Amicus Curiae - El Perro
 

Amicus Curiae - El Perro
(Goya)

The painting, seminal and symbolist,
slow brushed by an aging humility,
dog, darkened in that deaf man’s hand
half-hidden at the edge of sanity.

This old man’s projection of yearning self
is dog in hunger for his Master’s love.
Desire yellowed back in frozen time.
A silent dog beneath enormity above.

Inside the mind that works the knife or brush
are existential drives to understand.
The dog, earwitness to his master’s cries
attends the Court of Doubt and takes the stand.

The last four lines make a very nice epigram.
To take all 12 lines, though, Jan, is to make me wonder what's the point of this? It reads like an intellectual and very well-phrased description that one might write beside the painting in a museum. That is, I'm not sure it really adds a further dimension to that which the observer can already detect in the art: and beside the genius of the painting itself, which says all of this without the need of any word at all, it makes the poem seem almost more superfluous. I know you didn't much like my own poem that glanced at the painting: but I think it was representative of my philosophy of ekphrasis: that is, that the poet should take the art and leap off from it, that is, the poet should use the art as inspiration towards their own ends. To purely describe, seems to me just to turn the poem into a kind of information-pack, no matter how eloquent. In other words, what does the poem say which the painting doesn't?

Hope this helps.

Ekphrasis has been considered generally to be a rhetorical device in which one medium of arttries to relate to another medium by defining and describing its essence and form, and in doing so, relate more directly to the audience, through its illuminative liveliness.’
Wikipedia

The definition of ekphrasis has changed over time, but today we use it to mean “The verbal representation of visual representation” [see James Heffernan, Museum of Words: ThePoetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery (University of Chicago Press, 1993)].
Rebecca Olson, Oregon State University Associate Professor of British Literature

Five minutes with Professor Google will do wonders.

You could have a ‘philosophy’ that dictates sonnets should only be written in unrhymed alexandrines and be only ten lines long eschewing the Volta and you are entitled to it BUT a sonnet is not that. Your ‘philosophy’ regarding Ekphrasis is similarly wrong.

As you can see from the definitions above Ekphrasis is not about the subject as a trigger.

I am grateful to your ‘ekphrastic’ poem as It caused me to revisit Goya’s darkness where I saw existential doubt as the dog begs the question. Doubt gives rise to thought and so to existence.

Your response would appear to be a trifle partisan one Cameron. Eratosphere is unique and has survived much and many. Let us have metered verse and no ten line sonnets.

Jan

Jan,

This is not what I consider ekphrasis. It goes too far in describing the painting and the painter and his process. Ekphrasis should launch the writer on a new work of art in response to or inspired by the source. Clearly I have my own definition of ekphrasis, but even if I'm off my rocker, this poem is generally too descriptive and directly interpretive of the painting.

Rick

Jan,
This poem is the description one would write beside the exhibition. However you clarify it to yourself is your own matter, but how it reads to me is mine. You can do better. Just look at the previous poem you posted. I know you don't want to hear it but Goya already existed. Write your own thing instead of trying to audio describe his.
Hope this helps.

And please, Jan, spare us the rigid and exclusive definitions.

I actually like the poem better than most, with the exception of the first line.

Nemo

Jan, like Nemo I don't much like the first line - that really does sound like something out of a museum catalogue - but I like the rest of the first verse, and all of the second. I think you could stop there, with a very nice last line. (Although it has one foot too many? I don't mind that, in a strategic last line.)

What do you think?

Cheers

David