Van Gogh's Influence On Starry Night

This poem was created from Anne’s inspiration from Vincent Van Gogh’s famous painting Starry Night. It begins with a quote from a letter written by Van Gogh, which says that he has a deep need for religion, and that it is when he feels this need that he goes out and paints the stars. This is very profound because it is about man’s need for something everlasting and holy. Even though Van Gogh didn’t want religion in his life, he still had a need for the holy. By creating the painting of the stars, Van Gogh was, in effect, memorializing the beauty of the world. He was acknowledging the incomparable power of beauty that the world holds. Though he may not actually feel the presence of the Divine, a painter understands eternity, and he understands
the holiness of beauty.
Van Gogh was a very troubled artist, just like Sexton was. When people look at the painting ‘Starry Night’, there is a lot of movement in the brushstrokes, and that turbulence, almost anger, in the thick spiraling sky with its “eleven stars”, boiling in the “hot sky.” Sexton’s description of the painting like, with the “black-haired tree” slipping up “like a drowned woman into the hot sky” really does make a person think when they go back and look at the artwork. When they look at the painting they will see that the tree does actually look as if it were made of hair. There is something so very dark and menacing about that image, it’s so “alive”, and “it moves”, that Sexton writes. The way that Anne says that the night “boils” in the poet’s description, accurately reflects what this looks like and the style of the artwork.