The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Challenges
    • Challenge Archives
  • Ebooks
  • Prizes
  • Book Shelf
    • TERcets Podcast
  • The Ekphrastic Academy
  • Give
  • Submit
  • Contact
  • About/Masthead

 In Cézanne’s Les Grandes Baigneuses by Susan McCaslin

4/21/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
The Bathers, by Paul Cezanne, 1898–1905.

 
In Cézanne’s Les Grandes Baigneuses
 
 
flesh once again sings itself solid
               where a sapphire river
mates with the hearing eye
 
 
Titian   Tintoretto   Rubens
             rise again in oils
from Impressionism’s shimmer:
                                                      sculpted clouds
 
trees vaulting over flesh’s density
 
the correspondences:
                                                                        taste seeing
                                                                        touch sounding
                                                                                                            (as Baudelaire sang)
 
Faces’                                   
androgynous blurs
                          bodies                  
                                       articulate
                                                       symmetries
 
                                                                                 in groupings
                                                                                                           of five
                                                                                                           and eight
rendering poetry and painting
             each other’s
                                                   semblances and frères
 
 
After seven years’ labour
                                                                                          he leaves the work
 
                                                    unfinished

 
 
 Susan McCaslin
 
This work is a segment of a book-length sequence of poems on Paul Cézanne to be published by Quattro Books in Toronto in Oct. 2016.

Susan McCaslin is the author of thirteen volumes of poetry and nine chapbooks.  She completed her Ph.D. at UBC in 1984 and taught at Douglas College in B.C. in the English and Creative Writing Departments for twenty-three years.  Most recently, Susan has published a memoir, Into the Mystic: My Years with Olga (Toronto: Inanna Press, 2014), a spiritual autobiography exploring the sixteen-years she spent as a young woman learning from Olga Park, an elderly mystic from Port Moody, British Columbia. Her most recent volume of poetry, The Disarmed Heart (Toronto: The St. Thomas Poetry Series, 2014), explores the roots of violence and peace-making in the individual, the community, and the world.  Her previous volume, Demeter Goes Skydiving (2012), was short-listed for the BC Book Prize (Dorothy Livesay Award) and the first-place winner of the Alberta Book Publishing Award (Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book Award) in 2012. 

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    The Ekphrastic Review
    Picture
    Current Prompt
    Picture
    COOKIES/PRIVACY

    This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies.

    Opt Out of Cookies
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Join us: Facebook and Bluesky
    @ekphrasticreview.



    ​
    ​Archives
    ​

    June 2025
    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    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 [email protected] 

  • The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Challenges
    • Challenge Archives
  • Ebooks
  • Prizes
  • Book Shelf
    • TERcets Podcast
  • The Ekphrastic Academy
  • Give
  • Submit
  • Contact
  • About/Masthead