The Gauguin Answer Sheet: Poems
The painting Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? by Paul Gauguin, intended as the painter's final artistic testimony, is the inspiration and framework for this book. In one way, The Gauguin Answer Sheet focuses on the intricate details of the painting and offers its lush Tahitian landscape and characters—a black dog, a pair of conspirators, a shy woman, a pleading goddess, and a crouching mummy, among many others. In another sense, Dennis Finnell deeply probes the underlying implications—and personal associations—the painting offers.

The poem's own questions, suggested by those in the painting's title, are concerned with origins, identities, and futures—of the poet and others. Finnell reflects on the plight of the characters portrayed in Gauguin's painting and imagines their thoughts and feelings about life in the world outside. Along with his ruminations on these imagined characters, Finnell visits his own family history, reflecting on the lives of earlier generations, to affirm the shared nature of each individual's origins and identities. Through his poetry, time and space, painting and history, and imagination and reality interconnect and offer an unusually imaginative, surprising work of art.

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The Gauguin Answer Sheet: Poems
The painting Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? by Paul Gauguin, intended as the painter's final artistic testimony, is the inspiration and framework for this book. In one way, The Gauguin Answer Sheet focuses on the intricate details of the painting and offers its lush Tahitian landscape and characters—a black dog, a pair of conspirators, a shy woman, a pleading goddess, and a crouching mummy, among many others. In another sense, Dennis Finnell deeply probes the underlying implications—and personal associations—the painting offers.

The poem's own questions, suggested by those in the painting's title, are concerned with origins, identities, and futures—of the poet and others. Finnell reflects on the plight of the characters portrayed in Gauguin's painting and imagines their thoughts and feelings about life in the world outside. Along with his ruminations on these imagined characters, Finnell visits his own family history, reflecting on the lives of earlier generations, to affirm the shared nature of each individual's origins and identities. Through his poetry, time and space, painting and history, and imagination and reality interconnect and offer an unusually imaginative, surprising work of art.

21.95 In Stock
The Gauguin Answer Sheet: Poems

The Gauguin Answer Sheet: Poems

by Dennis Finnell
The Gauguin Answer Sheet: Poems

The Gauguin Answer Sheet: Poems

by Dennis Finnell

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Overview

The painting Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? by Paul Gauguin, intended as the painter's final artistic testimony, is the inspiration and framework for this book. In one way, The Gauguin Answer Sheet focuses on the intricate details of the painting and offers its lush Tahitian landscape and characters—a black dog, a pair of conspirators, a shy woman, a pleading goddess, and a crouching mummy, among many others. In another sense, Dennis Finnell deeply probes the underlying implications—and personal associations—the painting offers.

The poem's own questions, suggested by those in the painting's title, are concerned with origins, identities, and futures—of the poet and others. Finnell reflects on the plight of the characters portrayed in Gauguin's painting and imagines their thoughts and feelings about life in the world outside. Along with his ruminations on these imagined characters, Finnell visits his own family history, reflecting on the lives of earlier generations, to affirm the shared nature of each individual's origins and identities. Through his poetry, time and space, painting and history, and imagination and reality interconnect and offer an unusually imaginative, surprising work of art.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780820322933
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Publication date: 05/14/2001
Series: The Contemporary Poetry
Pages: 72
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.25(d)

About the Author

DENNIS FINNELL is the author of two additional books of poetry, Red Cottage and Belovèd Beast (Georgia). He is the winner of the 1990 Juniper Prize and a grant from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation. He lives in Deerfield, Massachusetts.

DENNIS FINNELL is the author of two additional books of poetry, Red Cottage and Belovèd Beast (Georgia). He is the winner of the 1990 Juniper Prize and a grant from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation. He lives in Deerfield, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents


Some of you look into this, my mouth
Start our eyes
Scratch, sniff
Come, endure
Interlude: for the shy one
Out of mouths
Her kiss evaporates, his testimony calcifies
Ultimata
Conspirators, speaking
Aorta, keeping the whitecaps white
Interlude: Mary K on you and the omnivore
A word dressed in fog
"From, from . . ."
Interlude: the shy one on skin and light
Climbing out through the mummy
Notes
Acknowledgments
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