 Seated Couple (Egon and Edith Schiele), by Egon Schiele (Austria), 1915. Seated Couple This once translation grasps the thread: woman and spineless man at one, essentially alone. Schiele’s hand all over – pornographer’s eye, death mask stare limbs that don’t belong. Life study; art of the possible. I think of Lowell lying on your electric blanket head in hands. Giovanni stands weaponless, his wife supposed pregnant, connected by touch, the hidden couple over-exposed. It doesn’t last, art; marriage forever proximate. Thomas Day Note: While writing this piece, the poet also had in mind Robert Lowell’s ekphrastic poem, "Marriage," about van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Marriage. Thomas Day teaches English at Eton College, where he also runs the Praed Society for poets and songwriters. He is the editor of the English Association journal The Use of English. He has poems forthcoming in Agenda and English in Education, and has published critical essays and reviews in Essays in Criticism, The Cambridge Quarterly, The Warwick Review, the TLS and others.
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The Ekphrastic Review
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January 2021
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