By Pam Creech, Contributing Writer
A poet, storyteller and painter since fourth grade, Michael White’s love for writing and visual art led him to pen his newest poetry book about the artwork of 17th-century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. White will read from “Vermeer in Hell” Oct. 30 at 7 p.m. in the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Kenan Hall, room 1111.
White’s research for “Vermeer in Hell” spanned 10 years and involved expansive travel, he explained.
“I traveled around the world looking at Vermeer paintings,” White said. “Each chapter title has the name of a city — Hague, Amsterdam.”
It was in Amsterdam where White discovered his interest in Vermeer paintings.
“It was an impulse trip,” he explained. “I was just trying to get out of Wilmington for a weekend. I had some frequent flyer miles saved up.”
The paintings White saw in Amsterdam inspired him to take more solo trips to view more of Vermeer’s work. “Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window,” which is on display in Dresden, Germany, had a particularly strong impact.
“It’s one of the most beautiful paintings I’ve ever seen,” White said.
White was intrigued that such an exquisite painting is displayed in downtown Dresden, which was heavily bombed by British Royal and United States Army air forces during a WWII air raid. His intent became an exploration of the evil and placidity within life and human nature. The book’s final poem, which takes place during the infamous air attack on Dresden, particularly reflects this idea.
“That was a breakthrough poem for me,” White said. “Any full expression of human life has to include both sides. It has to include our darkest, as well as our brightest sides. We do horrible things to each other, but we are often capable of serene reflection.”
White also said the poem is a reflection of writings by Victor Klemperer, a German of Jewish heritage who experienced the raid first-hand.
“He had received his papers to Auschwitz that morning,” White said. “Oddly enough, the bombing of Dresden was the best thing and the worst thing that ever happened to him.”
The air raid allowed Klemperer and his wife to flee the country and avoid being sent to a concentration camp.
White compares his book to Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir, “Eat, Pray, Love.”
“Instead of eating pizza in Italy, I looked at art in Amsterdam. I spent hours standing in museums and I was completely happy,” he said.
White is chair of the creative writing department at UNCW. His work has been published in the Kenyon Review, the Florida Review, the Missouri Review, Image Journal, Memorious and the Journal. White has received the Colorado Prize for Poetry (1998), the Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry (2005) and the Florida Review Editor’s Prize Competition in Poetry (2010). He won the 2013 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Prize for “Vermeer in Hell.”
