Picasso, Caravaggio, Anderson, Colville Thursday, Sep 4 2008

The more ekphrastic poetry I read in books and journals, the more I’m convinced that it would be easy to compile several collections of poems inspired by single categories of images. For example, it would be easy to compile a collection of poems inspired by landscape paintings, or portraits, or religious iconography. It would be easy to compile a collection of poems inspired solely by the artworks of Picasso.

So, too, would it be easy to compile a collection of ekphrastic poems inspired by equine art. This week I’m reading a new anthology of poetry entitled Cadence of Hooves : A Celebration of Horses, edited by Suzan Jantz. Scattered throughout the 487 pages in this voluminous paperback are seven conventional ekphrastic poems (inspired by individual works of stationary art). Also included are three poems responding to ordinary photographs.

And what’s on the cover of the book? What we might expect : a lovely painting of three horses by artist Valerie Mejer.

The ekphrastic poems in this anthology are:

“A Painting at the Met” by Danielle Georges (artwork not identified)
“Neon Horses” by Dorianne Laux (Martin Anderson’s neon horses)
“Horses of San Marco Venice, 1989″ by Deborah Fleming (bronze statues)
“The Rope” by Alice Friman (Picasso’s BOY LEADING A HORSE)
“Conversion of Saint Paul” by Rebecca Dunham (Caravaggio)
“Even With No Hand To Hold It” by Margo Berdeshevsky (Picasso’s CABALLO CORNEADO)
“The Eyes of a Dark Horse” by Laurelyn Whitt (Alex Colville’s painting HORSE AND TRAIN)

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Tattoo Highway Wednesday, Sep 3 2008

One of my ekphrastic poems recently received an “Honorable Mention” award in a contest sponsored by the online journal of prose, poetry and art, Tattoo Highway. To read all the award-winning poems, click HERE.

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Seamus Heaney Tuesday, Aug 26 2008

A single work of art can inspire an ekphrastic conversation that extends over several generations. The description of Achilles’s shield as it is being forged in Book 18 of Homer’s The Iliad is the oldest recorded passage of ekphrasis in Western literature. The shield is imaginary, of course, yet its many elaborately hammered scenes are described in great detail. Centuries later, W.H. Auden composed “The Shield of Achilles,” a poem describing a more menacing shield covered with hopeless scenes of war, violence, and devastation. More recently, Seamus Heaney composed “A Stove Lid for W.H. Auden” (published in Heaney’s District and Circle). Heaney gives that poem an epigraph, a quotation from Auden’s poem: “The mass and majesty of this world, all / That carries weight and always weighs the same…”  Then Mr. Heaney composes the first line of his poem as a variation on that epigraph: “The mass and majesty of this world I bring you / In the small compass of a cast-iron stove lid.” His poem proceeds by describing the humble lid: its substance, parts, and function. The poem also mentions a stove, ashpan, and coalhouse (recalling the fiery forge of the blacksmith god in The Iliad).

Thus, one long ekphrastic conversation has continued for generations: from the mythical, godlike shield of Homer to the apocalyptic, godless shield of Auden to the de-mystified, humanized stove lid of Heaney.

What would be the next poem in this conversation? Perhaps a poem about the smallest shield-like item mentioned in Mr. Heaney’s poem: the compass?

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The Storialist Monday, Aug 25 2008

Here’s a blogger who composes poems inspired by the photographs on another blog: The Storialist.

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Olympics Monday, Aug 11 2008

What if a TEAM EKPHRASIS competed at a Poetry Olympics? What awards might the team members compete for? All in good humor, I propose the following contests and winners.

Long Distance Ekphrastic Poem : the winner might be Girls on the Run by John Ashbery which, at fifty-five pages, may be the single longest ekphrastic poem ever written (according to Museum Mediations by Barbara K. Fischer).

Swiftest Sprinting Ekphrastic Poem : the winner might be the haiku “Drowning” by Suzanne Bruce (published in Voices Beyond the Canvas).

Best Relay Ekphrastic Poem : the winner might be the ten-part series “Pictures from Brueghel” by William Carlos Williams (published in Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems). Or, the winner might be the ten-part series “Seeing All the Vermeers” by Alfred Corn.

Top Gymnastic Ekphrastic Title : the winner might be the flexible palindrome “Sex at Noon Taxes” by Sally Van Doren (published in her award-winning collection Sex at Noon Taxes).

Highest Scoring Ekphrastic Poet : the winner might be the prolific Basil King who wrote seventy-seven ekphrastic poems, one per each of seventy-seven artists (all published in Basil King’s 77 Beasts).

Smoothest Cycling Ekphrastic Poem : the winner might be Robert Pinsky’s poem “Song,” an example of rimas dissolutas in which the lines of each stanza cycle through the same abcde rhyme scheme (published in A Convergence of Birds, edited by Jonathan Safran Foer).

Beach Volleyball Ekphrastic Poem : (just kidding)

Oldest Contending Ekphrastic Poet : the uncontested winner will be Homer, whose Iliad contains the oldest recorded passage of ekphrasis in Western literature.

And let’s not forget those whom we could call the Olympic “coaches” : those artists who have inspired the poets. Among the greatest ekphrastic coaches who have inspired the greatest number of ekphrastic athletes throughout the years are Vermeer, Brueghel, Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso, and O’Keeffe.

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Poetry & Art Thursday, Aug 7 2008

A poetry and art collaboration between the Hudson Valley Writers Center and Manhattanville College will take place on Sunday, November 16, at 2:30 pm, at the Hudson River Museum. For more information, call 914-332-5953.

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Poetry & Architecture Wednesday, Aug 6 2008

On Saturday, September 27, 2008, Poets House in New York City will be offering a symposium on the connections between poetry and architecture. For more information, call 212-431-7920.

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Leigh Wen Sunday, Aug 3 2008

Last Saturday morning, my husband and I walked through the streets, public squares, and parks of downtown Albany, following the trail of the city’s temporary “Sculpture Walking Tour.” The tour features eighteen structures by fourteen different sculptors.  Many of the public artworks are made entirely or partly of steel. One of my favorites, paradoxically, was not a sculpture, but a huge painting paying homage to the river that flows by Albany: The Hudson by Leigh Wen. This mural-like piece was mounted upright behind some large windows on the first floor of a commercial building converted to an art gallery. (Perhaps the artwork qualifies as a sculpture because parts of the building are constructed from steel?)

As soon as I saw the painting, I recognized it. I had seen it first many years ago, in another art gallery a few blocks away from its current site (actually, in the earlier location of this same arts organization). It is a beautiful painting of fluid energy. The entire canvas is filled with blue and white undulating waves.

So I plan to write an ekphrastic poem which compares my first sighting of this painting with my second sighting of it, and relating those changes of location to the ever-changing nature of the river itself.

Can we ever dip into a painting more than once in the same place?

LATER NOTE FROM BLOGGER: After writing this post, I found out that the artwork in the window was similar to, but not identical to, the painting I saw many years ago. In addition, that window artwork qualifies as a sculpture because it is equipped with lighting devices which illuminate the artwork at night.

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Seurat Saturday, Aug 2 2008

On July 26, I attended an evening poetry reading performed in the city park not far from my home. The first featured poet began by quoting a statement about the art of painting, which he then related to the art of poetry; and the second featured poet began by reading her own poem inspired by a Seurat painting. Because the first poet was local and the second poet was from out-of-state, I assume that this commonality was coincidental. Even so, it was delightful, bringing both poets in concert with one theme. 

The “Poets in the Park” summer readings are organized by local poet Dan Wilcox. 

OTHER POEMS ABOUT SEURAT

“Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon Along the Seine” by Delmore Schwartz (in Transforming Vision, edited by Edward Hirsch).

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Jan Greenberg Friday, Aug 1 2008

For more than forty years, I have saved some of the picture books which I read as a child. They are so beautiful, and so memory-rich, that I can’t bear to part with them. I still have the Golden Press edition of The Little Mermaid (1966) by Hans Christian Andersen which I received as a holiday gift when I was seven or eight years old. That edition, printed and bound in Japan, has a 3-D picture on the cover: a yellow mermaid suspended in tropical blue water amongst coral and fish. If I tilt the book up and down, the fish waver back and forth.

I feel that same wonder and delight as I hold a brand new book (April 2008) for younger readers: Side by Side: New Poems Inspired by Art from Around the World edited by Jan Greenberg. Yes, that’s right–a collection of ekphrastic poetry for middle-school and junior high students. Side-by-side on facing pages appear a color reproduction of the artwork, the ekphrastic poem in its original language, and a translation of the poem into English. The artworks range from paintings (oil, murals, etc.) to statues (bronze and sandstone) to photographs to mixed media to coffins to wooden figurines to porcelain discs.

Ms. Greenberg has adopted a sophisticated organizational scheme for her book. She divides the contents into four sections in accordance with some established stances of ekphrasis: description, envoicing, narration, and mediation (what the author calls, respectively, Impressions, Voices, Stories, and Expressions). One poem provides an embodiment of ekphrasis that I have never seen before. The poem “Turner to His Critic” by Grace Nichols dramatizes a refutation by the painter J.M.W. Turner to an art critic who dismissed one of his paintings as “soapsuds and whitewash.” In the poem, the affronted painter tells his critic that, “even the sea can see…/That this work is a masterpiece.”

I have yet to find such a far-ranging, multicultural collection of ekphrastic poetry written for adults. In this book, thirty-three countries on six continents are represented. Biographies of the poets, translators, and artists are also included. Ms. Greenberg’s volume sets a fine example. I hope that eventually, someone else compiles a similar collection for grown-ups. Until that book appears, I will savor this juvenile edition.

Perhaps the origins of ekphrasis are not, after all, in mature classic works like the eighteenth chapter of Homer’s Iliad. Perhaps, instead, ekphrasis is just our adult term for that affection which we had, as children, for the pairing of beautiful words with beautiful images.

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