Written for: dVerse Poets Pub – “Warhol in Words” – Poetic Pop Art-dVerse form for all
(posted by Victoria)
“Pop art emerged in Britain in the early 1950’s and developed to a new level in America in the second half of the decade. Influenced by the cultural trends of mass production and commercialism, pop art focuses the artists’ efforts on the mundane and, as the name suggests, the popular cultural icons of the era. Think of Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans or Marilyn Monroe’s. A response to non-representational art such as abstract expressionism, pop art explores simple reality in detail.”
And so, for today’s prompt, let’s enter the world of Pop art. Here are a few ways you may choose to do that:
• Chose a cultural phenomenon, a product, an icon/idol or mass medium as the subject of your poem.
• Write about an artist of the Pop Art Movement. There is an extensive list available on Wikipedia, as well as a wealth of information about pop art: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_Art
• Write an ekphrasis using a work of pop art.
• Browse a grocery store or mall, looking for art in the ordinary and use that for inspiration. Art is all around us.
• Create a poetic “time capsule,” a chronicle of the age and culture in which we live.
• Use repetition or shape to make your point.
I have become the country’s glamor girl.
See me as blonde, simple, sexual.
No one sees the blood behind
the beauty. I am bleeding from
inside out.
Andy paints me in my blue period,
far from the thoughts of Picasso.
I am becoming the night.

Unraveling. They stifle me. I have a brain that thinks. I am not a cardboard cutout.
And so she did become the night, lost and alone in a world that never stops! Nice!
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Thanks, Dwight!
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I like this description: “No one sees the blood behind
the beauty.”
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Thanks, Frank!
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great deconstruction
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Thanks so much, Andrew.
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Very well captured — I am reminded of Elton’s song too.
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Yes, I did think about that. Thanks, Sabio.
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Sarah, this is so poignant and sad. You have caught the essence of both Marilyn and Pop Art. There is so much similarity in her life and Andy’s–that black hole, the emptiness. Dang.
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Thanks, Victoria!
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Ah, poor Marilyn. Such a touching piece. I love the progression through the images, it works really well.
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Thanks, Sarah!
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Of course Photoshop now allows us to take a portrait and create it in any color we wish. Guess Warhol was the precursor of that!
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He could be the secret father of Photoshop!
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