[Sarah-Jane Crowson]

Jim, thank you so much for posting.

I love how it speaks to me directly - the Sphere as an island, a space we all inhabit. And within that I love the ‘obscure board of Fiction, where prose languishes in an echo chamber’. That sentence is superb writing, I think.

I love how your geographer’s description of a digital space allows the geographer agency - agency in saving poems, or not, from drowning. I like the narrator’s description of themselves, too, particularly the ‘rabbit holes’ and how this works with the image - reading the poem with the image brings an entirely new dimension to the poem.

For me, the image is ambiguous - it is aesthetically lovely, but it is also ‘The Tempest’ like - rich and strange - half-real, half not. The video works with the poem to both suggest the Eratosphere as a magical, transformed place, but also as a submerged, half-dead space. The video adds another dimension again - it shares a kind of geological dreamscape, a striving to reinvent the more mundane world.

The poem beneath the prose-poem (the form reminds me of a haibun, - the longer descriptive passage and the short imagistic poem) is beautiful - and it works with the short imagistic poem to describe the picture but also point out, very concisely, how the image and art is a wonderful metaphor for humanity.

Formative points (I will always have formative points, it is in my nature) for me would be to detach the prose poem from the specific place of the ‘Sphere and consider, instead, making it more general a title - an imaginary planet or place.

I’d also consider centre-indenting the prose poem parts, perhaps so they squarely fill the lines and echo that sense of contrast with the imagistic poem.

And, honestly, I’d contact the artist and start a collaborative conversation, at the very least see if you can use the image you've chosen to send off as an ekphrastic piece, as the dimensions of art, video documentary, prose poem and imagistic poem are exciting, and completely rich and strange. Kudos.

Sarah-Jane
(Forget to say 'wow' that you dived to see it too, but that's a very non-poetic aside!)

[Michael Cantor]

Thanks, Sarah-Jane, for taking on the Art board.

Normally, with your Ekphrastic101 ekphrastic poem you start with an obect or a scene, and write a poem about or around it. I'm doing this the other way around, and having trouble. The poem is below. It's an oldie from my first book that I always liked, and always thought of as "ekphrastic", although there was no specific painting or object I had in mind - but I always thought it was calling for one. But I'm a writer, not a painter. The poem is below, and below that are links to a few paintings I found in my wanderings (through the internet, not through Europe). Each relate to the poem in some way, but none perfectly. Whaddya think?

The Man Who Painted Women

We watched you as you limned a woman’s face
and body – got it right – the half-held breath,
the promise seen implicit in the eyes,
the tension of the shadows on her flesh,
and yet you seemed unpleased. You gave her pearls,
then scarves, to try to capture and reflect
an essence – stepped back further, further,
inserting dark green dabs to form a bed,
and built on that until you’d filled the space
with tables, bureaus, bottles, fresh cut flowers
lying in the fragments of a shattered vase –
a note, a spill of wine, a twisted mirror –
added windows and a door – and finally you
stepped out of one of them to freeze the view.

https://www.metmuseum.org/-/media/im...w=173&m h=119

https://www.metmuseum.org/-/media/im...w=173&m h=119

https://www.studiointernational.com/...w-2011/2-b.jpg

https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upl...-s1600-c85.jpg

https://www.metmuseum.org/-/media/im...w=173&m h=119

[Jim Moonan]

.
.Michael, superbly articulated poem, as usual... I don't find any of the links to do it justice. Could it be that you need to take up painting, too? Ha! In my eyes, your poem seems to invoke a Van Gogh-like splash of clutter and intrigue. None of the links do that for me. But the poem is gorgeous...

In my humble attempt, I wrote the "poem" (more of a journal entry as is) before I began upon the task of attaching a visual to reflect it. It needs a heap of work.

I will say again that poetry and imagery go hand-in-hand and so it makes perfect sense to pair the two. After all, look at Blake's work. Not every poem would benefit from visual overlay, etc. but it is a form that I think Sarah-Jane is well-versed/immersed in, and I am glad to be engaged in it.

..

[Sarah-Jane Crowson]

Hi Michael, and thank you for posting and sharing your poem. I like your work (I’ve browsed your website). For me, you have a very clear style which is uncomplicated but manages to convey complex ideas without labouring them. And I like this poem very much so I’m grateful for the chance to read it.

I’ve been at work today but spent some time with the poem this morning and thought about it hard over lunch. I like the meta-qualities of the poem - the fact we don’t see the picture, or the man, or the woman, but they are instead defined by the things around them. I like the frames, the view - mentioned, explicitly, just as the poem closes and the moment is released, in a sense. I wonder who ‘we’ are, too - the narrator.

I haven’t got as far as looking at the images youv'e linked to yet (apologies, this is because I spent too long with the poem). I’m going to do so in a second- I’m really interested what your choices are. I know that mine would be to go for the frames/things angle - maybe Braque. Not an image of a woman. If I were going for an image of a woman - very straight link with image and poem - it were it’d be from that period - Modigliani, maybe. Or you could go for Tracey Emin’s bed, and that would bring a whole new set of meanings to the poem. I know! Rachel Whiteread’s Due Porte. That would bring out the ‘things’ angle.

Anyway, I’m excited to explore your links, and I’ll be doing this next, and will post later once I have done so!

Sarah-Jane

[Sarah-Jane Crowson]

Hi Michael,

I have just looked at your images and I think they're all fab. For me, they work with the idea of inside/outside, the picture as representation (the ideas of the poem rather the furniture of the poem).

I'll come back again, and I can see the rationale for all the choices, all of which dialogue with the image, again for me, in slightly different ways, but for now, I think the final image is the one I love with the poem, because it brings in something new - the woman as onlooker. The woman as onlooker, framed. Looking outside. That really works for me with the poem. Which one is your favourite?

Sarah-Jane

[Michael Cantor]

Sorry about the delay, but none of them really work for me - which is why I posted so many in the beginning. I would normally ask my wife to help - she's spent her life working as a graphic arts director and illustrator, and does my covers - but it's gardening time and she's got compost coming out of her ears. Hopper and Modigliani call to me, but nothing works perfectly. Here's my present favorite.

https://images.collections.yale.edu/.../0/default.jpg

[Sarah-Jane Crowson]

Tell your wife good luck with the gardening! I don't know what the climate/season is like where you are but over here everything is growing and growing, and mostly in inconvenient places (I am not a gardener - the best word to describe the garden is 'wild' - but it does have lots of life and colour in it).

To pictures. I can see that the openness - the lack of clutter in the latest image works with the poem's dissatisfied list of objects. So it adds weight to that reading.

Thinking about Hopper and Modigliani and the poem took me to Vanessa Bell and Charleston (not sure why, possibly the gardening snuck in).

https://emuseum.aberdeencity.gov.uk/...8/vanessa-bell

https://www.nationalgalleries.org/si...?itok=UpHPWvuN

https://chariswhiteblog.files.wordpr...6/image20.jpeg

Is there a particular meaning that you want the image to draw out?

Sarah-Jane

[Jason Ringler]

Hi Sarah,

Here's my quick take on the Rothko pictures. i found the first one pretty scary, a crime-scene of nightmares, mutilations; the second one, a serial killer looking through blood with half his skull exposed, so not that pleasant haha. I know nothing of Rothko or these paintings, so I'll probably have to read up on him.


the pink elf

silly putty leads to bean art
fish swims up to body parts,
draped over blood vessels noodle
their guts by the gory doodles

sick in portrait, eyes that jumble
brickhead saves his flame in bundles
laughing back through the gaps themselves
is the world of the pink elf




https://d2jv9003bew7ag.cloudfront.ne...othko-No-2.jpg

[Allen Tice]

Michael, your post 22 would go very well in your The Horrors of War thread.

[Sarah-Jane Crowson]

Hi Jason,

Thank you so much for joining in and sharing your work and ideas! I think the move from stone to stove is beautifully surreal and also really interesting - the stove as the place of production, of warmth - a kind of statue, but one which people cluster around for very different reasons. I love ‘steam uplifted’ and the ‘piney spices’ and I hope you workshop it if you feel the urge.

The image is gorgeous. It’d make a fantastic surrealist collage to combine the two ideas, I think. I’m not sure how confident/eager you are to play with arts practice but I could imagine a similar type stove image being used to amazing effect cut up (physically) and the pieces placed in a silhouette of a face. Or use eyes from magazines and position them over the stove image. It’d be brilliant, I think.

I love how your Rothko poem is so different to both John’s and Michael’s. I enjoy the playfulness in it, the way you’ve taken a surreal leap, and the kind of horrible but also really effective noodle/gory doodles. A combination of child-like and visceral, which has a real effect on the reader (not that pleasant an effect, but I don’t think that this was the point of your poem).

Allen - nice to see you here.

Sarah-Jane