For all the men and women whom we honor on this Memorial Day weekend:
Yusef Komunyaaka’s poem “Facing It” inspired by The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall.
Egypt Friday, Mar 28 2008
architecture and art and ekphrasis and monument and painting and poetry 1:07 pm
Last week my husband, daughter, and I took a tour through Egypt. Every day I wrote in my travel journal: recording the itinerary, drawing pictures of various objects and scenes, and making notes for future poems. On yesterday’s eleven-hour return flight from Cairo to New York City, I wrote a poem entitled “Unfinished,” inspired by some monuments we had seen in their original settings. As soon as I am recovered from jet lag, I hope to learn more about the major Egyptian poet Ahmed Shawki (1868-1932), whose home (now a museum) we drove past on our way from Giza to Cairo.
(Other ekphrastic poets have written about Egypt. In his chapbook How to Paint the Savior Dead, Jason Gray includes one poem entitled “The Little Sphinx” and another poem entitled “Meditations of the Tomb Painters.” And in her ekphrastic collection Try, Cole Swenson treats the flight into Egypt as part of her long poem “Triptych.” )
Black History Month Wednesday, Feb 20 2008
art and ekphrasis and monument and mural and painting and photograph and poetry and sculpture 1:49 am
I will devote the last week of February to listing ekphrastic poems either written by African American and other black writers, or inspired by visual artworks created by African American and other black artists. (Poems inspired by jazz, the blues, and other kinds of music are not listed below.)
ALEXANDER, Elizabeth. “Monet at Giverny”
ALEXANDER, Elizabeth. “Painting”
BROOKS, Gwendolyn. “The Chicago Picasso”
BROOKS, Gwendolyn. “The Wall”
CLIFTON, Lucille. “Ten Oxherding Pictures”
CLIFTON, Lucille. “The Photograph: The Lynching”
COTTER, Joseph S. “Looking at Portraits”
DUNBAR, Paul L. “The Photograph”
GILBERT, Christoper. “African Sculpture”
JOHNSON, Georgia D. “To May Howard Jackson, Sculptor”
JOHNSON, James W. “Before a Painting”
KOMUNYAKAA, Yusef. “Facing It”
MAJOR, Clarence. Several poems on Hopper, Rembrandt, Eakins, etc.
MERRIT, Constance. “Black Iris: After Georgia O’Keefe”
MYERS, Walter Dean. “Migration”
RAGLAND, Samantha. “Cigarette Smoker: Painting by Hale Aspacio Woodruff”
RAGLAND, Samantha. “On Looking at “The Banjo Lesson” by Henry Ossawa Tanner”
RAY, Henrietta C. “The Sculptor’s Vision”
RAY, Henrietta C. “The Tireless Sculptor”
St. JOHN, Primus. “Notes on a Painter’s Palette”
TRETHEWEY, Natasha. (Ms. Trethewey has written many poems inspired by documentary and family photographs)
TRETHEWEY, Natasha. “Again, The Fields”
TRETHEWEY, Natasha. “Picture Gallery”
WALCOTT, Derek. Tiepolo’s Hound
WHEATLEY, Phillis. “To S.M., A Young Painter…”
OTHER RELATED POEMS
The white Englishman J.M.W. Turner’s famous painting Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On) might be considered to be at least a footnote to the history of African American ekphrasis. The painting was, in part, based on a poem written by Turner himself. Winslow Homer’s painting The Bright Side depicts African Americans working for the Union Army as mule drivers. Ted Kooser has written a poem about that painting entitled “The Bright Side” (the second poem in his series entitled “Four Civil War Paintings by Winslow Homer”).
