Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night offers mentor art for teaching students about ekphrastic poetry.

Mentor texts have long been used to model writing techniques. Mentor art can likewise be used to inspire, teach, and refine student writing. Mentor art has the added benefit of addressing diverse learning styles and providing visual support to language learners. Mentor art is especially fitting when introducing your students to ekphrastic poetry. A Google search offers a wealth of general resources and lessons on ekphrastic poetry. This lesson provides a slightly different take by using a broad array of resources around a single work of art— Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night.

What is ekphrastic poetry?
Ekphrasis is loosely translated from the Greek word for “description.” An ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a work of art where the poet may amplify and expand its meaning. While early ekphrastic poems relied almost exclusively on detailed descriptions of the art, modern ekphrastic poems interpret, inhabit, confront, and speak to the art or artist.

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Since ekphrastic poetry grows out of a writer’s intimate understanding of a work of art, it is especially important to let students experience the art on its and their own terms before using it as mentor art. These related resources can support this effort.

• Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night is in the Museum of Modern Art’s collection. See their website for detailed information.
• This interactive Look and Learn gallery walk explores the roots of The Starry Night and how the painting inspired W.D. Snodgrass’ ekphrastic poem and Don McLean’s song — includes links to online biographies and samples of ekphrastic writing.
• This interdisciplinary teacher’s resource offers a range of teaching moves and language for analyzing The Starry Night.
• Magnify this high-quality image.

1. Analyze Don McLean’s “Vincent”

Point out and discuss: Don McLean was inspired to write “Vincent” (Starry Starry Night) after reading a van Gogh biography.

This analysis is apt since McLean saw parallels between music and poetry. As he explained on the UK show Songbook,

Music is like poetry in so many ways. You have wit and drama and humor and pathos and anger and all of these things create the subtle tools that an artist, a stage artist, a good one, uses. Sadly, this has really gone out of music completely. So it makes someone like me a relic, because I am doing things and people like me are doing things that utilize all the classic means of emotional expression.

This song has a number of entry points to support discussion.

• The video Don McLean – Vincent (Starry, Starry Night) with lyrics melds van Gogh’s paintings with McLean’s soundtrack and lyrics.
• Helen Brown’s interview with Don McLean “Why I had to Write ‘Vincent’.” The Telegraph. Feb 24, 2010, describes the thinking and emotional state that inspired McClean to write “Vincent.” This article also describes how McLean’s song echoes van Gogh’s painterly sensibility.
• Don McLean’s website offers more insight into McLean’s motivations and related videos

How does “Vincent” speak to the artist and the artwork?

Turn, Talk, and Report Back (Possible answers: McLean’s lyrics echo the biography that inspired him to write “Vincent.” While he specifically references The Starry Night he also includes references to other works and life events. McLean expresses sympathy for van Gogh’s mental illness that made him “suffer for his sanity.” A bipolar thread that shifts from melancholy to ecstasy runs throughout the song. McLean also celebrates van Gogh’s creative bent and his focus on the downtrodden and overlooked—“weathered faces lined in pain/are soothed beneath the artist’s loving hand.” Van Gogh’s painterly style and his focus on life’s simple beauties are evoked in such lyrics as “flaming flowers that brightly blaze,” “swirling clouds in violet haze,” and “morning fields of amber grain.” McLean’s song encourages listeners to look at van Gogh with sympathy and awe. While he suffered from a mental illness, he also tried to help people to see the beauty in the everyday experiences we take for granted.)

2. Analyze ekphrastic poems inspired by Vincent van Gogh’s “The Starry Night.”

Point out and discuss: Here are four more Starry Night inspired ekphrastic poems. Consider how each poet uses different types of ekphrastic poems to creatively respond to the art and the artist.

• In his poem “Starry Night,” rapper Tupac Shakur talks to van Gogh like a kindred spirit, both socially conscious creative souls ignored by their indifferent communities. Note the regular use of the second person. Tupac respects the purity of van Gogh’s creative drive. In addition to identifying with van Gogh, Shakur had a special affection for McLean’s song “Vincent.”
• Reflecting her trademark confessional style, Anne Sexton’s “The Starry Night” sees the world through van Gogh’s searching tortured eyes. His longing is her longing. His emotional and psychological imbalance is is her emotional and psychological imbalance. And eventually, his suicide is her suicide. Death and a search for the divine mingle in the night skies. Listen to Anne read her poem here.
• Robert Fagles’ “The Starry Night” imagines van Gogh’s brooding, restless thoughts as he paints. Note the use of the first person. Fagles evokes van Gogh’s worldview as he fights his dark thoughts and creeping madness. He looks to the heavens for divine intervention and peace.
• W. D. Snodgrass’ “Van Gogh: ‘The Starry Night,’” is the most visually descriptive and experimental of these five ekphrastic poems. The poem, which contrasts the dynamic night sky with the calm village, is organized into four distinct parts—the village, the night sky, the mountains, and the cypress. In addition to describing the parts of the painting, Snodgrass linguistically reconstructs the painting. You can instantly recognize the three passages that describe the village by their regularity. The lines about the town are symmetrical, orderly, and repetitious. The words are heavy, sleepy, and common. Like van Gogh’s brush strokes, the lines about the sky are swirling, energetic, and irregular. Note how the words cause the reader to breathe in bursts like the pulsing stars. The lines about the mountains and the cypress undulate like the forms themselves. In addition, Snodgrass uses italics type to integrate excerpts from van Gogh’s letter throughout the poem. Through found text, expressive word choice, and strategic typography Snodgrass transforms The Starry Night to another medium.
• Japanese novelist Aoko Matsuda (The Southern Review—Winter 2019) offers a completely different perspective on Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.” In her missive, a child describes her life in the village under the whirlpools of light and how she shares the starry night with a stranger (Vincent) who looks down on her village from a neighboring hill.

…I turn and look absent-mindedly in the direction of the tree ghost, a bottle-green flame off in the distance, and that’s when I first notice the person. They are standing at the window of a building on the far side of the tree ghost, looking this way. The light from their room, the only lit one in the whole building, picks out their shadowy form against the window frame. They can’t actually be looking at me, I think to myself, but they are definitely looking at my village.…/The traveler and I stand facing each other, not moving at all. I lift a hand and try waving, though I’m thinking all the while that he probably won’t be able to see it./After a little pause, the man lifts his hand and waves back at me.…

3. How would you use poetry to interpret, inhabit, confront, and speak to a work of art?

Identify a work of art that resonates with you and respond to it using one of the following strategies. This website offers added examples and inspiration.

• Describe the scene or subject being depicted.
• Describe the scene beyond the moment shown or just beyond the frame.
• Describe the range of senses or emotions in the scene.
• Write in the voice of a character or object in the artwork.
• Write in the voice of the artist.
• Speak to the artist about a shared interest or concern.
• Relate the work of art to a personal understanding or current event.
• Write about the experience of looking at the art or how others respond to it.

How would you use Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night to teach ekphrastic poetry? Extend the discussion with your comments below.

Want more ekphrastic poetry? J.M.W. Turner’s The Slave Ship sets the stage for an inquiry study that uses slave narratives and ekphrastic poetry to give voice to the Zong massacre and the horrors of the slave trade’s Middle Passage.