Poster Image
$20
Item#: 2002SYR07
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
Farmer's Market Day
poster information
Description
farmer's market day—
the bald man scrutinizes
a ripe cantaloupe.
What I like about haiku is that it's very organic and unpretentious. It's really a living awareness about what's going on around us in the natural world, but also an awareness of how we, as humans, insert ourselves into the natural world.
This haiku about the market, for instance: it really came to me. It was something that really happened. I was at the farmer's market, just walking around, doing my thing, when I looked over, and here's a guy, so very carefully examining this cantaloupe. And he happened to be bald. It was one of those natural connections.
The poem came to me in that instant. That isn't to say I didn't work on it to revise it. I did. But that was actual experience, in the moment, right then and there.
I didn't know about the farmer's market. So I was curious. I figured there would be rich imagery at the market—colorful fruits and vegetables, interesting people. And I liked the idea of the old man. I've always found something interesting about drawing and painting older people, because of the history and wisdom about them.
The poem has the man “scrutinizing” a cantaloupe. The original wording, before the poet changed it, was “contemplating.” I thought that was kind of strange—most people don't contemplate a fruit. So I had to go with it and really make it fantastical, and really make him contemplating it, as though it was alive or something. Like the fruit was floating in the air—like it was magical.