Today I wish a Happy Birthday to my dear husband, without whom none of my poetry work would be possible. He has sent me to graduate school, conferences, and workshops. He has encouraged me to subscribe to poetry magazines and to buy books. He has given me the free time to write. And yes, he has even started writing his own poems, now accompanying me to open mics. Perhaps someday he will be the famous poet of the family!

In my life, there has been no greater poetry patron than my spouse.

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)

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.

I will resume blogging on Tuesday, September 2.

Today I mailed out a manuscript for a poetry chapbook contest, a manuscript which includes ten ekphrastic poems. I’ve been working on the manuscript for several months. Compiling a collection of poems requires a lot of work. And submitting to a contest requires even more work : formatting the manuscript as needed, proofreading meticulously, getting permission from members of my family, notifying the artists about whom I’ve written, cleaning the printer in order to produce a spotless copy, postmarking the packet by the deadline, etc.

I’ve learned from experience to proofread my projects not just once, but many times. Each day this week that I examined the manuscript, I noticed yet another mistake that had to be corrected. Even today, a few moments before putting the manuscript in the mail, I noticed that the heading “Table of Contents” had never been centered on the page. Back to the printer one last time.

So now all I have to do is wait for three months until the winner is announced.

If any of you are interested in submitting to poetry chapbook contests, a useful list of them can be found on The Poetry Resource Page.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.