Captain Science’s assignment from Michael Clay Thompson’s Building Poems today was to write a poem based on a photograph. He chose Steve McCurry’s famous photograph of the Afghan refugee girl, published in National Geographic.
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The Afghan Girl
Her eyes are like a rainbow, yet |
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Sharbat Gula was in fact 12 when that picture was taken.
excellent poem!
We did a little research after he wrote the poem, because he wanted to know more and to see the photograph of her as an adult. The poetry assignment was to write what he saw in the photo, though, and he thought she looked his age.
actually, I was complimenting him on his rather accurate guesstimate
what did he think about how she looked at 30ish?
He did make a good guess.
When he saw the picture of her as an adult, he looked a little stunned and said, “Oh, wow.” We talked about the clothing she was wearing (you can see the burqa pushed up on top of her head) and a little about the recent state of affairs in Afghanistan. We’re doing a Pennies for Peace camp at the end of May, where we’ll talk about this more extensively, but this was a nice introduction.
actually rather remarkable that she would have had her picture taken at all, especially the second time. pashtun women don’t usually reveal their faces to strangers, let alone male strangers.