Throwback Thursdays: Ten Works From Our Archives, Plus Call for Throwback Submissions, Plus Bonus Poem by Alun Robert ** Madame Kupka Among Verticals, by Michael Salcman Dr. Salcman shows us this unusual abstract portrait of the artist’s wife. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/madame-kupka-among-verticals-by-michael-salcman ** Ekphrastic Challenge Responses to Omar Odeh Omar Odeh is a Canadian painter from Iraq. Responses to his work include poetry by Alarie Tennille, Kyle Laws, Irina Moga, and more. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/omar-odeh-ekphrastic-writing-challenge-responses ** Painting with Words: Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, by Bill Waters Long-time contributor Bill Waters is best known for spare, lean poems. This one has a few more words than usual. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/painting-with-words-by-bill-waters ** Lavender Mist, by Leland James Poet Leland James takes on Jackson Pollock. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/lavender-mist-by-leland-james ** Ad Mariam, by Julia Rocchi Julia Rocchi contemplates a sculpture of the Madonna by Gordon Kray. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/ad-mariam-by-julia-rocchi ** Elegy to Robert Motherwell, by Alan Humason A prose poem by Alan Humason examines an elegy to the Spanish Republic. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/elegy-to-robert-motherwell-by-alan-humason ** Frida Kahlo Speaks, by Barbara Crooker World renowned ekphrastic poet Barbara Crooker contemplates Kahlo and the last chapter. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/frida-kahlo-speaks-by-barbara-crooker ** Lili au Rivoli, by Mary Gilonne Poet Mary Gilonne shows us a portrait we may not have seen before. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/lili-au-rivoli-by-mary-gilonne ** Georgia O’Keeffe Looks Over Her Shoulder, by Anne Higgins Anne Higgins has Georgia on her mind. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/georgia-okeeffe-looks-over-her-shoulder-by-anne-higgins ** Turning Colour Into Light, by Masha Savitz A beautiful journey into Bonnard. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/turning-colour-into-light-by-masha-savitz There are almost six years worth of writing at The Ekphrastic Review. With daily or more posts of poetry, fiction, and prose for most of that history, we have a wealth of talent to show off. We encourage readers to explore our archives by month and year in the sidebar. Click on a random selection and read through our history. Our new Throwback Thursday feature will highlight writing from our past, chosen on purpose or chosen randomly. You’ll get the chance to discover past contributors, work you missed, or responses to older ekphrastic challenges. Would you like to be a guest editor for a Throwback Thursday? Pick up to 10 favourite or random posts from the archives of The Ekphrastic Review. Use the format you see below: title, name of author, a sentence or two about your choice, and the link. Include a bio and if you wish, a note to readers about the Review, your relationship to the journal, ekphrastic writing in general, or any other relevant subject. Put THROWBACK THURSDAYS in the subject line and send to theekphrasticreview@gmail.com. Let's have some fun with this- along with your picks, send a vintage photo of yourself too! ** While I was hoping to have someone else's embarrassing throwback pic up today (or next Thursday, or the next...come on, catch the spirit!) I was flattered that long-time contributor Alun Robert sent in this Throwback homage. Even though it means I have to run the photo again, it would be wrong not to share! Thank you, Alun. ** Lorette in the Limelight she glares at the Minolta X-700 multi-segmented light metering 35mm lens tries to look cool 80s à la mode dark hair coiffured in front of her left eye pouting with precision lippy deep scarlet ear rings looping both not one under self spotlight casting a shadow across her pristine white blouse wearing influences on her sleeves dreaming with desire desiring adventure world at her grasp budding writer and artist to be driven by eclectic curiosity and by the joy of juxtaposition collagist of Canada wip Alun Robert Alun Robert is a prolific creator of lyrical free verse who remembers fondly the nineties but is not quite so sure about the eighties. Since 2018, he has been part of The Ekphrastic Review community enjoying the numerous challenges. He is a member of the Federation of Writers Scotland for whom he has been a Featured Writer.
0 Comments
After a Sudden Blow Swan feathers snow the hotel room. What isn't to be seen is blood. A plumed body, like a costume Neglected after a wild night, floods The floor. The bird lost his head. Randy, Zeus-possessed, aflame. Once animal. Then God. Then dead. Yellow hair flashed at his doom. Look at his beak; its colours bled, Embossed, shaded like Celtic runes. Did the manic bird-heart's dread, As life left, blush her cheeks to bloom? Just as she took on his power, Our Leda put on his colours. Vivid, not without pity, her Eyes say, "I'll choose my lovers." Paul Jones This poem first appeared as part of the Craven Arts (NC) Ekphrastic Challenge and 2020 Bank of the Arts National Juried Exhibition. http://www.cravenarts.org/ More about the artist: https://www.jilleberle.com/ Paul Jones — Poetry, Triggerfish Critical Review, Broadkill Review, and recently in The Ekphrastic Review as well as anthologies including Best American Erotic Poems (1800 - Present). Recently nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and two Best of the Web Awards. Chapbook, What the Welsh and Chinese Have in Common. Manuscript of poems crashed on the moon’s surface April 11, 2019. Unruly Behaviour Succincting time, strobbing material, strangling each flick of protean matter to spare a moment, that’s Duchamp’s Trois, threads twisting as they please in ultimate contingency then glued down in Pyrrhic victory. Liar’s paradox in series, mis-runs revealing a squirming standard, the difference in each fall records the aleatory history of aleatory units, fleeting as earlier definitives—cubit, hogshead, foot, rod, i.e., somebody’s foot is the canonic foot, and it doesn’t matter. All the while the conceptual insistence of Trois holds court and measurement at bay, even while proclaiming to gauge anew, even while constants are only getting better at the infra-thin letting, the atom coming closer to timing time in exquisite detail what a second’s far-distant cousin is. When I make my next sculpture, eventually, when I go into space, I will re-do Duchamp’s Three Standard Stoppages to eliminate the pesky pull of gravity. Todd Sformo Todd Sformo is a biologist living in Utqiaġvik (Barrow), Alaska [note dot over "g" in Utqiaġvik]. His interests are overwintering physiology, art, and measurement. He has published two prose poems, "Knots" in Hippocampus (1 June 2015) and "Gray" in Cirque (Summer 2018), and one essay on studying a fungus gnat in winter "So much depends upon" in Catamaran (Fall 2020). Mask A mask will hide a person. And the breath and pulse that life is disappear – in much the way snow blanks a landscape or the stars swim out of eyesight when the sun comes up. Who I might be without the mask is moot – but who I am in it, that has some weight. This is an Ife copper mask. The face would not surprise, met on the street, though art has left its trace on eye and lip and cheek: all smooth lines. A man wearing this could not cry out or speak, but he could see his feet. This may have served for royal burials – a king transformed, but still a king. We all step masked into existence and that mask is not ours to remove. The kings of Ife were buried royally, and every pulse and atom of their person was concealed by their high station. As the Emperor Vespasian became a god, so they ceased to be mortal – and their copper face refined what changes into what does not. John Claiborne Isbell Since 2016, various MSS of John Claiborne Isbell’s have placed as finalist or semifinalist for The Washington Prize (three times), The Brittingham & Felix Pollak Prizes (twice), the Elixir Press 19th Annual Poetry Award, The Gival Press Poetry Award, the 2020 Able Muse Book Award (twice) and the 2020 Richard Snyder Publication Prize. He published his first book of poetry, Allegro, in 2018, and has published in Poetry Durham, threecandles.org, the Jewish Post & Opinion, and The Ekphrastic Review. As a young man in the 1990s, he published books with Oxford and with Cambridge University Press and appeared in Who’s Who in the World. The Art of Works to John Di Leonardo Regarding September September here hath thirty days, each hours to regret or praise, as labour left to be reviewed perhaps to be as art construed... ...the poetry for eyes we've made to seek -- within -- the sense conveyed of who we were and what we knew becoming what we chose to do... ...perhaps on canvas as design for others left as lore to mine... ...or image formed some other way as thought forever to portray our love so trying to transcend the time as gift we had to spend. Portly Bard Portly Bard: Old man. Ekphrastic fan. Prefers to craft with sole intent of verse becoming complement... ...and by such homage being lent... ideally also compliment. For Orlando sun / hammers down / like a pestle / its blunt club / on the dust / rubs bright dirt / in his eyes / Carel Fabritius / caught in the Delft Thunderclap / 1652 / at the height / of his career / dies / dying / is defined / by the timbers / the cart / the woman / on the ground / in future depictions / by Edward van Poel / In 2016 / in an interview / a girl / sat on a wall / her ankle boots / swinging / the tremor of lace / on the cuffs of her jeans / a minute long / They ask / how it feels / to lose / her brother / dancing / in canvas shoes / like a paintbrush / mouth full of white Russian / a line of milk / down his Adam’s apple / tugged / by the wind / spun off palm trees / Watch / his t-shirt / brown / like fruit / in his fist / feel his breath / go limp / gather these / dashes / tears / on the wooden stand / like curls of tobacco / with the side of your hand / work the body / of the poem / the way bullet / works the body / load / cock / point / the title / at your lover / enemy / which is to say / I’ll blow you / back. Grace Tower Grace Tower is a queer poet from rural Derbyshire, England. Having graduated with a Creative Writing degree from Queens University Belfast this year, she is now undertaking a Creative Writing MA at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her work for this involves using genre painting from the Dutch Golden Age as a medium to explore and normalise minority sexualities. She won the 2019 Brighton & Hove Arts Council Student Poetry competition, featured in The Seamus Heaney Centre’s Ekphrasis Project, and received the 2020 Dissertation Prize for her poetry collection which received the highest marks. Her poem “Queer in Belfast” was recently published in Libretto magazine. April is poetry month, but isn't every month poetry month?
Celebrate poetry and expand your repertoire with this collection of ekphrastic poetry exercises. These are not painting prompts, but a range of approaches and projects that you can apply to any painting. You will never run out of new ideas! Click on image, or click here to purchase. Your ebook purchases are an incredibly important support to The Ekphrastic Review. THANK YOU. A Dream of Blue Roses Your pierced hand is a thin embroidery of azure rivers and pain. Adrift in your trembling pulse the ocean-milk of your blood repeats the pattern of rain terse in August and spilling through the underground lode of your veins. This winter the roses are blue, they hint to renewal, to the end of sorrow and waiting: still entangled in sleep, your azure body glimmers with light. Your eyelids of silver resplendent, you’ll wake in the reversed lore of a dawn burning with shimmering light. Federica Santini Federica Santini lives in Atlanta, GA, and teaches at Kennesaw State University. She holds an M.A. from the University of Siena, Italy, and a Ph.D. from UCLA. A literary critic, poet, and translator, her work has been published in over forty journals and volumes. She is a 2021 Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference Fellow (Arizona State University). The Vermeer Tales by Gail Tyson (Brunswick, ME: Spring Leaves Chapbook Series/ Shanti Arts Publishing, 2020) The Vermeer Tales: Linda Parsons Reviews and Interviews Gail Tyson We may not be aware of it, but we are always seeking balance—emotionally, physically—in tune with our inner clocks, the broader ticking of time and seasons, day to night, joy to grief. In The Vermeer Tales, Gail Tyson offers a balancing scale for our lives’ journeying, one threshold to another, using three luminous paintings of Johannes Vermeer as touchstones for revealing and exploring each "word picture" presented. Although the chapbook is labeled “ekphrastic prose,” and is based on A.S. Byatt’s The Matisse Stories, Tyson’s tales (short story, fiction/nonfiction hybrid, and memoir) reach beyond any label in a beautifully balanced, produced, deft, and seamless collection. The first piece, “The World Can Be Mended,” uses Vermeer’s The Lacemaker as guidance for Ashley, a medical student who spent her childhood sewing with her grandmother, but who struggles to suture expertly and quickly in surgery. In the painting, a print of which hung in her Gran’s house, a young woman bends to her lace tatting, her lemony dress lit by morning, shades of blue spilling over her intent work. “Threads gush out of the girl’s sewing cushion red as blood, the bright flow of life that courses beneath my fingers when I touch patients,” Ashley says. She longs to mirror the painting’s intensity in surgery—and must if she is to continue her degree. She ultimately finds success in an evening practice program for students. We learn of Ashley’s affair with a married visiting fellow, all part of her education in cutting the loose ends of old insecurities. In the end, a newfound strength realigns Ashley with her future, bringing her home to herself and her bright destiny. The fulcrum of the chapbook is appropriately the middle piece, “Woman Holding a Balance,” with fiction and personal memoir on either side. Vermeer’s painting of the same name is the most striking of the three in light, coloration, and layered meanings. And the piece, part fiction/part essay, appropriately holds balance in sway as the narrator Catherine questions her swirl of a business career weighed against a slower, more purposeful life. Catherine visits the painting in the National Gallery, which grounds her in “tranquility and harmony.” A woman stands at a table holding empty scales surrounded by pearls, coins, and other valuables, bathed in golden light. A picture of great intimacy, yet change and movement as she waits for the scales to balance. In Buddhist tradition, with great change and feeling "off-balance" come growth and transformation. Catherine holds her own transformative scales, waiting for the moment of reassurance, the “vanishing point” of alignment used by Vermeer, set against her past choices, including remaining childless. Still, she understands, as we all must, that we live in ambiguity, always striving for, or living into, a balance either close at hand or just beyond. The personal voice and path of the third and last piece, “Woman in Blue,” is heartbreaking though satisfying and inevitable. The companion painting, Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, is a study in blues, diminished light, and shadow—yet glowing with equal intensity and focus. Vermeer’s wife, Catharina, is the subject, a nice twin of "Catherine" in the previous essay. Here Tyson turns the page of love and grief, as she says, “the verso and recto of our deepest relationships.” Step by step she leads us through her husband’s sudden illness and passing in 2019. The memoir toggles between thoughts on Vermeer’s work and history and her own journey of caregiving and anguished parting. Again we see stillness and change—both in Catharina and in Tyson’s unreal reality. Again we are called to the everyday, the domestic, the inner world weighing the balance of togetherness and loss seemingly in the blink of an eye. We cannot restore the past, nor repair our brokenness in it. We can only navigate the rutted road ahead with as much balance as possible, righting ourselves within ourselves, through darkness and into the brighter coming day. ** Interview Questions Linda Parsons: Did you envision the three pieces as a whole from the start (the chapbook is based on a similar concept), or did it take shape over time? Gail Tyson: The desire was there from the beginning, but a different inspiration triggered each piece. For “The World Can Be Mended,” I ran across an article in The Guardian about a London event where medical professionals and knitters swapped stitching skills. It triggered personal associations and gave me a way into writing about Vermeer’s The Lacemaker. The contemplation of art inspires much of my writing, but Vermeer’s portraits of women—and the essential mystery at the heart of these portraits—speak to the mystery of being human. Linda Parsons: You beautifully integrate history and research of larger aspects, such as Vermeer’s glazing and pigmenting techniques, into the pieces without straying from your focus. What advice might you give to readers about this? Gail Tyson: Writer/teacher Priscilla Long taught me that every subject should have a hundred words. I keep my “word-trap” lists in mini-Moleskin books. Combine both sensory and concrete words, and let wordplay show you unexpected connections. When I wrote “Dark Spirits” (Appalachian Heritage, Winter 2018) about drinking whiskey with a friend who later died, I made rhyming lists—proof, hooch, tumor; distill, Tennessee hills, kill—that kindled connections. Research can easily lead me down many rabbit trails. I try to balance all that fascinating information with feeling. The fact that Vermeer used lapis lazuli more than any other painter naturally raised the question, for me, of what that did to his family budget. Expect that much of the research won’t make its way into the final work. What you choose to include or discard helps give your piece a voice. As Priscilla says, “Voice is articulated through extreme accuracy.” I’m also a huge etymology fan. The history of a word can open up an entire subject. Linda Parsons: Was the book an instrument of healing for you, and how would you express that aspect to your readers? The individual pieces each address a major turn in my life. Patty Loveless sings about seeing “what it is I can live with and without” (“The Last Thing on My Mind”). Gail Tyson: The individual pieces each address a major turn in my life. Patty Loveless sings about seeing “what it is I can live with and without” (“The Last Thing on My Mind”). Writing helps me begin to answer that for myself. These pieces also explore threshold experiences—identity, trust, loss—that everyone faces at some point. I began writing “Woman in Blue” just before my husband’s diagnosis, and after he died the writing gave me a safe container to relive unbearable pain, as well as to honour it. Only when Christine Cote at Shanti Arts Publishing decided to publish the chapbook did I see how the stories reflect the maiden/matron/crone phases of womanhood. Linda Parsons Linda Parsons is the poetry editor for Madville Publishing and reviews editor for Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel. She is copy editor for Chapter 16, the literary website of Humanities Tennessee. Widely published, her fifth poetry collection is Candescent (Iris Press, 2019). Invitation to the Tavern after Midnight “La danse au chanson mariait!” ~ Bizet’s Carmen Querido, Loosen your cravat, and toss aside your tailcoat. Who cares if the floor sticks beneath your boots? Crushed orange and spilled Manzanilla tang the musty night. Dissolve your morals in this glass of ale, and sag into that chair of wicker and worn wood. Mercédès and Frasquita beg you to fetch your guitar, splintered but singing, from the wall where it hangs. Flex your fingers, and find the chords. Surrender your pulse to the pounding of my heels. Let the fringe of my raven’s shawl caress your cheek as I strut. This inn is mine, and you are, too! If your hungry hands want to crumple my petticoats before dawn, strum when I pull these unseen cords. We are victorious tonight, no longer soiled—neither farmer nor thief nor invisible maid, but ravished and remade regal through song. So launch your longing to the ceiling alongside my shadow, drenched in yearning, cresting in crescendos, as our clapping rhythm binds our souls. Swell your lungs and throat…then, throw back your head and wail. Gisèle Lewis A decade-long resident of Tampa, Gisèle writes about memories, art, and volunteering with the local refugee community. She also loves synchronized swimming, wine consumption, and teaching her daughters to curse in French. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in the Baltimore review, Pirene’s Fountain, Saw Palm, and Havik! Her interviews with women readers appear at giselelewis.com. |
The Ekphrastic Review
COOKIES/PRIVACY
This site uses cookies to deliver your best navigation experience this time and next. Continuing here means you consent to cookies. Thank you. Join us on Facebook:
Tickled Pink Contest
April 2024
|