Before You Read: A Garden Is a Painting
When the gardener picks up earth instead of paint
Picture a garden you know — a balcony pot, a school flowerbed, a field. Now picture a painting of flowers. What do the two have in common? Both have colour, arrangement, light, a maker who chose where each thing goes. So here's the question this poem asks: is a gardener also a kind of painter — just working in soil and seed instead of paint and canvas?
Think about what a gardener decides: which colours go where, what blooms in which season, how the whole thing will look. Isn't that... composition?
To read this poem you need three painter's words. Learn them now and the whole poem opens up.
A painter's toolkit — the words the poem builds its comparison from.
Q1.A palette is:
Q1.What is the central comparison (metaphor) of this poem?
Picture a garden you know — a balcony pot, a school flowerbed, a field. Now picture a painting of flowers. What do the two have in common? Both have colour, arrangement, light, a maker who chose where each thing goes. So here's the question this poem asks: is a gardener also a kind of painter — just working in soil and seed instead of paint and canvas?
Think about what a gardener decides: which colours go where, what blooms in which season, how the whole thing will look. Isn't that... composition?
To read this poem you need three painter's words. Learn them now and the whole poem opens up.
A painter's toolkit — the words the poem builds its comparison from.
Q1.A palette is:
Q1.What is the central comparison (metaphor) of this poem?