Smitha Vishwanath's Blog, page 8

NaPoWriMO 2025, Day 17 : Chiles Relleno

Our resource today is Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, where you can find a smug ceramic pelican, a samurai’s ceremonial suit of armor, and a photograph of the French impressionist painter Camille Pissarro dressed as a Venezuelan herdsman. And now for our daily optional prompt. The surrealist painters Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington moved to Mexico during the height of World […]

NaPoWriMo 2025, Day 16 : Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14 in C# minor

Today’s resource is the Museum of Photographic Art, which is part of the San Diego Museum of Art. Through the museum’s online collection, you can explore a number of current and past exhibitions, including a series of portraits by Bern Schwartz (I rather like the one of Ralph Ellison) and a group of very painterly compositions by Lynn G. Fayman. […]

NaPoWriMo 2025, Day 15: Musings

Copyright@smithavpennings.com. All Rights Reserved. My books:  While Brother J.C.’s warm-up and Kenyon’s poem might seem very different at first, they’re both informed by repetition, simple language, and they express enthusiasm. They have a sermon/prayer-like quality, and then end with a bang. Your challenge is to write a six-line poem that has these same qualities.The ShirtThe […]

NaPoWriMo 2025, Day 14: The Insect Kingdom

Our featured resource for the day is the online gallery of the Rijksmuseum, where you may particularly enjoy their series on 100 masterpieces within the museum’ s collection. And here’s a little anecdote about how browsing an online collection of this kind can lead you to new and startling discoveries. While taking a peek at […]

NaPoWriMo 2025, Day 13 : There’s a story in every painting

Painting by me. Based on a friend’s photograph Donald Justice’s poem, “There is a gold light in certain old paintings,” plays with both art and music, and uses an interesting and (as far as I know) self-invented form. His six-line stanzas use lines of twelve syllables, and while they don’t use rhyme, they repeat end […]

NaPoWriMo 2025, Day 12 : Bob Weir at the Guitar

Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem inspired by Wallace Stevens’ poem, “Peter Quince at the Clavier.” It’s a complex poem that not only heavily features the idea of music, but is structured like a symphony. Its four sections, like symphonic movements, play with and expand on an overall theme, using the […]

NaPoWriMo 2025, Day 11: Gotta get up and try, try, try

Our resource for the day is the online collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, where you can find everything from a pair of bamboo-framed sunglasses to a very silly parody advertisement for talking toilet paper to a rococo coffee pot with a spout in the form of a rather gobsmacked sea-serpent. And last but not least, today’s (optional) prompt. Take a […]

NaPoWriMo 2025, Day 10- Coming clean

Today’s featured resource is a virtual visit to the Sistine Chapel. I went there many years ago and marveled at the wonderful paintings (while also getting quite the crick in my neck from craning up to look at the ceiling). But when I went to talk over them later that day with the friend I was […]

NaPoWriMo 2025, Day 9 : We walk in the wilderness

Our featured resource for the day is the online gallery of the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. Although it may be most famous for its witch trials, Salem was a seafaring town whose sailors and shipowners brought back all manner of items from their travels – which became the initial source of the museum’s collection. The museum […]

NaPoWriMo 2025, Day 8 : A Ghazal- His eyes

Today’s featured resource is a bit silly: it’s the Museum of Bad Art. Now, bad art – like good – is in the eye of the beholder, and I rather like some of the paintings in the museum’s whimsical collection.And now here’s today’s totally optional prompt!The ghazal (pronounced kind of like “huzzle,” with a particularly […]