Poster Image
$20
Item#: 2004SYR06
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
In a Rose Garden
poster information
Description
In a Rose Garden
at the top of Campus Hill
wedding dresses bloom
When my wife and I moved to Syracuse, we used to go up to the rose garden for walks. Well, on Saturdays, it's like one out of three brides in Syracuse would go up there for a picture op. You'd get run over by brides. Brides, grooms, the whole wedding party. So it just hit me as wedding dresses blooming. It was almost instantaneous. That haiku came right out.
I've always enjoyed the rose garden, and this was a good opportunity to illustrate it. The last line of the poem really struck me: "wedding dresses bloom." I know that a lot of people go to the garden to have wedding pictures taken. So I was originally thinking of a picture of a couple having wedding pictures taken. Then I decided to relate it more to my college experience. I've often seen couples in the garden, so I started to think of the wedding dresses in bloom as things developing.
I had my roommate and her close friend, who are really quite comfortable with each other, pose for me. And it was fun. I mean, we went out and I was, like, "Act like a couple." And they were, like, "Ummm, how do we do that?" We did a couple of different poses, and this one, with her head on his shoulder, on the bench, seemed to work the best.