Art for Art's Sake: The Illustrated Poem

Abstract

Poetry is a language that paints on the mind's eye images more beautiful and more powerful than the physical eye can behold. Poetry reflects our familiar world back to us with unfamiliar distinction. What illustrator dares to reproduce such personal and powerful visions of the imagination, which poetry's words inspire? Illustrators of children's poetry picture books do.
The problem can be that illustrated editions of a traditionally oral literature do not necessarily exercise children's imaginations the way the words do. So, do illustrated poems interfere with children's ability to imagine?