Poetry Challenge: Optical Order

In addition to being an artist, Markus Lüpertz was a poet. Throughout the exhibition, share your Lüpertz-inspired poems with us to win prizes. Every other week, we’ll issue a new poetry challenge based on images or themes in the exhibition for fresh inspiration and chances to win.

Installation view of Markus Lüpertz at The Phillips Collection. Photo: Lee Stalsworth

THIS WEEK’S CHALLENGE:
Rather than chronologically, the Markus Lüpertz exhibition is organized in an optical order (more on this in a previous blog post). Write a short poem describing your response to the way Lüpertz’s works are displayed and arranged in this installation.

THIS WEEK’S PRIZE: An Individual membership to The Phillips Collection.

TO ENTER: Leave your poem in the comments here, or share on social media with #LupertzPoem. We’ll select winners on Friday, September 1.

**UPDATE: The winning poem was submitted by Rebecca B:

Walking into a room
A city
A town
A crowd
We do not simply
Walk
Into the present moment
With painted past
And indistinct future
We enter a space
Filled with
Light
Color
Voices
Feelings.
Because we enter
Through a doorway
Does not mean
We should expect
A way
We have already felt
We have already faced.

Poetry Challenge: Dissecting Dithyrambics

In addition to being an artist, Markus Lüpertz was a poet. Throughout the exhibition, share your Lüpertz-inspired poems with us to win prizes. Every other week, we’ll issue a new poetry challenge based on images or themes in the exhibition for fresh inspiration and chances to win.

Baumstamm Abwaerts Dithyrambisch (Tree Trunk Down—Dithyrambic), 1966. Distemper on canvas, 98 1/2 x 71 in. Hall Collection, Courtesy Hall Art Foundation

THIS WEEK’S CHALLENGE:
Create a haiku inspired by the colors and shapes in Markus Lüpertz’s Baumstamm Abwaerts Dithyrambisch (Tree Trunk Down—Dithyrambic). A traditional haiku is a three-line poem with seventeen syllables, written in a 5/7/5 syllable count.

THIS WEEK’S PRIZE: Four anytime tickets to The Phillips Collection

TO ENTER: Leave your poem in the comments here, or share on social media with #LupertzPoem. We’ll select winners on Friday, August 18.

**UPDATE: The winning poem was submitted by Katherine Rutsala:

So quartered and drawn
the green golden tree trunk flies.
The forgiving sky.

Poetry Challenge: Men Without Women

In addition to being an artist, Markus Lüpertz was a poet. Throughout the exhibition, share your Lüpertz-inspired poems with us to win prizes. Every other week, we’ll issue a new poetry challenge based on images or themes in the exhibition for fresh inspiration and chances to win.

Männer ohne Frauen. Parsifal (Men without Women: Parsifal), 1993. Oil and tempera on cardboard, 33 x 20 1/2 in. Private collection

THIS WEEK’S CHALLENGE:
Create a haiku describing what you see in Lüpertz’s Männer ohne Frauen. Parsifal (Men without Women: Parsifal). A traditional haiku is a three-line poem with seventeen syllables, written in a 5/7/5 syllable count.

THIS WEEK’S PRIZE: Exhibition Prize Package (exhibition catalogue and other goodies from the museum shop)

TO ENTER: Leave your poem in the comments here, or share on social media with #LupertzPoem. We’ll select winners on Friday, August 4.

**UPDATE: The winning poem was submitted by Macie McKitrick:

castrated fluidity:

geometry flows
unhindered by soft waters
angles bend in pain