 In the Musée d'Orsay
About suffering, the Old Masters, they were never wrong. —W. H. Auden We flail our bodies along, legs failing, arches falling, but we've never seen such light, tint, and tone at once, the sky gushing through the ribs of steel to show each Cézanne and Van Gogh, in a line along the wall, no darker than the real windows to the France outside, Montmartre, mount of martyrs on the hill, bleached in sun like a cemetery, the sky deep blue above the Sacre Coeur and Seine with orange Magritte hot-air balloons and puffy bruised-on-the-bottom clouds. Raised a temple to the train, then almost razed, the bones were resurrected, the skeleton was saved and given new transparent flesh. Through the crystal ceiling and high windows everywhere, light falls past us to the ground where sculptures writhe, held down by stone that lends its form to all their yearning. We should stop before we kill ourselves, and we have to pee again, and it's always in the basement, but there's also always one more room of air and colour, and a greedy childish clarity still intact inside drags us to another sunlit day in Arles, its wrung-out cypresses squirming up, or the stony mount of gauzy St. Victoire, till we are down, but still not out, crawling towards another bright Monet mirage of river, sea, and sky, gasping, water, water as we die. William Greenway William Greenway’s newest collection Selected Poems was the winner of the 2014 FutureCycle Press Poetry Book of the Year Award. Everywhere at Once (2008), won the Ohioana Poetry Book of the Year Award, as did his Ascending Order (2003), both from the University of Akron Press. He has published in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Georgia Review, Southern Review, Poetry Northwest, Shenandoah, and Prairie Schooner, and has won the Helen and Laura Krout Memorial Poetry Award, the Larry Levis Editors' Prize from Missouri Review, the Open Voice Poetry Award from The Writer's Voice, the State Street Press Chapbook Competition, an Ohio Arts Council Grant, and was 1994 Georgia Author of the Year. He’s Professor Emeritus of English at Youngstown State University, but lives now in Ephrata, PA.
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 Agony in the Garden, by Duccio di Buoninsegna (Italy). 1308-1311. Staring Straight at Me
olive pit eyes called Jesus, I know pretext, too much red wine made us sleepy, they said, denying that they fell asleep upon garden stones; they didn’t look at him, staring straight at me. M.J.Iuppa M.J.Iuppa lives on a small farm near Lake Ontario’s shores. Check out her blog: mjiuppa.blogspot.com for her musings on writing, sustainability & life’s stew.  Wreckage of B-24D Lady Be Good (photography series), by unidentified United States Air Force photographer (USA), 1959. Lady Be Good (April 1943)
The men you carried once might be on Broadway for all the good it would do. Benghazi is, in real terms, no closer than that gray desert. They’ve set off across hills and plains of sand instead of the sea they thought waited below the dark. Given a week their trek will be complete for infinity’s hours. Eventually, as it must, the desert will finish you as well, as you finished your final flight on its deceptive waves. The slide into not being will take as long as the slide between low dunes, though one is measured in years and one eternity's seconds. Rust won't do it. Left long enough, you'll be blasted to atomic thinness by your carpet carried on the air. The truths within your mystery, your memory, alone remain behind. Lennart Lundh This poem was first published in Poems Against Cancer 2014, by Lennart Lundh. Lennart Lundh is a poet, short-fictionist, historian, and photographer. His work has appeared internationally since 1965. Len can be found on Facebook, and his books are available from the VisionsWords store on Etsy, as well as on Amazon.  Still Life With Five Bottles, by Vincent Van Gogh (Netherlands). 1884. Sin Collector
Collecting sins in old bottles, the days reach out and drop them in like pebbles, still smelling of fond river beds. Yesterday, it was the temptation of an improbable love, too big to fit into that slim hipped flask, but sin is pliable, twists and changes as it is gathered, as we change its name, change its colour, make it bearable in the morning. When all those hours, all those words, all that feel of skin on skin has been corked, when the bottles fill the shelves and rooms and toss and turn on the breasts of the tides, when everything has been cleansed and bathed and the rain never stops falling, tell me then, when did love become a mistake. Rajani Radhakrishnan Rajani Radhakrishnan: "I am from Bangalore, India and post my work on thotpurge.wordpress.com. Some of my poems have recently been featured in The Calamus Journal, Quiet Letter, Visual Verse and Parentheses Journal."  Les Fiances de la Tour Eiffel, by Marc Chagall (Belarus). 1913. Tone Poem #1: The Bride Speaks
now I have taken all the bread and gathered it inside my whale-like belly for another time, or for when they dissect me or if I have children and petals from white roses too, plucked from afar and sent into the avenues and markets like cough-drop fairies now I have sent out the last of many invitations, lit all my candles and turned on the hot water, before opening the window for the first sound of birds always a tree somewhere connecting earth to ether hope to what went before a bride waiting to be kissed into technicolour something perfect prayed for and a star just bright enough to make it so singing there must be singing or at least the desire to sing a moment of cultivated composure before breath is expelled and with it the universal melody of longing even the naysayers who know if we were meant to fly God would have given us wishbones even they have been invited because even they want to get it right this moment of grand intent of one and one thousand rewritable nights searching for coffee beans and leather for my soles, in the hush beneath the tower, before crickets and the green whisper of leaves comes an echo of shells and the boots of occupiers, darkening weddings and spoiling wine the uncertain cut of the tourists’ shirts, blinking from crowds bound by cobbled streets behind shutters and doors hands reach for wings. how easy to become lost to the world of men to the thing of it I could nod and nod forever my mock acquiescence live grateful for nothing instead I wait in this hiding place bunkered against the light as the sun intensifies to mere artefact ad libbing a prayer thumbing the beans of a makeshift rosary and I know he will come for me love or some other small revolution driving him to the tower he will know not to look up he will remember the direction fear takes me in the steel heat children still trade marbles, a turtle sneaks down the drain and no-one notices all eyes are bronzed by the sun, bare chests and shoulders locked in the heroics of time that is what becomes of love here, an echo cupped in our hands it was never part of anyone’s deal making this shadow crossing between wed and widowed between mankind and man friends spare each other the whole truth husbands and wives forgive and forgive again through a red fog a father sees his father in the shape of his own raised fist and stops everywhere lovers just are we dream of hushed things a thin reach of moonlight Solomon’s song and loosed from long dead skin this single feather now soaring. Ashley Capes & Jane Williams This poem was first published at Poetry Slave: Collaborative Verse. Jane Williams is an Australian writer based in Tasmania. While best known for her poetry, Jane enjoys writing in a variety of forms and genres, combining photography with poetry and collaborating with other artists. She has been a featured reader in countries including the USA, Ireland, Malaysia, Czech Republic and Slovakia where she held a three month artist residency in 2016. Her most recent book is a collection of haiku and senryu Echoes of Flight, Ginninderra Press. Her first collection of poems for children will be published by Gininnderra Press in 2018. https://janewilliams.wordpress.com Ashley Capes is a poet, novelist and teacher living in Australia. He teaches English, Media and Music Production, has played in a metal band, worked in an art gallery and slaved away at music retail. Aside from reading and writing, Ashley loves volleyball and Studio Ghibli –and Magnum PI, easily one of the greatest television shows ever made.  A Mixture of Frailties, by Susie MacMurray (UK). 2004. Click image for artist website. Rubber Glove Wedding Dress Tier upon tier, this froth of inside-out fingers, pinned to a dressmaker’s dummy. It must have taken weeks - fingers deft inside fingers, latex nipped and stretched like balloons before the blowing which makes you think of birthdays, the prickle of magazine-pattern dresses your mother stayed up to sew, the terrycloth apron she wore to wash up the best plates and afterwards, Marigolds over taps, her wedding ring, with its dusting of talc, on the draining board. The day you scrubbed up in white, she had her first manicure, Rose-Dawn-tipped fingers fussing, pulling hooks and eyes tight. Today, you can almost hear her gallery whisper berating this modern stuff – this foamy pooling, this train of gloves, empty-handed as the pair you found yesterday in the pockets of her coat. Victoria Gatehouse Victoria Gatehouse is a Yorkshire-based poets whose work has featured in numerous magazines and anthologies. She originally trained as a scientist before working on her MA in Poetry from MMU. Victoria is particularly obsessed by the garment sculptures and installations of Suzie MacMurry who’s work she first encountered during a poetry course at Manchester Art Gallery. She has a pamphlet forthcoming with Valley Press and does voluntary work as a Library Ambassador for Calderdale.  Composition, by Jean Paul Riopelle (Canada). 1950. Dance of the Palette Knife Quickly, quickly the hand flies the canvas bounces, receives what the blade delivers jabbing, jabbing, jabbing leaving behind each time its load of colour. the blade scrapes and removes and replaces scratches and scribbles replaces and scrapes layering red over blue over yellow over white over black-- a synaptic map of synaptic gaps and snap-to-it connections. Anne Swannell Anne Swannell’s work has appeared in anthologies from Leaf Press, Kind of a Hurricane Press, Chuffed Buff Books, OWF Press, Polar Expressions. Poems have appeared in The Malahat Review, Grain, Event, CV2, Prairie Fire, Dandelion, Antigonish Review, and many other literary journals. She has published three books of poetry.  Arca de Noe, by Leonora Carrington (Mexico, b. UK). 1967. Arca de Noé My body is seasick with rot, a few suns burn under my ribs and bubble up to boil out my eyes. I’m half a blown-out moon-- bone-brittle, cratered. How strange to see There’s a version of myself over there behind the rock bent double in selfish grief. Is this what I get for thinking I could die? The red deer are waiting to climb aboard. Where do they think I can take them, when I’m so twisted in on myself, my boards white as bone, and my stern mocking me? Who are these birds that light on my other half, and these cloud apparitions in the rain? I dreamed of three brothers throwing rocks off a rooftop. The youngest had something to prove. He threw too hard and as I watched, he fell ten stories to the ground. What have I done, bringing children into everything? Jessica Purdy This poem first appeared in SurVision Magazine. Jessica Purdy teaches Poetry Workshops at Southern New Hampshire University. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. In 2014 she was nominated by Flycatcher for Best New Poets and Best of the Net. She was a featured reader at the Abroad Writers’ Conference in Dublin, Ireland, 2015. Recently her poems have appeared in The Light Ekphrastic, The Wild Word, SurVision Magazine, Silver Birch Press "Beach and Pool Memories" Series, Local Nomad, Bluestem Magazine, The Telephone Game, The Tower Journal, The Cafe Review, Off the Coast, and The Foundling Review. Her chapbook, Learning the Names, was published in 2015 by Finishing Line Press. Her book STARLAND was published in October 2017 with Nixes Mate Books.  Fishermen Carrying a Drowned Man, by Jozef Israëls (Netherlands). 1861. Death of a Fisherman, Alicante
after Heliodoro Guillén Pedemonti There was the sea, impenitent, ruffling its muddy plumage across Raval Rouge, the altar boys scuffling by the doorstep weighed down by candelabra, men holding a stray oar, sword-like, curious neighbours in feisty veils, fishing nets splayed on walls like rambling roses and dawn, having tinged a rusty vine, bearing a crucifix of light. Abigail Ardelle Zammit Editor's note: The wonderful image above is a placeholder and not the painting that inspired the poem. Zammit's poetry was prompted by a painting she viewed at MUBAG, The Museum of Fine Arts Gravina in Spain. The artwork was by Alicante artist Heliodoro Guillen Pedemonti, possibly also titled Death of a Fisherman. We regret we are unable to find an image to show or link. You can learn more about the artist here: http://www.mubag.com/guillen-pedemonti-heliodoro/. Abigail Ardelle Zammit is from the island of Malta. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing (Lancaster) and has had poems published in various British and Canadian journals. Her first collection, Voices from the Land of Trees (Smokestack 2007), takes its inspiration from Guatemala’s violent past. Abigail’s second collection Portrait of a Woman with Sea Urchin won second prize in the Sentinel Poetry Book Competition (London) and was published in 2015. Abigail is a lecturer in English at the G.F. Abela Junior College. She has had workshops with many established poets and in 2016 she was a guest poet at the Inizjamed Mediterranean literature festival, thanks to which she started translating poems from Maltese into English. Her poetry spans various themes but there is a sustained interest in the relationship between text, body, landscape, coastal geographies and the female experience. https://abigailardellezammit.net/   I was honoured to be approached by James B. Nicola, one of our poets here at The Ekphrastic Review, to blurb his poetry book. Here are the covers for his beautiful collection of ekphrases.
Click the link below to view, read blurbs, and order. If you want The Ekphrastic Review to blurb yours, contact theekphrasticreview@gmail.com. https://www.shantiarts.co/uploads/files/NICOLA_OUT.html |
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November 2023
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