Wood_cover.qxd (Page 1) - National Council of Teachers of English

Interdisciplinary Connections 83these together will allow students to learn from one another while creatingmore complicated and thorough projects for the fair.Artistic Endeavors: Creating a Still LifeNot long ago, I was flipping through Nikki Giovanni’s Cotton Candy ona Rainy Day and came across a poem called “Fascinations.” The laststanza goes like this:“if you were a pure boltof fire cutting the skiesi’d touch you risking my lifenot because i’m brave or strongbut because i’m fascinatedby what the outcome will be” (40–45)I was prompted to paint something to illustrate these lines, an endeavorI’d never attempted before—three blue-purple watercolors cut open byyellow-orange flames. Unsatisfied by any one of the paintings I’d done,I cut them up and put them back together to make one stained glasscollage set in a black shadow box topped off with a transparency yieldingGiovanni’s words, and when I was finished, I couldn’t rememberwhich came first, the words or the images. Which was the art? I wasn’tsure that it mattered, and to distinguish between the two seemed like amistake. I gave the piece to a friend as a gift, hoping that ultimately thepicture would forget that it was born from words, hoping that it wouldunderstand that its real purpose was to frame the world in a new lightand become something special for this person. This is the miracle ofpoetry and art; they seem to bring one another to life, that is, if they canever really be seen as separate entities.Pat Mora’s poem “Still Life” lends itself to this sort of artistic endeavor,a merging of words into images and back again.Still LifeStill hearing dawnalive with birdsstirring the morning breeze.Still warming my fingersround a cup, café I madein the quietbefore the world fills the air.Still opening these doorsheavier nowwith my own hands,