Yesterday and today, I wrote poems that come from Grant Wood's lithograph, Honorary Degree (1938). I wasn't crazy about yesterday's poem so I gave it another try today. Okay, first yesterday's poem, a tanka:
After “Honorary Degree” (1938)
Grant Wood would have loved
how Robert Frost had a quilt
sewn of the hoods from
his honorary degrees.
What a rainbow of colors!
—Draft by Vince Gotera [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]
And here is today's poem.
Honorary Degree
Three men in robes of velvet and satin,
beneath an American Gothic high window,
play out an age-old tableau: awarding
an academic prize to a person of great note.
It’s rather like the Wizard of Oz bestowing
a medal on the Scarecrow for his smarts.
The man on the left is handing a diploma
to the one in the center, a rotund man
who, most agree, looks like Grant Wood
himself. The man on the right is beginning
to drape a velveteen hood over Grant,
which mirrors the shape of the window,
itself an echo of his most famous painting.
This lithograph seems clearly a send-up
of the whole honorary degree custom.
Wood’s avatar, placed right in the middle,
has the mischievous look of a farmboy
who’d rather be on a riverbank fishing.
A brown trout would be a better catch
than that diploma or that fancy hood.
—Draft by Vince Gotera [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]
Here's the Grant Wood lithograph:
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| Grant Wood, Honorary Degree (1938) |
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