Soul Looks Back in Wonder

Soul Looks Back in Wonder is a poetry book illustrated by Tom Feelings, with a compilation of some of the most inspirational black poets of the 20th and 21st century, including Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou. I really liked this book, both for the poetry and for the amazing art work. While reading this book to my reading study child. When my young student looked at the art work, she commented that she believed that maybe art was a form of poetry. I thought this to be a beautiful notion, what a great thing to say to someone in the art department. Art as poetry, when we originally defined poetry, we decided that poetry was simply an author using the words to create images in the readers' head to get their message across to the reader. Thinking about this I wonder, why not? Is art not simply poetry put into the visual realm of being? and do not some poets shape the words to create a literal image or picture of what their poem is about? I originally brought poetry into my reading workshop in order to shift our focus into writing, but I am beginning to think of writing, and even reading as a more ambiguous concept that humans are naturally inclined to participate in. While my reading child was not fully familiar with the likes of Langston Hughes or Maya Angelou, or even the fight for human equality in which their works or so pron to represent, she was able to see the images and find meaning in them as windows into the human self. So why are schools cutting art departments?