Prompt: The Color of a Poem

 

"The Japanese have this idea of the color of a poem. Bashō talks often about the colors of poems. I think what he means by that is the moods and the tones, the sort of aesthetic principles of them. And I think that you can’t just sit down and write that, you have to really embody it. That’s the hardest part: figuring out what tone or what mood you’re writing towards. A lot of this has to do with the themes you’re working with, or the mode that you want to present. That takes sometimes weeks, months — years, really — to develop before language comes to fruition. Language has its own register, like music, and depending on the “octave” or the tone that you’re using, there are connotations, there are meanings, implicit in tone."  -  Ocean Vuong

The idea of a poem's color can be interpreted in several ways. The most direct meaning refers to the literal or suggested colors within the poem's descriptions. It can use descriptive words (e.g., crimson, slate, golden, shadowed) that map out a vivid visual scene.

But when people speak of the "color" of a poem, they are usually referring to its overall tone, atmosphere, imagery, and emotional resonance. A painting uses a palette of colors to set a mood; a poem uses language, sound, and visual imagery to paint a specific feeling or atmosphere in the reader's mind.

Sensory details that evoke a visual tone. A poem filled with descriptions of rain, wet cobblestones, and fog carries a "cool gray" or "blue" color profile, whereas a poem describing dried wheat, baking sun, and dust carries a "warm ochre" or "golden" color profile.

In the short poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost, he plays with expectation. He opens by describing nature's earliest spring shoots not as green, but as gold. Gold represents early promise, preciousness, and beauty, which quickly fades as leaves mature into ordinary green. Color here acts as a clock, measuring the fleeting nature of perfection.

"The Nomenclature of Color" by Richard Jones contains a palette of Nile blue, absinthe green, dragon's-blood red, iron gray, and Venetian pink and functions almost like a painter's color card. Jones pairs specific historical pigment names with personal imagery, such as connecting "dragon's-blood red: My mother's ark sighs,"and "absinthe green: Laura’s eyes." Exact color labels here carry emotional histories and sensory associations.

Color is deeply tied to human emotion and psychology. The "color" of a poem often serves as shorthand for its mood. Dark, somber colors (Black, Charcoal, Dark Violet) can evoke grief, mystery, melancholy, or solitude. Bright, warm colors (Yellow, Orange, Gold) can evoke joy, vitality, nostalgia, or illumination. Cool, calm colors (Soft Blue, Sage, White) can evoke serenity, distance, stillness, or contemplation. Of course, a poet may also use these in unexpected, even contrary ways, as Frost did.

The symbolic use of color in poetry is as old as recorded poetry. Green for youth and rebirth and rust or brown for aging and decay are so common that they may even feel clichéd.

Our model poem this month is "Instructions on Not Giving Up" by Ada Limón, which has a palette of deep greens, pale spring hues, and dark chartreuse. Limón focuses on the arrival of green leaves in early spring. Rather than using green as a cliché for rebirth, the poem treats the heavy green foliage as a physical weight—a thick, unapologetic presence of life returning after winter. The shifting shades of green track an internal emotional movement from winter weariness to relentless persistence.

For our December issue, we are looking for poems that use colors not only as content but to create a tone for the poem. 

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: November 30

Ada Limón was born on March 28, 1976, in Sonoma, California. In 2001, she earned an MFA from New York University's Creative Writing Program. Her first poetry collection, Lucky Wreck was the winner of the 2005 Autumn House Poetry Prize, selected by Jean Valentine. The Carrying won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and her 2015 collection Bright Dead Things was a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; Limón is also the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. In 2022, Limón was appointed United States poet laureate and, in 2023, was appointed to serve a second two-year term. Limón is currently Distinguished Professor of Poetry at Texas State University. 

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