Genre Conversations, Cornell & Moore

In this project students were introduced to the work of poet Marianne Moore and artist Joseph Cornell and asked to look for ways the artifacts they made (poems and boxes, respectively) suggested similarities in theme or practice. The visual art students were then asked to create work that responded to Moore or was Moore-like in some way, and the writing students were to create work that responded to Cornell or was Cornell-like. Here are a few examples:

Ian Koh:

[Made:] Saturday @ 7:30pm – 8:30pm, 28 February 2015

Response to Cornell’s “Solar Set”

Object of Obsession

Scientists exhumes from their deep mental crevice,

Silence leaks sacredness, like a beautiful delicate chalice.

Frantic

but intensely chalked lines and numbers gambit

at inapprehensible magnitude.

Found just over head in clear imaginary ether

So distinctly shining, a tiny crystal,

Like a cartoon mouse hole in a spot

on an infinitely large wall; and a child waits for a clap and squeak. 

 Chris Rasmussen:

Kaitlin Lanning:

Lex Aquilina:

Marisa Lainson:

The Last Medici Princess

There are ghosts in the kitchen drawer next to the sink,

mixed with the whisks and the spoons, asleep.

They're hidden under the silverware tray. Above,

slippery waves of moonlight spill through the window

and kiss the countertop blue. A bird sits on the sill and sings,

"How do you do, How do you do."

The clock chimes two.

I roll marbles in the grout lines of the tile

floor. They scatter and the cat chases after,

following lines that look like telephone wires, a

crucifix covered in shoe prints. I hear our mother

sob and roll three marbles all at once.

They clash and clatter, globs of matter

in motion.

The cat doesn't know where to run.

It'll be three hours yet before the sun comes

up. Voices swim in the rafters like whales

in the ocean, they echo and they spar.

The bird extends her wings and says,

"Goodnight, whoever you are." Our parents

are still fighting, but the dawn is marching

towards our door.

Katie fell from the second floor.

She doesn't play marbles with me anymore.

She lives in the kitchen drawer next to the sink,

sleeping in pearls and a dress. Sisters I never knew

keep her company, likewise clothed in their best--

pendants and curls, their wide eyes unblinking

and blue. They whisper in silence,

"We're waiting for you."

We were the last two. 

Adrianna Coe:

Abby Zilka:

My Eye Falls on Cornell's Parrot and Butterfly Habitat

and meets two other eyes, 

two other creatures staring out,

plump, perched, complacent, nestled and floating,

they flash against the whitewashed sky. Beneath

wrapped-wirey knotted cloud, breeze trails me to the hatched

and boarded case where drabber beasts of air

toss lightly, wing

to wing, span to span, landing

dusty rooted to the ground, then lift and

rush back up: two old friends.

Safe, contained, I tumble through;

watching them watching others

and again.

Kristen Hatakeda:

Kristin Rasmussen:

Ian Heisler:

 

Holly Collier:

Kelly McBride:

Mare Insularum:

sea of islands, the southeast range

of moon mountains. A light flickered on

in the old section. I returned in tropic showers,

saw the racehorses and yellow trees at dawn.

In Belmont, they're playing calypso music, 

tidal forces against the shores. Night

in the Ibrium Basin, a surface breach,

a flood of lava uprising.

[Text taken from Lunar Orbiter Photographic Atlas of the Near Side of the Moon and Isles of the Caribbean.]

Johanna Hickle:

 Sands of Time

Each in turn must scoop his share

From the floor of this desert we call life.

Goblets, hats, cupped hands

Clutching at what we cannot keep.

Sand always discovers the

Cracks in the class

Tears in the cloth

Gaps between the fingers.

A trickling towards

The inevitable conclusion.

Life is not the organized hour glass

But an imperfect vessel--shattered. 

Time leaks.

Its loss will end coldly

And yet we linger in each warm grain of the present.

Sand wears down stone and bone alike

But does so 

Almost gently. 

Jessamy Delling: