​Forever Dali

In 1960, my mother and I emigrated from Scotland to Canada to join my father. Our family had faced challenges as a result of my father’s shell shock.  In 1957, he experienced a serious breakdown.  After a year in psychiatric care, he moved to Canada to start a new life. 

Two years later, we were to join him, flying from Prestwick, near Glasgow, to Windsor, Ontario.  Mother decided we’d travel to Glasgow a day early to visit Dali’s Christ of Saint John of the Cross.  Bought in 1952 by the then Director of Glasgow Museums, Tom Honeyman, whom my mother knew personally, the painting was housed in the Kelvingrove Museum and she wanted to see it.

“We may never get to come back,” she said.

I was only twelve, with no idea why Mother “had” to see this painting.  After all, we’d looked at paintings in museums before.  Wasn’t this just another painting? 

We took the train and spent money on an extra night in a hotel, money we could ill afford.  Our possessions had been shipped and all we had was a small suitcase each and enough sandwiches to meet our needs until we got on the plane.

Next morning, we waited for the museum to open. Once inside, we headed for the Dali, then hanging in a large room, centered on a long wall.

Reproductions of the painting are misleading.  It’s not as big as one might anticipate—about six and a half by four feet—but it’s huge.  We stood in front of it all day and stared.  It didn’t matter how much our legs ached or how hungry we were, we couldn’t tear ourselves away.  At closing time, Mr. Honeyman came and took Mother and me to dinner, our sandwiches now forgotten, squished and soggy in Mother’s handbag.

At dinner, Mr. Honeyman and Mother talked about how Dali had hung a stuntman to see how a human body responded to the gravity of its own weight.  They talked about the water below, the bay of Port Lligat where Dali lived at the time, and the Spanish courtiers and their boats so tiny below the hung Christ.  Why Spanish courtiers?  They talked about the painting’s controversy—a “stunt,” “kitsch.”  They talked about Mr. Honeyman’s bargain. He’d paid only £8,200.

All this talk flowed over and through me as I ate my dinner, made even more delicious by not having eaten since breakfast, but I don’t remember what was on my plate.  I knew that I would never view paintings the same way again, even bad or uninspiring ones, because Dali’s painting was viscerally within me.

What it is that mesmerizes?  The easy answer is the enormity of our situation coupled with the impact of the painting.  But would that have happened with a different painting?  No.  It was this one.  Dali.  His vision.

For my mother, her words came true.  She never saw the painting again, but if I travel to Glasgow, I must go to the Dali again.  Every time, it hangs in a different place in the museum, but even when it’s at the dark end of a corridor, it hits me the same way—physically, in my chest, and emotionally, as I fight off tears.  The pain of crucifixion jumps off the canvas, a testament to our human capacity for cruelty. Yet,  Christ’s drooping head and the absence of his face somehow correlate with the sacrifice the subject represents.  

It’s inescapable, irresistible, a permanent collection in my being.

Aline Soules
​
Aline  Soules' work has  appeared in  Kenyon Review,  Houston  Literary  Review, Poetry  Midwest, and The Galway Review.  Her books include Meditation on Woman and Evening Sun: A Widow’s Journey. Find her online at http://alinesoules.com, @aline_elisabeth, and https://www.linkedin.com/in/alinesoules/

​Edward Hopper’s Room in New York
 
Seated in the room’s one comfortable chair
a husband hunches forward, intent upon his paper
as if his life depended on the scores he finds there.
 
Just home from work
he has not yet loosened his tie,
nor spoken with his wife
 
who is wearing her bright red dress,
the one with the bow in back that
comes easily undone.
 
She knows he has not noticed
so she plunks the keys of her piano
to say to him softly
 
that she is there
and has been waiting all day
for him.
 
The room glows--
yellow walls, oak table and door,
the rosy tones of the man’s chair and the woman’s dress.
 
Something could come of this.
 
Joseph Stanton

Joseph Stanton is a professor of art history at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He has published many books of ekphrastic poetry, with a new one scheduled later this year. His work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Poetry, Harvard Review, Image, New York Quarterly, and more. Over 500 of his poems have appeared in journals and anthologies. His awards include the Tony Quagliano International Poetry Award, the Ekphrasis Prize, the James Vaughan Poetry Award, the Ka Palapala Pookela Award for Excellence in Literature, and the Cades Award for Literature. Ekphrastic poetry was one of the central concerns of his doctoral research at New York University, and he conducts ekphrastic writing workshops in New York and Honolulu. For more information on Stanton's latest ekphrastic collection see: http://brickroadpoetrypress.com/order-books/things-seen-by-joseph-stanton ​
​

Art History Lesson

One perfect, winter afternoon in the Louvre

I stood in front of Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe
for almost an hour.  No one else was around.
Inside my mind, the snow falling outside. 

I stared & stared: nude woman seated closely 
with two clothed men. Their legs & feet intertwined.   
His black shoe not quite touching her ivory statue foot.
Same old illusion, I thought--ménage à trois.
Her direct gaze—flash & depth of brown eyes!   
A little ennui. Blue ribbon on straw hat. Spilled fruit 
on the grass. Prostitute or goddess? Well yes, that’s all of us.

​Julia Caroline Knowlton

Julia Caroline Knowlton holds a BA degree in English/French from Duke, MA & PhD degrees in French Literature from UNC-Chapel Hill, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University in Los Angeles. The author of a memoir (Body Story, 2004) and a poetry chapbook (The Café of Unintelligible Desire, 2018), she is Professor of French at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta.  Her accomplishments include an Academy of American Poets College Prize, a Pushcart Prize Nomination, and a fellowship at Antioch. Her poetry has been published in many journals, including Roanoke Review and Raw Art Review. She is currently focused on polishing and publishing her first full-length book of poems.

Secret Dealings
 
And when the light has been taken,
when a blanket of black envelops the world,
when sounds are muffled by the thickness of dark,
that’s when she smiles.
No witnesses to this outrageous display
of unseemly hilarity.
She is the mother superior of the midnight mass
conducted in secret in chambers made of stones
planted at the holy site millennia ago.
She offers the bowl
to the sister whose bell-like giggles
earlier filled the clearing with joy.
 
A shy moon lifts itself
to rise above the clouds.

Rose Mary Boehm
​
A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of Tangents, a full-length poetry collection published in the UK in 2010/2011, her work has been widely published in US poetry journals (online and print). She was three times winner of the now defunct Goodreads monthly competition. Recent poetry collections: From the Ruhr to Somewhere Near Dresden 1939-1949 : A Child’s Journey and Peru Blues or Lady Gaga Won’t Be Back.

Ekphrastic Writing Challenge

Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrastic! We feature some of the most accomplished influential poets writing today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. 

Thank you to everyone who participated in our last writing challenge featuring the work of Sofonisba Anguissola, which ends today at midnight. (Click here to see the Anguissola challenge.) Accepted responses for the Anguissola writing challenge will be published on March 29, 2019. 

The prompt this time is Reply to Red, by Yves Tanguy.  Deadline is April 5, 2019.

Guest Editor

The Ekphrastic Review gives a warm welcome to contributing poet Shirley Glubka, who is our guest editor for this challenge!

Guest editor's note: 

Hello, everyone--

I'll be guest editor for the Yves Tanguy Ekphrastic Challenge. My own poetry and prose have ranged from confessional to narrative to meditative to whimsically experimental to formal to abstract, so I'm trusting that in this, my first formal experience as editor—at age 76, no less—I'll be open to all styles. I'm drawn to energy, craft, sincerity, originality. I'll look for a link to the art, but it need not be obvious. I'm willing to look closely. Poetry and short prose, both welcome. As Lorette, our hard-working ongoing editor says, have fun. Else, why do it?

Shirley Glubka 
https://shirleyglubka.weebly.com 

The Rules

1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination.

2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything.

3. Have fun.

4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.

Send your work to [email protected]. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry.

5.Include YVES TANGUY WRITING CHALLENGE in the subject line in all caps please. 

6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. Do not send it after acceptance or later; it will not be added to your poem. Guest editors may not be familiar with your bio or have access to archives. We are sorry about these technicalities, but have found that following up, requesting, adding, and changing later takes too much time and is very confusing. 

7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 

8. Deadline is midnight, April 5, 2019.

9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is.

10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline.

​11. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges!

NEWS

We have been featuring occasional guest editors for the ekphrastic challenges.

We're hoping this will inspire us in unexpected ways, add new flavours and perspectives to the journal, foster community, and widen readership.

Upcoming guest editors include Shirley Glubka, Joan Leotta, and Jordan Trethewey.

We're excited about this and about having a whole year of challenges, now that we've found an ekphrastic prompt system that is working in terms of consistency and longevity. Many great poems are about to be written!