[Susan McLean]

Like Catherine, I like the different kinds of "reflection" that are at work in this poem. I love the metaphor of the face as an unbaked boule. I do find the syntax demanding in the third stanza, but I read it as saying that his eye recognizes his own gaze in her gaze, and he does not allow the strong colors around her face to distract the viewer from what is going on in her character. Some paintings are about color and composition; this one, I think, is about psychological insight, satire, and empathy in a complex combination.

Susan

[Dmitri Semenov]

The poem reads as well, if not better, without S1.

Lines

His eye, so good at unseen faults in others

this moment that’s reflected from within.

are so good one wishes an improvement on

and at his own, picks out in her its kin,
then sets it so no flame or aqua smothers

that connects them.

The last two lines are a good conclusion for this sonnet.

The only wish is to replace "see" with something less direct, like "guess."

[Michael Cantor]

This is well written and competently executed, but I'm afraid that it doesn't do anything for me that the painting doesn't do better, doesn't bring a new sense or dimension to what exists. It's a faithful description of the painting - but doesn't reflect the intensity of Lautrec's work (this is one of his less flamboyant paintings, but still the poem seems more subdued) - doesn't create an atmosphere or emotion for me. (In other words, what David Rosenthal said.)

[Quincy Lehr]

Indeed, this poem can be taken as illustrative of both the strengths and weaknesses of the Contemporary American Sonnet. While it's not too cloying about it, the piece is set in another time period (and fair enough on that) around a high-art motif (again, no foul per se). But it tells you not only what the painting is, but what Lautrec is reckoned to do. It states it quite plainly so that there's no ambiguity, and likewise with the couplet, which does what couplets are supposed to do and illustrates why couplets are so dangerous (and not always in a good way).

To put what David R. and others have put another way, I want the painting to lift off the canvas in an ekphrastic poem somehow, rather than remaining something in the Museum of Western Civilization, to touch this time, possibly others, rather than serving as a sort of commemorative plaque or plaque at a museum explaining what's going on.

[Kevin Cutrer]

I think that's a fair assessment, Quincy. I do like some of the finer points of the language in this one, but in the end they don't add up to anything too stunning. I think the problem with this poem is that it tries too hard to recreate the specific visual elements of the painting rather than engage it. The challenge of ekphrastic poetry is to give a clear sense of the visual while using the peculiar gifts of the language medium to take the reader beyond the art object. This one only goes halfway there.

[Rick Mullin]

I don't think this is particularly effective as an ekphrastic poem. The first two stanzas really describe the picture and its narrative--this is why we don't need the painting in front of us to understand the sonnet. But it isn't a good reason for something...that doesn't necessarily have to happen. I think an ekphrastic that stands on its own should send me looking for the art at the end, if I am not already familiar with it. If I am familiar with it, I want to see it differently. This poem fails in that regard, I'm afraid.

The line "floats pale and doughy as an unbaked boule." is a little too clever for the use of the word "boule", which is standard fare bread in French still life paintings. And "underneath the master’s practiced hand" reminded me of a line in Don McClean's Starry Starry Night song about Van Gogh. It also opens the door to what I think really needs to be kept out, and that is the part that gets into the painter's process. That is almost always, as it is here, fraught with knowledge or understanding the writer brings to the painting.

So, yes. I think this is too thought-out. The writer picks up on an interesting hook--the painter painting a woman who is painting herself, and thus painting himself as all portraits are to some degree self portraits (his regard for her parallels self regard, thus model and painter are before the “canvas” looking into their own faces). But the writer wastes precious sonnet space by imposing and to some extend describing this interpretation rather than showing an affect the painting has on the viewer.

On a technical point,

so good at unseen faults in others
and at his own,

is grammatically too compressed. It is not demanding syntax--I think it’s just wrong.

RM

[Petra Norr]

I think it needs the painting to work, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. In fact, this poem is a marvellous take on the painting and it made me see and reflect on things I wouldn't have done otherwise. In the third stanza, the "it" definitely refers to the woman's eye. And in the painting one of her eyes is indeed visible; it's very tiny and I probably wouldn't have noticed it if the poem hadn't led my own eyes to it. The poet interprets the look in the woman's eye as "unsparing" (in the couplet). And as the poet implied earlier in S3, her (unsparing) gaze as she looks at herself in the mirror is akin to Lautrec's own way of gazing at things and seeing "unseen faults", faults that might not be visible to an ordinary onlooker.
Lots of layers in this poem, just as there are in a painting. I admire both the poem and Lautrec's painting.