Poster Image
$20
Item#: 2002SYR01
Purchase Details
11x17-inches, printed on heavy weight (100-pound) Hammermill cover paper. We package each print with a piece of chipboard in a clear plastic sleeve.
You also receive…
An information page with photos of the artist and poet, and hand-written comments from each.
Medium- and large-format posters are available by custom order. Contact us for details.
Poem Inspiration Location
Passing Crows Caw As
poster information
Description
Passing crows caw as
notes glide from a bluesman's
slide in Armory Square
I love haiku for the way it connects you to the natural world. I see it as a snapshot of a moment, where I'm an observer, and I'm connected to the environment, exploring and reflecting its intricacies and uniqueness. To capture one of these moments is the challenge of haiku.
Writing haiku about the downtown, there's the additional challenge of coming up with something from the natural world and melding it into the man-made world.
I blended three things that I consider integral to the Syracuse landscape: crows, the blues and Armory Square. Everyday I hear crows spinning talking blues, so I couldn't imagine any self-respecting crow cruising through Armory Square, hearing a smokin' blues rift, and not wanting to chime in.
I guess I was even thinking about jazz in the way the haiku was written. There was something about the beats, with the soft and hard syllables, that had syncopation to it—a jazz-like quality.
So I had the poem in front of me, and I just started sketching furiously, until I found something that I liked. The character is a large part of it. The image almost has a 1930's quality. It reminds me of the films of that era.
And then the power lines. Power lines, for some reason, are something I associate with Syracuse. I don't know why. They have this kind of lyrical, flowing quality to them. So I tried to get that with the power lines in the image as well.