[A. E. Stallings]

Sorry to have been scarce around these parts of late. Only just returned from the island conference.

An issue I've been pondering. It seems to me that we must have discussed this at some point... but looking back, I haven't found it. How to write about art? (Or should one? Housman, for instance, considered poems on paintings an illegitimate genre.)

I'm interested in what favorite ekphrastic poems folks here may have. Or any ekphrastic poems of your own? Any thoughts on this topic?

I'll start things rolling with the obvious:

Musee des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully
along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the plowman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

-- W. H. Auden


Also a wonderful piece of het-met. And so gracefully rhymed--it was years before I even noticed.

[H Roland Angus R]

Here's a link to a selection of about 40 poems, each with the relevant picture -

http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/Paintin...titlepage.html




[This message has been edited by H Roland Angus R (edited September 09, 2003).]

[Robt_Ward]

"The Offering of the Heart" is a famous Flemish Tapestry from the early 15th century, considered by some to be the "original valentine".

I do not know the author of the following, and I cannot google it up, but I have it almost verbatim in memory.

*******************

The Offering of the Heart

Against a somber background, blue as midnight,
more blank and rich than cloud, as dark as storm,
the almost-moving leaves are almost golden,
the light is almost warm.

Seated, a lady in a cloak of ermine
holds on her hand, correctly gloved and bent,
a falcon, without feathered hood or jesses.
Her gaze appears intent

On what her hound, good little dog, is doing
about her ankles, left front paw in air,
heedless of the two white, careless rabbits.
He does not see them there,

Or turn, as does the falcon, toward the gallant,
the gentleman, more elegant than smart,
wearing a crimson cloak with ermine lining,
who offers her his heart,

Holding it gently between thumb and finger,
whose "U" it does not fill, a plum in size,
a somewhat faded strawberry in color.
She does not raise her eyes.

How can a heart be beating in the bosom,
and yet held out so lightly in the hand?
Innocence. Mystery. An age of science
could scarcely understand.

***********************

Since I can't locate the original (I read it once, thirty years or so ago) I cannot check my accuracy, but on other long-remembered poems I'm usually pretty close.

Below is a link to an image of, and discussion of, the tapestry that inspired the poem. When I taught photography, in my first class each semester I'd recite this poem, and then after discussion I'd show an image of the tapestry. Then I'd ask each student to describe in words a photograph they held in high regard, as an assignment.

In the next class session we'd read the descriptions, see if anybody could identify the photo from the words(surprisingly often they could), and then show the actual photo. It was (and is) my contention that, as Richard Avedon said, "The art of seeing is the beginning of Art", and I found this exercise extremely useful in leading students to a truer visualization, or a deeper one, of things.

(robt)

http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/html/m/mas.../05offeri.html



[This message has been edited by Robt_Ward (edited July 17, 2003).]

[Chris Childers]

Was "Leda and the Swan" based on a painting, or did I make that up?

I read somewhere the casual opinion that ekphrastic poetry began as "descriptive-type writing." In my understanding it wasn't "descriptive" writing so much as the creation by description of a work of art within a poem, such as the Shield of Achilles or the cups of Alcimedon in the Eclogues. By those criteria, Ode on a Grecian Urn would also be ekphrastic, since it isn't really based on one pot as much as the creation of one from scattered sources.

Also, I'm not sure but I think Wilbur's "This Pleasing Anxious Being" is about photographs; at least, the second part is, and the first could be, though it doesn't seem to fit with the third. Photographs and memories. Ekphrastic or not, it's great.

Chris

[This message has been edited by Chris Childers (edited July 17, 2003).]

[Robt_Ward]

Chris,

It's generally accepted (or claimed, anyway) that Yeats was writing about Michelangelo's version when he did this poem. There's apparently also an Hellenistic Relief that scholars feel influenced the poem. In any event, the subject itself has been so often depicted in classical painting and sculpture, as well as by poets such as Ovid et al, that certainly Yeats was working from a foundation here.

Here's a quote from the link at the bottom of this page. The link's well worth checking out.

According to Charles Madge* the above mentioned Hellenistic relief would have inspired Yeats. Which is evidenced by the flapping of the wings, the emphasis on the web on Leda’s thighs, but foremost by the way in which the swan catches Leda’s neck and presses her face against its breast.

But equally right are all those who traditionally maintain that the poem is inspired by Michelangelo’s Leda. To begin with, Yeats’ Leda does not stand upright, as she does on the Hellenistic relief. She is lying supine, as with Michelangelo. And even when the webs on Leda’s thighs may also appear on the relief, marble has no colour, and it is precisely the resonance of that colour black that is more than echoed in that splendid ’her thighs caressed by the dark webs’. But foremost those ‘terrified fingers’ betray that also the painting of Michelangelo lies at the roots of Yeats’ sonnet. Even when they ward off, rather than wriggle out of pleasure. The mere fact that Yeats’ Leda uses frail fingers rather than full arms to ward off the brutal swan, at once reminds us of the fact that also on the Hellenistic relief Leda does not ward off. With her full arm she rather eagerly extends a helping hand – her wriggling fingers being hidden from view through the thighs.

http://d-sites.net/english/yeats.htm

(robt)

[Robert J. Clawson]

I saw an excellent one in last month's Atlantic. Can't remember the author.

[A. E. Stallings]

Thanks all for responding... Hello Bob!

An ekphrastic poem doesn't have to be based on a real work of art--it would include, as Chris points out, Homer's description of the Shield of Achilles (and Auden's), Catullus' description of Ariadne, Virgil's description of the Daedelean gates, etc., etc.

"Leda and the Swan" would be a curiously convoluted case... as paintings would tend in their turn to take details from Ovid (where she is indeed supine), though that is only a few lines from the depiction (ekphrastic) of Arachne's tapestry. Whew.

Ovid, obviously, cannot be overestimated in his influence on paintings of mythological subjects.

"Ode on a Grecian Urn" one of the all-time greatest ekphrastic poems.

Speaking of which, here's a little poem by Christopher Bakken from his "After Greece" which is in conversation with the Keats:

Terra Incognita
Phaestos, 17th.c. B.C.E.

Disc, you were buried so long we forgot
how to read: hieratic or hieroglyphic,
surely these doodads signify something.

From rim to center your brave little men
and large-breasted women leap backwards
among shields and beehive thingamabobs.

Who's chasing whom, where on earth, for what?
If only you were marble or hematite,
you might be venerable, sacred: but clay?

Foundling of fires unwilling to speak,
you make, along with us, companion carbon,
a common corporation of dust.

[C.G. Macdonald]

RACHMANINOFF ON THE MASS PIKE


It calls the heart, this music, to a place
more intimate than home, than self, that face
aging in the hall mirror. This is not
music to age by—no sprightly gavotte
or orderly pavane, counting each beat,
confining motion to the pointed feet
and sagely nodding head; not Chopin, wise
enough to keep some distance in his eyes
between perceiver and the thing perceived.
No, this is song that means to be believed,
that quite believes itself, each rising wave
of passionate crescendo, wise and brave.
The silly girl who lived inside my skin
once loved this music; its melodic din
was like the voice she dreamed in, sad, intense.
She didn’t know a thing, she had no sense;
she scorned—and needed—calendar and clock,
the rules, the steps, the lines, Sebastian Bach;
she wanted life to break her like a tide—
but not too painfully. On either side
the turnpike trundles by, nurseries, farms,
small towns with schools and markets in their arms,
small industry, green spaces now and then.
All the heart wants is to be called again.

By Rhina P. Espaillat

Thought of Rilke’s “Archaic Toros of Apollo” and Lowell’s “For the Union Dead,” but the above poem might not be as well known. Yet.

And, at this point, I don’t see another poem on a piece of music on this thread.

[H Roland Angus R]

We actually had an ekphrastic poetry competition over at PFFA recently. For what it's worth, this was my entry -

Virgin Mary and Child
terracotta
Florence, 1425


i.

In her humidity and temperature controlled
glass case, she sits night and day, weight on one elbow,
hands limp in her lap, her eyes cast down
past the seal-pup face of the Christ-child.
Through the glass she hears the clatter of feet
and the chatter, and hopes to catch
the Tuscan accents that remind her
of a sunny room and the touch of calloused fingers
that deftly shaped and smoothed the supple clay of her.

ii.

She slouches, eyes fixed
on a paint-smudge on the floorboards.
The sack of onions standing in for Jesus chafes
against her side. The blanket draped around her
weighs on her head, and sweat itches
down her back. The arm-rest bites
into her arm, and her shoulder cramps and spasms;
but she dare not stretch, for then he'll come again
to re-position her, his old hands loitering
across her breasts and thighs.

iii.

Slumped in her chair, she gazes past his head
down to the floor, and remembers
the day when the angel came _
mauve incandescence and the smell of cinnamon,
a blast of love that seemed to tear
the skin from her and leave her new. So now she has
this almost-child, fat and pink, who watches
everything and never cries. Behind his stolid dumbness,
she can feel the weight of God in him
pressing heavy against her heart.
A day of carrying him has left her racked by it.

I found looking for a subject an interesting exercise. I went to the V&A (the Victoria and Albert Museum - a museum of decorative arts) with no real preconceptions about the kind of poem I wanted to write, and wandered around looking for a piece I could write a poem about. I quickly found that just looking for pieces I liked wasn't particularly useful; it was more important to have angle to approach the work from. So in the case of the one I actually used, it's a sculpture of the Virgin and child, but Mary is looking weary - tired and perhaps a touch pissed off. So that gave me a way of writing about it - trying to find an answer or answers to why she looked like that.

More generally, one of the things I like about ekphrastic poetry is that the reader can share the source material with the poet. Ideally, the poem should also work as a free-standing piece, but it's interesting to read the poem with the picture in front of you. Unlike a poem about, say, a funeral, where the reader is very much at the mercy of the poet in the way the experience is presented to them, you approach a poem about a familiar painting more as an equal with the poet. You have your own tale on the painting, they present theirs, and it almost becomes a dialogue where you are exchanging your responses to a shared experience. In fact, it's a three-way dialogue - as well as the normal interaction of poem and reader, there's the interaction between poem and painting, in which hopefully the poem draws strength from the painting as well as casting light on it.

Anyway, enough waffle.

Harry

[This message has been edited by H Roland Angus R (edited July 18, 2003).]

[Lisa Barnett]

Thanks for posting these wonderful ekphrastic poems. I can't resist making a little contribution of my own...


WHISTLER DECORATES THE PEACOCK ROOOM, 1876-1877

The room an empty space that he would fill
with his extravagant design--with blue
and gold he'd lavish everywhere until
the room outshone what it would hold and through
such alchemy allowed him to forget
the canvases he'd left for months undone;
those spare arrangements he could not perfect
with hours of study, then a quick, pained lunge
with brush and paint.
..........................Not like this dizzy joy,
this circling round and round the gilded room
'til even he could gild no more, so buoyant
with the borrowed brilliance of that plumage
that he invited half of London out
to see his triumph over painted doubt.


Please note that the dots in the the second half of line 9 are not part of the poem; I couldn't get the text to indent otherwise!

Lisa