The Ekphrastic Review
  • Ekphrastic Journal
  • About
  • Give
    • Merch
  • Book Shelf
    • Ekphrastic Book Shelf
    • Contributors' Book Shelf
  • Ebooks
  • Submit
  • Prizes
  • Ekphrastic Writing Challenges
  • TERcets Podcast
  • Writers
  • Contact

The Three Graces, by Michael Salcman

6/15/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
The Three Graces, by Antonio Canova (Italy) 1814-1817 (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The Three Graces

Three daughters of Zeus stand in triangulation: 
from left to right, Joy, Charm and Beauty, their bare feet
tiptoe an altar, two right legs and Joy’s left 
obtusely bent at the knee. See how their pale arms circle 
in careless caress of a back, face or marble shoulder
in sisterly love or carnal intent. A single scarf connects 
Joy’s sex to the other two, hiked up where Beauty cups
the belly of Charm's breast, that mistress of elegance
 
who deftly (as we might expect) turns her head away 
to steal kisses from Joy on our left. But Beauty looks blind
with her too serious face as if preparing a father’s banquet
or sharing a sisterly secret, powers overcome by Time
and attitude. In chiseled irony the sisters seem evenly lit,
though Joy’s riding a hidden pillar in a garland of flowers.

Michael Salcman

Michael Salcman is a retired physician and teacher of art history. He was chairman of neurosurgery at the University of Maryland and president of the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore. He is  a child of the Holocaust and a survivor of polio. His poems have appeared in Arts & Letters, Harvard Review, Hopkins Review, The Hudson Review, New Letters, and Poet Lore. His books include The Clock Made of Confetti (Orchises), nominated for The Poet’s Prize, The Enemy of Good Is Better (Orchises), Poetry in Medicine, a widely used anthology of classic and contemporary poems on doctors, patients, illness and healing (Persea Books, 2015), and A Prague Spring, Before & After (2016), winner of the 2015 Sinclair Poetry Prize from Evening Street Press. Shades & Graces, forthcoming from Spuyten Duyvil (2020) won the inaugural Daniel Hoffman Legacy Book Prize. Many of the poems in his published collections are ekphrastic in nature (especially in The Clock made of Confetti).
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    The Ekphrastic Review
    Picture

    ​​Find a writer, artist, or poem, etc. by searching here:
    PLEASE SUPPORT US
    Join us on FB and Twitter!
    Picture



    ​
    ​Archives
    ​

    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015

    Lorette C. Luzajic theekphrasticreview@gmail.com 

  • Ekphrastic Journal
  • About
  • Give
    • Merch
  • Book Shelf
    • Ekphrastic Book Shelf
    • Contributors' Book Shelf
  • Ebooks
  • Submit
  • Prizes
  • Ekphrastic Writing Challenges
  • TERcets Podcast
  • Writers
  • Contact