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"Visibility: Ten Miles: A Prairie Memoir in Photography and Poetry "
Visibility: Ten Miles is a collaboration of poetry and photography between Sharon Chmielarz, poet, and Ken Smith, photographer. Both are well acquainted with the prairie; hence these photos and poems include not only grasslands but also the unusual only insiders have seen. These images come from two angles, what the eye sees and what the heart responds to. The title suggests the ability on the prairie to see in distances of miles, not of city blocks or minutes. Here it can suggest something more lies ahead which is unseen. And that is what this book brings to the reader–what might be unseen or unremembered or not yet imagined to the eye.
- GenresPoetry
85 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2015
5 people want to read
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June 18, 2015
Visibility: Ten Miles: A Prairie Memoir in Photography and Poetry
By Sharon Chmielarz and Ken Smith
Publisher: North Star Press of St. Cloud. www.northstarpress.com 2015
85 pages
ISBN: 978-0-87839-788-4
$16.95
This book is a collaboration between two accomplished artists: poet Sharon Chmielarz and photographer Ken Smith; both have lived in the prairie, “the steppe,” much of their lives. Their pairing of pictures and words explores the landscape and some of the people who live in it—sunflowers, snow, eagle, clouds, isolated houses, a cow, a windmill, a July 4th parade, machines for farming, current and abandoned, and stretches of prairie ten miles and more. Not surprisingly to those who’ve lived or traveled through the prairie, the wind threads through thirteen of the poems.
At the book launch, the artists presented a multimedia show of some of the work: Smith projected some of the photos and Chmielarz read the companion poems. One of my favorites was the poem “wind,” a list of definitions from nature, which ends with this stanza:
…big alto wind
whooshes in a cottonwood
talking herself
into forest…
I was—and still am--delighted with the pairing of this poem with the beautiful photograph of wind turbines that look like modern sculptures, seen from below. Their blurred blades convey the motion and power of wind.
The book is small compared to many text and picture “coffee table books” but in the mind’s eye the images and words expand, as you might imagine from the previous paragraph; for another example, I see the big sky with its layer upon layer of huge clouds in the photo “Family Outing” as it jumps to me from page 18. Humans stand, tiny, on the rocks below. The poem next to it, “Living on a Planet with Four or Six or Twelve Moons,” brings the big sky to the larger cosmos, where the moon, unlike its life in the city, rises and travels on another time table than the one that we can see.
So how did these two wonderful artists create this collaboration? Contrary to my expectations, I discovered that they did not work together on the creation of the individual poems and photographs that “matched.” They did not set out to illustrate each other’s work. Rather, when they met to discuss this collaboration they shared all their own work from and about the prairie and chose the pieces that would represent the prairie in its complexity as well as add to its partner, as in the examples above.
I’ve been entranced with this collaborative book since it came out in the spring. After the launch, I read the poems straight through, out of my admiration for Chmielarz’ poetry. Then I picked the book up again and marveled at the photos and the pairings. Only later did I browse through the artists’ comments and photograph titles and discover a greater depth to the range of the work, which continues to fascinate my imagination, stay in my heart/mind’s eye.
By Sharon Chmielarz and Ken Smith
Publisher: North Star Press of St. Cloud. www.northstarpress.com 2015
85 pages
ISBN: 978-0-87839-788-4
$16.95
This book is a collaboration between two accomplished artists: poet Sharon Chmielarz and photographer Ken Smith; both have lived in the prairie, “the steppe,” much of their lives. Their pairing of pictures and words explores the landscape and some of the people who live in it—sunflowers, snow, eagle, clouds, isolated houses, a cow, a windmill, a July 4th parade, machines for farming, current and abandoned, and stretches of prairie ten miles and more. Not surprisingly to those who’ve lived or traveled through the prairie, the wind threads through thirteen of the poems.
At the book launch, the artists presented a multimedia show of some of the work: Smith projected some of the photos and Chmielarz read the companion poems. One of my favorites was the poem “wind,” a list of definitions from nature, which ends with this stanza:
…big alto wind
whooshes in a cottonwood
talking herself
into forest…
I was—and still am--delighted with the pairing of this poem with the beautiful photograph of wind turbines that look like modern sculptures, seen from below. Their blurred blades convey the motion and power of wind.
The book is small compared to many text and picture “coffee table books” but in the mind’s eye the images and words expand, as you might imagine from the previous paragraph; for another example, I see the big sky with its layer upon layer of huge clouds in the photo “Family Outing” as it jumps to me from page 18. Humans stand, tiny, on the rocks below. The poem next to it, “Living on a Planet with Four or Six or Twelve Moons,” brings the big sky to the larger cosmos, where the moon, unlike its life in the city, rises and travels on another time table than the one that we can see.
So how did these two wonderful artists create this collaboration? Contrary to my expectations, I discovered that they did not work together on the creation of the individual poems and photographs that “matched.” They did not set out to illustrate each other’s work. Rather, when they met to discuss this collaboration they shared all their own work from and about the prairie and chose the pieces that would represent the prairie in its complexity as well as add to its partner, as in the examples above.
I’ve been entranced with this collaborative book since it came out in the spring. After the launch, I read the poems straight through, out of my admiration for Chmielarz’ poetry. Then I picked the book up again and marveled at the photos and the pairings. Only later did I browse through the artists’ comments and photograph titles and discover a greater depth to the range of the work, which continues to fascinate my imagination, stay in my heart/mind’s eye.
Displaying 1 of 1 review