Brown House with Multiple Figures and Birds (1939-1942) I must not write about this house those silhouettes that ladder men in stovepipe hats dogs or foxes aerial and subterranean giving chase geese or vultures plunge and soar away, away shadows attack surround or flee this empty house Bill Traylor born enslaved in Alabama freed from that house at twelve to sharecrop raise a family live on Montgomery’s streets scavenge posters and boxes to draw on with pencil and paint in his dotage by the fruit stand or seated in front of a tavern said he was born on April Fool’s Day but he was no fool slept at the shoe store or the funeral parlor when he could or with a daughter buried October 1949 in an unmarked grave I cannot know the pain of living in a place where lynching was as common as cake walks the stench the stain pain he numbed with drink nor the joy he felt discovering paint in his eighties. Still I want to stand at Mount Mariah AME Zion Church his polished tombstone marks his place marks his span THROUGH HIS ART HE LIVES ON. Traylor found a place to rest his bones. Lois Baer Barr Lois Baer Barr is a reading buddy for the Open Books Foundation in Chicago and teaches creative writing in Spanish at Lake Forest College. Her chapbooks of poetry and flash fiction are Biopoesis and Lope de Vega’s Daughter. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, she was a finalist for the Rita Dove Poetry Prize in 2019. Untitled (Man, Woman), ca. 1940–1942. Two fingers pointing, Hello! Hello! Like a cave painting from Jim Crow, a woman, a man, tux and tall hat, evening bag swinging tick-tock on its chain. Like a Rorschach painted on cardboard. So cool to strut a finger dance. So fierce to walk a public spat. Or maybe they’re jazzed-up Blues-ers pointing to God. Kathryn Dohrmann Kathryn Dohrmann has taught for many years in both the Psychology and Environmental Studies Departments at Lake Forest College. Her poems have been published in CALYX, The Chicago Tribune, The A-3 Review, Thema, Turning Wheel: The Journal of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, and in Collaborative Visions: The Poetic Dialogue Project. She has been a finalist in the WBEZ Illinois Poet Laureate Contest, and a judge for the Midland Authors’ Society annual poetry prize. Construction with Exciting Event, 1939-1942 Men in black chimneysweep hats hearts pounding fingers spread in fear about to be launched into the unknown, child hanging from the tail of confused cat, hyaenas ready to taste blood, one being soon to axe another, blackbird escapes with the olive branch, thrusters ignite with a rumble. Karin Gordon Karin Gordon, who was born in Denmark, has worked as a textile designer in Sweden, Switzerland and New York. After moving to New York, she dreamt that a Swiss artist took her paintbrushes and handed her a bunch of yellow pencils: Now you write. She began writing non-fiction for newspapers and arts organizations. After she heard the British painter Cecil Bacon say he likes poetry because it says a lot in a few words, she turned to poetry. Her poems have appeared in East on Central, Whetstone, Wisconsin Academy Review, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Poetica, Snowy Egret, and others. Snake, 1939-1942 Even the snake has room for complaint. Wide mouth open to swallow, its still eye spies us, judging our size, fangs bared. It is black, and thin, and coiled but for a tail, spiked as if testing the dull, orange air; fissures sizzle around its head. A famine sounding in a flat desert, we stand accused and are stilled. Cynthia T. Hahn Cynthia T. Hahn, author of two books of poetry, Outside-In-Sideout (Finishing Line Press, 2011) and Coïncidence(s), a bilingual volume of French and English poems, illustrated by Monique Loubet (alfAbarre, 2014), has been a French professor at Lake Forest College, IL since 1990. She has translated a volume of French poetry, as well as nine novels and short stories by French, Algerian and Lebanese authors.
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the lost coin, found silly me, i didn’t hear it drop as my hearing is somewhat lost as well i swept the floor for my little zuz then i decided to make a day of it scrub the house before the sabbath sundown reorganize the cupboards and the food pantry, refill the water jars sometimes i hide things next to the yeast then forget they’re there i checked lit a lamp and doubled checked sure enough there it was on the floor next to the bottom shelf when i announced the news the neighbour women and i all laughed now i sit in sundown rest to delight with one found coin as well as a swept and tidy house Sister Lou Ella Hickman Sister Lou Ella is a certified spiritual director whose poems and articles have appeared in numerous magazines and journals as well as four anthologies. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015. (Press 53) The Inquisitor’s Instructions to Paolo Veronese Replace the dog with Mary Magdalene. And all the Germans must go. If not, it’s the auto-da-fe for you. The drunkards, the fools, the freaks we’ll allow. Venice is liberal with its last suppers, as was our Lord with His. But you argue your art is joyous praise, no product of thought. Precisely. Heresies bloom in light and colour. The dog and the Germans must go. Stephen Bunch Stephen Bunch lives and writes in Lawrence, Kansas, where he received the 2008 Langston Hughes Award for Poetry from the Lawrence Arts Center and Raven Books. His poems can be found in Autumn Sky Poetry, The Literary Bohemian, Fickle Muses, IthacaLit, Mudlark, and others. From 1978 to 1988, he edited and published Tellus, a little magazine that featured work by Victor Contoski, Edward Dorn, Jane Hirshfield, Donald Levering, Denise Low, Paul Metcalf, Edward Sanders, and many others. After a fifteen-year hibernation, he awoke in 2005 and resumed writing. Preparing to Leave, his first gathering of poems, was published in 2011 and Transmissions from Bone House, his second, in 2016. Bunch can be found on the Map of Kansas Literature near L. Frank Baum and Gwendolyn Brooks. [He reports that property values tanked when he moved into the neighbourhood.] At the American Visionary Art Museum: Madre Dolorosa O invocator of auras, practitioner of the remote view, of gender fluidity, dressed as a nun at Studio 45, you adore her, Mother of Sorrows; claim as yours her consciousness; then weep with her on this canvas for a world where sacred and cosmic comingle/ collide, phallic-like comets spiraling toward South America, atomic mushrooms erupting from an ocean of tears below the sacred temple of her heart. Lavender and rose, you rise in this specter of paint and space to bow down to apparition, Mother Mary, pray for us to complexity, even to the ecstasy of grief now and at the hour at the hour of her contemplation, of our deaths at the hour of your creation, Madre Dolorosa at the hour of your invocation of this doomsday vision. Amen. Amen. Marjorie Maddox after Madre Dolorosa, by Ingo Swann (USA, 1933-2013) Click here to view image. ** At the American Visionary Art Museum: Highways From here he sees there, one road running above the other, the mystery of Mars no asphalt look-alike but still a twin risen to enlightenment, riding the rails of space and purple mountains majesty, the mind’s psychedelic skies just one more way to somewhere before sailing away to mirage from that parched desert or uninhabitable planet you no longer believe is not real. Climb in. Marjorie Maddox after Highways, by Ingo Swann (USA, 1933-2013) Click here to view. Winner of America Magazine’s 2019 Foley Poetry Prize and Professor of English and Creative Writing at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published 11 collections of poetry—including Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (Yellowglen Prize); True, False, None of the Above (Illumination Book Award Medalist); Local News from Someplace Else; Perpendicular As I (Sandstone Book Award)--the short story collection What She Was Saying (Fomite); four children’s books; Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (co-editor); Presence (assistant editor); and 550+ stories, essays, and poems in journals and anthologies. www.marjoriemaddox.com You Cannot See the tunnel that approaches. It hurtles forward, the clearance so low it might skim the hat from a cowboy, prone on the top of the train. He stands now, but has only a split second before he must dive for the train’s roof. You imagine the expression on the wrangler’s face. Is it fear? Panic? Concentration? What might courage look like, in the shadow of that wide-brimmed hat? That Stetson? Clearly not black. This man must be the hero, “the good guy.” You want him to succeed; you root for him. You watch the train’s wake in the creosote bushes. Breathless, wind tugs at the cowboy’s chaps. You see his vest, his string of bullets, his hands, poised above his six-shooters. The bad guys must be near! They jammed their black hats down tight, pulled their bandannas up over their faces. You see the cowboy’s bowed legs and the way his boots plant themselves on the bouncing train. You see telegraph poles, the mountain pass, the whizzing railroad ties, the distant rock formations, the “yella” sky. You cannot see the next moment and the one after that; you cannot see if he makes it through that tunnel, off that train, beyond the bandits, the hold-up, the gun battle, the runaway stage, the box canyon, the charging buffalo, and into the arms of his rescued sweetheart. You must hold your breath and wait. Not all the good guys make it. Mary Stebbins Taitt Mary Stebbins Taitt has an MFA in Creative Writing in Poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts and likes to write illustrated children's books for her grandkids. She was nominated for a Pushcart for her poem "A Jungle of Light," was included in McSweeney's Poets Picking Poets, and has received enough rejections to paper a gymnasium. The Persistence of Memory The child, the grassy grave, and standing there. The mother speaking to the five-year-old. She tells him of the soul he is to bear, his older brother's soul. His own must fold-- a flag of honour, mourning, hid from sight. Your brother was an infant when he died. You, Salvador, are lucky, living, bright as pennies copper-new. Your world is wide. It's time you understood the will of God. He gave you life that you might incarnate the precious little one beneath this sod. His grave releases him. This is your fate. The man had masks, a strangeness, force. The art flew birdlike from a darkened source. Shirley Glubka Shirley Glubka is a retired psychotherapist, poet, essayist, and novelist. Her most recent chapbook is Reflections Caught Leaping: poetry and related prose. Her latest novel: The Bright Logic of Wilma Schuh. Shirley lives in Prospect, Maine with her spouse, Virginia Holmes. Website: http://shirleyglubka.weebly.com Antiphony/Anti-Phoney V Hear lachrymae resound! Jacob faces malakh: violence & angel; zealot & quietus. Seraphim wounds; enemy supplicates; opponent vivifies; anterior femoral kerfs. Peniel—challenger named & unexpectedly blessed: Israel. Ex quercus gloria, blood, etc… Love wrestles Jacob obelus. Generates Israel. This young disciple keeps urging YHWH: “divide me too; come God: zealously pummel, hurt, negate; re-name.” † Know: Down under ascetic praise, zero excitement: women, querulously yoked in piety, lower dull heads. Their Monsignor stands offishly, lowered eyes too, his gaze close & exclusive. Some bullock, whose features require unpicking, mewls. Novice: feeble kicks, vain gambol, no rival. Jacob—battered, queasy--aliased—is cornered. Zarqua/Jabbok yearns; an exhaustive vision overlooked. Ben Egerton Ben Egerton is a poet and education lecturer from Wellington, New Zealand. He is close to completing his PhD in poetry and theology at Wellington's Victoria University, where he holds the Claude McCarthy Fellowship. Ben's poetry has been published in the United States, New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom. Nocturnal Scenes From an Apparition She remembers being taken, as a child, to a Colour Circus at night, where Fauvists bred with Outsiders, seemingly taming chaos (though wildness always bled out, and lingered – as sure as a turmeric kiss on white canvas). Here colours defied gravity with breathtaking ease - to float, shimmer, and sweep through the air like trapeze artistes; where trees kept the aura of day in extended arms - drawing in dusk like a catch in their nets: a mackerel sky of rainbow scales - playing sweet, light, melodies as though with a flute - lifting the heavy cover of night with a peacock feather. The Circus played on in her mind, for years ever after: displays of implausible gaudiness that made her gasp, and laugh at her fears. Janina Aza Karpinska Janina Aza Karpinska is an Artist-Poet who lives on the south coast of England. She has an M.A. in Creative Writing & Personal Development & Foundation in Fine Art, Chelsea College of Art & Design. Her work has been published in several anthologies & magazines including The Third Way, Chichester Magazine, Psychopoetica, and Pandora's Books amongst others; and exhibited in several locations around Britain. Self Portraits— a Review of Kendall Johnson’s Dear Vincent: a Psychologist Turned Artist Writes Back to Van Gogh (Sasse Museum of Art, 2020) Before I begin, in the interest of disclosure, it should be said that I have known Dr. Kendall Johnson for the better part of 35 years. He is an artist, psychologist, and teacher, as well as my father. It is an honour to have been asked to write a review of his new book, one which I repaid by informing him that I intended to be as impartial and trenchant as necessary. The latter quality was not at all necessary. I highly endorse this book to any consumer of art, though not for the reason that it provides a clinician’s perspective of the works of Van Gogh. I hope this review will clarify what I mean by this, and convince the reader that it is a preferable trait. Electronic in format and unencumbered by the constraints of the press, Dear Vincent makes abundant use of the high resolution images freely disseminated by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Each page of text faces, more or less, a corresponding image, curated by Kendall (as he signs his letters, and how I will refer to him). To prepare myself to write this review, I travelled with my family to the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena to view the one painting in this book accessible to a Southern Californian, Van Gogh’s Mulberry Tree (1889). Painted 99 years before the birth of my sister, the canvas is vibrant yet, awash not only in colour, but in thickly-layered texture. The caked-on brush strokes stand out on the canvas (still visible along its margins) like a bronze frieze. Rather than figures leaping out at the viewer, a vortex of texture pulls the image out of its own dimensions. I felt dizzy after watching it. I wondered how a photograph, irrespective of the resolution, could duplicate the experience. A writer and a painter himself, Kendall solves this impasse by creating a book of layers, thickly daubed. The text itself is a series of juxtapositions. On each page the reader meets three distinct blocks of text, with the equivalent number of fonts. The first block gives biographical and interpretive information to segue from the painting to the next block, an excerpt from Van Gogh’s letters. Next, the very conceit of the book, Kendall responds to the letter as though he himself were the recipient. Having identified as a psychologist, Kendall allows us to imagine a therapeutic conversation between himself and the artist. However, these categories do not remain static. The focus shifts from Kendall observing the artist to Kendall taking in the painting, considering himself as an observer, and the text often interposes a final block of text, a short lyrical fragment. These short lyrical passages carry us out of the biographical speculation, returning us to the canvas. Reversing this process, for the sake of this review, I would like to let the author speak for himself. What follows now are excerpts from a conversation I had with Kendall. I have edited them for clarity and length. Q: Under what circumstances did you create this book? A: Gene Sasse, Founder and Director of the Sasse Museum of Art approached me about it. Since the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam had made high resolution images of Van Gogh’s painting publically available, he suggested we put together a virtual exhibit through the Sasse Museum. He approached me specifically from the position of my being an artist and psychologist. I could give commentary from those dual perspectives. Q: He was interested in how Van Gogh’s possible illnesses affected his paintings? A: Yes. Various authors have attributed his work to illnesses ranging from depression, psychosis, addiction, and even problems in seeing. Through my research and writing, I came to believe that the conversations about illness were sidelines. They missed the point. His work excelled in spite of, not because of, his mental illness. He did this all in spite of the burdens he carried. Q: How did you decide what images to include and how to order them? A: Curating the images was my initial task. My first interest was choosing paintings I really liked. My mother and father were both artists in their own ways, and I chose many images I had grown up with as prints on the wall of my childhood house. My favourite painting is actually in the Norton Simon, nearby. The first time I happened upon The Mulberry Tree I was transfixed. Like many of his paintings, it simply pulsates. People were pushing around me to get by, but I couldn’t move. Q: You also chose to curate excerpts from his letters. How did you decide what to include, and how to pair it with a painting? A: I really felt like I was curating his life through his letters. I based the excerpts on my selection of paintings, and chose them because they provided insight into the conditions in which he painted, his motives, or what was going on in his mind at the time. I had selected the images based on my personal preference first, and their significance next. I looked at three elements. First, I wanted to illustrate his personal maturation combining with artistic self development. All of his great paintings are carefully composed with an inner logic. Once he did that, he produced masterpieces. Those were the first two criteria; how was he maturing personally and how did that combine with his own artistic growth? The third element I looked for were his psychological struggles. It’s ironic that I approached this project being asked to give my clinical opinion of those struggles, my professional diagnosis. In fact, in doing the project I came to view those as extraneous factors. But they still played an important role in his work, obviously, but not as causes. Illness, poverty, and social difficulties functioned more like crucibles. Madness did not determine his aesthetic, but provided an impetus, energy, and an urgency for his work. It’s as if he was struggling to say important things before the light was lost. Q: Your text format is unique. When the reader opens the book, they will find each painting on the left side of the page, along with identifying information. On the right, there are three distinct text blocks. The first block gives orienting information, almost like clinical notes on the biographical and psychological context for the painting. The second block is the excerpt from his letters, providing a counterpoint for both the painting and the clinical notes. The excerpts are given in a cursive font, in iron red. Under that, in a third font, we find your notes to Vincent. In this third block, the reader encounters a much more personal engagement with the painting and with Vincent. You sound like a friend, less than a clinician. You compare memories and respond as an artist. How did you settle on this unique text structure? A: Van Gogh was not only one of the more complex artists, but one of the most articulate. Over twelve hundred letters have been found, and many hold literary value, and certainly all give insight into his work and his life. The layers of text reflect the layers of his work, his concerns, his developing style. Some of it is my reaction as a shrink. Others as reactions as an artist. The latter wins out over the process of the book. The drama is in the process of this side of me winning out. I came to see the underlying psychological factors less important the Van Gogh’s accomplishment as an artist. Q: It should be said that there is a third feature of your letters. After your prose response, you often provide an additional layer, which completely collapses the clinical viewpoint. You insert poems beneath the prose of your letters, and many of these poems of identifiable as haikus or tankas. What was your motivation for doing this? A: I love the epistolary form. It’s personal. I don’t have to limit myself to an ostensive position of “objective expert.” Once embarked upon a personal interchange, though, the possibility for perspectives opens up even further. A poetic response allows access to the work at the aesthetic level. Q: So you consider your letters to be prose poems? A: Yes. The virtue of the prose poem is that it allows context with response. The haibun form allows even more. The addition of short form poetry following the prose poem allows a “stepping into” Van Gogh’s world. Combining the context of the prose poems with the imagist haiku and tankas, layers different realities and meanings. When I break into the verse, I’m stepping out of the context, capturing the immediacy of experience. Q: Is it fair to say that the letters and the verse mirror the doubling of the process of juxtaposing the paintings and the writing? A: I think so. My own process as a reader of Vincent is reflected by the process of writing. I emphasize critical factors as a psychologist, I empathize as a person, and finally I commune as an artist. Q: Why specifically did you choose haibun as a method of communion? Why did you choose a Japanese form of prose and tanka? A: Again, haibun fits the epistolary poem form beautifully, allowing contextual factors to be addressed. Haiku is about direct experience. Tanka allows an additional two lines, which give the space for placing the poet in the picture, and for expressing emotion as part of the picture. I see the haiku and tankas as imagist poems. They capture the moment directly, and point beyond. Q: Is it a reference to the influence Japanese prints had on Van Gogh? A: I think so. The circumstances of the block prints embody a cultural hybridity. The block prints Van Gogh and other artists of his time purchased had become available from the newly opening trade with Japan. The emergent middle class in Japan created areas of indulgence for pleasure. Part of that was the production of cheap prints for export that found their way to Paris. They emphasized bold lines, flat planes, and bright colour—all aspects of van Gogh’s work after he left Paris. Some have said that these prints sabotaged the delicacy of impressionist painting. … Reviewing our conversation, my only dissatisfaction was with his response that he chose this epistolary form because it interested him. I think he was too modest. Rather, his fictional epistolary exchange, using as touchstones authentic letters to Theo, mimics the act of engaging an artist and their work. We make meaningful connections based on the information we have at our disposal. The artists are silent and the paucities of their lives, their human smallness, their failed relationships and their quiet deaths, are silent. The paintings do the talking. The boundaries between the viewers and the perceived becomes porous. This book succeeds at performing this experience. Kendall the psychologist becomes Kendall the viewer. The viewer becomes a part of the vision. In the galleries today, the original paintings have lost their vibrancy. Van Gogh’s colours have faded. However, like the layers of colour exerting a centripetal pull in the Mulberry Tree, a force beyond the senses seems to remain. Certainly, when we stand before paintings, we bring our own perspectives. Kendall’s book is an incisive enactment of this ritual. It goes far in showing that in galleries, as in zoos, we think we are the observers; but something thinking, something beyond our own senses, seems to be staring back. Even if you find the Van Gogh market oversaturated by books, speculative theories, kitch of the detachable-ear variety, etc, a book of such uniqueness is a valuable addition to ekphrastic literature. I highly recommend this book, a lifetime in the making. Trevor Losh-Johnson Click here to read the book online. Trevor Josh-Johnson is a writer and educator from the San Gabriel Mountains area. His first book, In Cabazon, was published by BlankSpace Publications in Ontario, Canada, in 2012. 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. The prompt this time is At the Theatre, by Prudence Heward. Deadline is March 20, 2020. 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. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF. 3. Have fun. 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY. Send your work to ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. 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 HEWARD 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, March 20, 2020. 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! |
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