One of my most vivid memories of the toys of childhood, other than my official Davy Crockett coonskin hat, was the ViewMaster ™. I spent countless hours advancing the scenes of stories, foreign places, movies, science topics, and many other subjects, with those small windows on a circular cardboard reel. And, yes, the ViewMaster ™ is still around and available on Amazon and in toy stores.
Officially, those scenes on the reels were “dioramas,” but I always believed dioramas were something else entirely – recreated scenes, usually historical or from nature, that you could see at museums like the Louisiana State Exhibit Museum in Shreveport. The museum as close to my grandmother’s house, and the two of us often went when I visited. It was my first view of agriculture up close.
As it turns out, the definition of diorama is broad enough to include both my childhood toy and the museum exhibits. Says the Merriam-Webster dictionary: “a scenic representation in which a partly translucent painting is seen through a distance through an opening; a scenic representation in which sculpted figures are displayed, usually in miniature.” A diorama can also be a life-size exhibit.
In Diorama: Poems, poet Sandra Marchetti doesn’t talk about childhood memories of toys or museum visits. But the aptly named poetry collection functions as its own diorama, allowing you to peer through a poem to view subjects displayed in scenic ways, or to allow you to walk through a life-size representation of a subject. And she does it by using profoundly vivid language.
To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.
Some Thursday Readings
Offsite – poem by George Witte at The New Criterion.
Hatley St. George: a poem for St. George’s Day – Malcolm Guite.
Sonnets for Shakespeare’s Birthday – Margaret Coats at the Society of Classical Poets.
“A Fairy Song,” poem by William Shakespeare – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.
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