The responses are up for the Nebra challenge. Click on image to read these amazing stories and poems.
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During these pre-springtime days in March, when it feels like an in-between time, and the news stays with me as I try to fall asleep, I’m drawn to these choice pieces of ekphrastic writing. They leave me with a longing for colour, sensory awakenings, and a sign that I am alive. They make me think that maybe, cautiously, hope is a good thing. Salieri, by Carolyn Martin Carolyn explores the aliveness of listening to music. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/salieri-by-carolyn-martin ** And Simply Read, by Wendy T. Carlisle The pleasure and relief of reading a good book—“Let it fall open of its own accord…” https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/and-simply-read-by-wendy-t-carlisle ** Nude in the Bath, by Laurel Peterson Laurel contemplates a painting by Pierre Bonnard and delivers a rich, colourful poem that makes you want to be in the painting. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/nude-in-the-bath-by-laurel-peterson ** Fine Art, by Gary Beck The last lines may surprise you and make you hungry at the same time. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/september-30th-2015 ** The hue of that portion of the visible spectrum lying between green and indigo, by Didi Menendez This poem could grow into a novel for all the depth Didi has packed into it. Any poem based on a gorgeous painting by Georgia O’Keeffe is fine by me. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/march-28th-2016 ** Coefficients, by Sholoka Shankar This poem, inspired by The Unexpected Beauty of Imperfect Things, by the TER’s fearless leader, Lorette C. Luzajic, made me smile and wish I’d written it. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/coefficients-by-shloka-shankar ** My Life with Mattisse, by Sheila Wellehan “I require the red of beets, blood, and tomatoes…” Yes, please! https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/my-life-with-matisse-by-sheila-wellehan ** Marjorie Robertson is an essayist, novelist, short story writer and multilinguist. Her first novel, Bitters in the Honey, was a semifinalist in the 2014 William Faulkner-William Wisdom Writing Competition. She is at work on a novel based on research from a University of Chicago residency in Paris. Her other interests include music, sleeping, meeting other ekphrastic writers, and hanging out with her family. To read some of her pubs, see www.marjorierobertson.com. There are almost seven 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 occasional Throwback Thursday feature highlights writing from our past, chosen on purpose or chosen randomly. We are grateful that moving forward, Marjorie Robertson wants to share some favourites with us on a regular basis, monthly. With her help, 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 10 or so favourite or random posts from the archives of The Ekphrastic Review. Use the format you see above: title, name of author, a sentence or two about your choice, or a pull quote line from the poem and story, 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! Cabinet Maker by Jacob Lawrence Fingers skilled, fingering a try-square to measure a clean board edge. Clawhammer, common nail put aside, the cabinetmaker concentrates, his eye trained to make a lidded chest of polished woods: birch, cherry, oak, the slotted screwdriver prepared to turn a slotted wood screw. Calm as wood the maker, wise to the old ways of C-clamp, cabinet hinge, chest handle. Time has honed, generations burnished his high craft, his ken of wood, the way he cuts straight and true. In his turn, death will cut him down. The work endures. Priscilla Long Priscilla Long is a writer of poetry, essays, creative nonfictions, fictions, science, and history. She has an MFA degree from the University of Washington and teaches writing. Join us Saturday night for a wine and art write night, on the theme of Women Artists. We'll take a close look at some surprising artworks by women and spend time doing some creative writing exercises. Our online workshops include learning about paintings, discussion and conversation, writing exercises, and voluntary sharing. We aim to challenge and inspire experienced writers as well as invite new writers to spread their wings! We have a Sunday Session the following day on Sunday afternoon, with another stellar lineup of prompts to expand your writing practice. You can write poetry, flash fiction, CNF, or anything you feel moved to write. Click here to sign up for Saturday night, Sunday, or check out the themes and dates ahead. "Whether you’ve ever written an ekphrastic poem or not, a two-hour workshop with Lorette C. Luzajic will inspire you. I especially like how in a few minutes she opens up an artwork—no matter the century of creation or the style—by describing its place in history and sharing intimate and insightful anecdotes about the artist. Each time, I find myself writing from a totally different perspective than I imagined when the artwork first appeared on the screen." Sandi Stromberg Like the Light, She Arrives after Hammershoi I. Today you wake in a thick womb of silence, before it is pierced by your waiting life. You wake with one soft wing upon your mouth; a crease in your mind, an unspoken Thing, listening. Watch the morning now, sprouting its wheatfields of light upon the floor. Gather your thoughts within you like a fluted bowl, your skin breathing, particles suspended in air. Learn to grow heavy, palpable. something in it thinks, and is thinking without us white bowls full of words II. A house with no memories is a chapel of moments, doors opening, windows with nothing to tell, and breath, the pale green seeping out of the walls, reminding one how kindred they are, lung and mind, necessary as air. The table stands beside her, emptied into the now, attention settling like dust. The mirrors silent on the walls. Soon, we become the standing, mind paused with expectation, body alert like a silent watcher of birds, convinced that any moment we will walk through… you shout, and she turns her head; you have chosen the memory, she says III. What does she stand for, placed like an object among objects, obscured from us, hinted to us? Like the light, she arrives without explanation, a presence which neither needs nor shuns you, and all gains meaning in association. She waits for no one to return, no one to blame, holding the keys there in her darkened hands. The room is solid with her shrouded form, blessing us eternally from the wooden chair, which will never die. Bound within time, we project our faces onto hers, invent stories, miracles. The heavy truth of her silence will outlast them all. through the glass, a soft suggestion of first snow, a sea with no waves, tide IV. To become the light, first you must sit in darkness. To become a fount, first the dark field, swallowing rain. Light is a knowledge that follows itself through darkness, wise of its own existence, placid joy unassailed, stark carrier of common grace. All things trust as it spreads its body beneath their feet: take this free gift of myself, and with it, grow. When you find that still, porous space within you, it is ready to climb in. she waits, with her tray of desire, outlives us the solitude blooms V. I have to believe a room is placed like this, bruise-purpled, cotton swabbed, swimming in its own muffled light. Precarious moment, tending towards the sentimental and the symphony, suggestion of crayon, small knitted caps. Particles clump through the curtain like timid droves of bees. And she, dark as midnight, absorbing and absolving all from the soft altar she kneels, half-assenting fact in the pastel dawn VI. How many faces a room wears; how many faces we bring within its doors. The day is beginning, the day is ending, night and encore of night, always the frame. This moment, immortalized; this one man’s window, nobody’s mirror. Does a true thought exist before it arrives, paperweight in the palm of the mind, meant for weighing down the infinite? Paint lies thick on the flesh, canvas. Three bricks of light crash through the window, anchor into the hazy blue. Who is behind the lens: the seeing one? The moon climbs the wall. Waves break. VII. Mystery is the silver mouse I suggest to you in the corner. Again you turn to remember, this needle between the cracks, thread of sheer muscle and the waking doubtfulness of ghosts. Now the walls are slate, weighted and ancient, burying their shadows beneath a succession of doors. She has disappeared from this poem. swirl of fingerprints like moulded clay across the surface. is. was. Jenna K Funkhouser Jenna K Funkhouser is a poet and author living in Portland, Oregon. Her poetry has recently been published by Geez Magazine, the Saint Katherine Review, and As It Ought To Be, among others. She is currently working on her second volume of poetry, an ekphrastic exploration of fully inhabited lives. Artscapes, by Lee Woodman Shanti Arts, 2021 We are very excited that a beloved ekphrastic poet has a new collection out! It was wonderful to connect with Lee Woodman about her new book from Shanti Arts Publishing. You can learn more about this incredible writer at https://www.poetleewoodman.com. The Ekphrastic Review: You say that when it comes to ekphrastic writing, you don’t choose the art, it chooses you. How does that happen? What do you experience? From childhood I have been fascinated with artworks and evocative language. I find it strange but thrilling when a sculpture beckons, a painting demands I pay attention, or a piece of music asks: "You know what I'm talking about?" Through poetry, I invite readers to walk with me into paintings, time travel through sculpture, and eavesdrop on conversations I have with artists. I experience a somewhat out-of-this-world feeling—a sense of entering a new space created by an artist’s use of color, texture, shape. They often introduce ideas or dreams that are novel, which inspire me to try out poetic forms that fit the content. A bronze globe sculpture, a huge chalk drawing of an avalanche, a Greek god striking his trident—all provide image and metaphor. Then I try to follow suit with my own interpretations through lyrics and wordplay. You’ve been writing or thinking about visual art for a long time, in your production work for major institutions. How has writing poetry about art changed the way you work or reflect? I majored in Art in College. I had intended to major in French, but when I took my first Art History course, I was completely smitten. I loved the way art forms changed with society over time—the influence of politics, wars, psychiatry, science, and literature in turn influenced the way artists approached life and various materials. At the Smithsonian Institution, in my career as a radio and television producer, I had to do a different kind of looking, listening, and planning. The editing process made me aware of the importance of getting down to the essential message of the program. Working at Library of Congress in the Veterans History Project, I learned how to ask leading questions about the effects of war to make a radio series broadcast on Public Radio International. Writing poetry makes me appreciate how I have had to look and listen to specifics. The more exact a poet can be with word choice and line breaks and the better the metaphors—the more universal the meaning of the poem becomes. Does a poem just spill out? Do you have long conversations with the artwork in person before you begin? Do you wait in for something to form, or do you have ways to compel that to happen? Tell us about your process when it comes to ekphrastic writing. It’s quite rare for me that a poem just spills out. I stare and stare at the artwork that compels me. I usually write thoughts and reactions in a notebook. Then I go back over the notes and highlight the “hot” spots or phrases that “rattle.” Very often, I go online to research the artist or the particular piece that intrigues me. I find the back stories of their lives and impulses fascinating. I think about what the artists have done with content and then reflect on the best poetic form to echo that. When you say you want your poetry, and poetry in general, to make others see art differently, what do you mean? How do you see art differently, and how will your poetry take us there? I think many people are confused by art and poetry. They assume it is difficult to understand or that their personal reactions are not valid. When I explain how I look at art or how I read a poem, it becomes more fun for them. I ask, “What do you notice? What do you wonder? What stays with you over time?” Then both children and adults realize how delightful the experience can be, and they burst forth with personal stories and reactions. That is really rewarding. Which of the poems in your book was the most difficult to write? Tell us the story behind that. The poem about Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights was challenging. After I stared at all parts of the triptych, and researched Bosch’s work in much more depth, I realized that if I looked at the work starting from the panel on the far right and traveled backward through the centre to the panel on the left, that I interpreted the whole work in an unusual way. It has been seen by historians and theorists as a reflection of Middle Age beliefs in sin and damnation; however, as pure art, it is a miraculous exercise of graphic dancing, dreamlike creatures, weird human physicality, and bountiful colour. I attempted to bring all of that ambiguity into the free form I chose for the poem. What are a few of your favourite artworks of all time, and why? I love Surrealists through time—as long ago as Bosch and then coming up through Dali, Picasso, Miró and into contemporary artists’ work. One of my very favourite paintings is Chagall’s Paris Through the Window, 1913. It is such an extraordinary mix of sheer colour, dreams, and imagery from his family life. I consider young Gabrielle Widjaja’s Dance, 2020 as surreal in its recapture of Chinese imagery and tradition. It spurred me to write a composite poem, half rondel, half free verse. I also see Agnieszka Nienartowicz's The Garden of Earthly Delights, 2017 as recapture of Bosch’s work redone as a painting of a tattoo on a young woman’s back! When artists are called “Surrealists” during their time, they often rebel because they have already moved on to a different way of making art. I think that is wonderful because after all, creators— whether sculptors, musicians, painters, or multimedia immersive artists—all stand on each other’s backs while bringing something fresh and new to the world. Lee reads a poem from her book.
The Re-assignment of Tracey's Knickers I got into the business of fine art re-assignment by accident rather than design. I was in a public library reading up the history of wood marquetry. I like the patterns, you see. I like periodic patterns. I find them restful. Lack of symmetry I find disturbing. However, that is not the point. As a young reader I read books no one else borrowed, and decided to reassign them to my own collection. I knew that property was theft and reassignment the redistribution of wealth. You will be interested to learn, I think, that there is no significant connection between wealth and IQ. The rich may be the cream of society and very thick. Ergo if one is poor and bright a little reassignment is necessary. It is self-help. I cannot say that a little became a lot, but it did become a habit. People with higher IQs often get into more financial difficulty than others, you know, and that was my situation. However, I solved the IQ/wealth equation by turning casual reassignment into a solid business model. I did not need to be born in Vienna and go to Chicago to learn how. I was also active from the early Thatcher years when entrepreneurs were better understood. I say, "understood", but no one really knew what I was up to. A good re-assigner like a successful Swiss banker operates strictly in private. We have much the same customer base. So while most people in the art business work en pleine air, as consultants or appraisers, we re-assigners work in chiaroscuro. Now provenance, while important to appraisers is what one might describe as "pathologically" essential to our business. My clients, you see, are often compulsive-obsessive. There is an interesting book by Philipp Blom about collectors and collecting. I suggest you read it. Aside from Blom you might try Eric Hebborn's "Art forger's handbook". He gives a nice overview of the market last century when both fine artists and re-assigners, or their fabricators, needed technical ability. They had to be blessed in that way because their modus operandi was imitation of genuine talent. But the market changed. Reputation became brand. The art object was of lesser, or no importance. On the other hand, its provenance was super-important. A doodle by Dali of good provenance was worth immeasurably more than a million doodles by another venal, paranoid psychotic. After a successful career - although I do say it myself – I retired to Tuscany with a small art collection of my own and alternated for a few months between cocaine and lost ambition, before deciding to write down the details of my last and most successful case. The desire for a small patch of posthumous sunlight is a vice for those of us who succeed in vivo in shadow. But before we get to the re-assignment of Tracey Emin's knickers, let me fill you in on the art scene at the time. I am not an historian, but a few facts are useful. Beginning with Marcel Duchamp – professional historians will argue the point – the spectator became as important as the artist. The object as trace of the art act was less important with regard to technical brilliance than its capacity to draw attention to itself and create opinion. Finally, of course, and now we are talking about the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of this, a successful artist might have no technical skill at all so long as he or she could generate twitter. The actual objects were, if necessary, made by contract fabricators. And in certain cases fabrication itself was replaced by selection. How did that work? Well an artist chose to objectify something, an unmade bed for example, and the audience encouraged by style makers then perceived that bed as so many tweets. Furthermore, the less they agreed about it the better the work of art. I am not sure why, but I am a re-assigner not a philosopher. One more thing: at the turn of the century, short tandem repeat kits for DNA analysis were introduced. That is all you need to know for the moment. At the time, I was on my way back through Switzerland. It was cold. It was the beginning of the year. There was, I recall, another banking scandal: Hong Kong Shanghai Bank this time: the usual malarkey: big bonuses and no oversight. But of more importance to my case, Tracey Emin's masterpiece, My Bed, had recently changed hands at auction for a substantial sum. As someone wrote: "her mess is our post-modern metaphor". Perhaps I wrote it myself, but I am not sure I agree with it. I am a tidy person. It is necessary in my line of business. It goes back to the marquetry. However, the hedge fund market was just getting into its stride at the time and one needs not a few style makers to hedge the professional reputation of a successful artist. For professional reasons I was travelling through Switzerland, cash-only, by train and taxi with no electronic devices about my person. And the request for help in reassigning Tracey's knickers had to wait for a reply until I visited an internet cafe in Basel. At the time I was on another case to re-assign a can of Piero Manzoni's faeces. The artist produced a limited edition of ninety cans in 1961. My re-assignment fabricator, a new one, had his workshop near Basel. We shook hands, drank a glass of wine together, then he showed me the Manzoni. I used cotton gloves to examine it. It was an interesting piece. The cans cannot be opened, of course. For a re-assigner that means what is in the can is less important than what is on the can. The signature, the type of steel, the printing ink, the label, the paper, and of course the provenance must all be perceived as genuine. Over the years, I reckon I have perceived more than 180 genuine Manzonis. People do not usually show them in public, you see. Unfortunately, one did go on show in a retrospective somewhere, was mishandled and leaked. Fortunately no one thought to verify the DNA because a friendly Welsh Corgi had provided it. Now I think of it there is an interesting paper on DNA typing from faeces. When was it published? I cannot remember. It is the sort of thing one needs to know in my business. Following the Welsh Corgi leak I changed fabricator, of course. His contract came to an end and he died in a motor accident shortly afterwards. I always found the Russians very helpful in that way. However, the new fabricator had done a really fine job, and I had passed the Manzoni paperwork through a number of collectors and auction houses. The bottom line was 9000 Euros excluding the vodka emolument, and the premium just short of 130,000. A modest gain, but major pieces in the millions attract overmuch scrutiny. With that particular can of faeces, I remember, I included a nice article by a noted Marxist critic about commodity fetishism. Perhaps I wrote it myself. Most collectors like to know what to say about the work they own. They like to impart a few well-chosen words while mixing their own martinis. High net worth individuals can be surprisingly hands-on. Reassignment of Tracey Emin's knickers would, I knew from the start, attract very close scrutiny. To begin with, they were part of her My Bed ensemble. They were biologically stained, and stains can be lifted and analyzed for DNA. To further complicate matters my client, for whom the stains were the attraction, was not only a collector of biological bibelots, but also a forensics wonk. She owned a medical testing facility in – well never mind where. It was going to be my toughest re-assignment. My only hope, I decided, was to remove the real knickers from the ensemble, re-assign them with their genuine DNA to my client, and replace them with a similar pair. I say "similar", but they needed to be identical aside from the DNA content. How? They were the best-documented pair of knickers in the world. Furthermore, they were inexpensive knickers and that made them more difficult to copy, but more of that later. Gesualdo da Poco Prezzo, or Doctor Psycho, was neither a doctor nor an Italian. He was really a performance artist from Australia. The doctorate was borrowed from DC comics. A large man, his professional shtick, often featuring his own genitals, was re-arranging the work of other artists. After a brief and distinguished career as a classical actor his mind had turned a corner and he now survived on cigarettes and atypical antipsychotic medication. Occasionally the old Shakespearean would re-emerge in a bold quotation, but overall his new persona was in the saddle and often difficult to determine. He came to celebrity as a performance artist with "Fountain", when he urinated over a couple of works at an exhibition of the Royal Society of Watercolorist. However, excoriated by the Murdoch press, excused by psychiatric professionals and loathed by most, his career as a performance artist was assured if not meteoric. He was too unstable to tout at the Venice Biennale or Basel Art Miami because he was genuinely rather than decoratively mad. In other words he was exactly what I needed, although he must have no notion of his role in the re-assignment of Tracey's knickers. St Martin's School of Art, London, now joined with other institutions had, in its glory days, a number of noted fabricators. I can think of three who specialized only in undergarments. They usually worked with defamation lawyers. At the beginning of this century there was a lucrative market in libel in London. You may recall the case of the Honorable R's jockey panties, in which the defendant denied all intimate knowledge of the transgender Miss X. Both prosecutor's brief and the defendant's briefs, the latter surprisingly produced in court with corroborative DNA evidence, were superb fabrications. You will not wonder why a lawyer would go to so much trouble, but may ask yourself why a creative artist would follow perfidious suit. It is a complex question. Fabricators are well paid, of course, and the emoluments are tax free, but they are not over rewarded. For my own part, I think it has more to do with artistic challenge than money. However, the fabricator of those infamous jockey panties – so well made, so carefully distressed and so intimately stained – was now long dead: a coronary event on a cruise and not a contract arrangement, by the way. And the skill, alas, that once sustained St. Martin's reputation in the field of forensic undergarments, was no more. After much soul-searching I was constrained, therefore, to try instead the Royal College of Art. My Bed was on extended loan to the Tate Gallery, London. I visited a number of times in my capacity as an art scribbler with an interest in post-modern masterpieces. I got to know the attendants who sat, day in, day out, gazing with celestial detachment upon that brilliant ensemble of the "detritus of a sluttish oeuvre". I don't think I wrote that: I was working up an article and reading around the subject. "Cast adrift in the raging something of a tortured something..." Emin's masterpiece was increasing in capital value, I calculated, at the rate of about 5-10% per annum, adjusted for inflation. The individual value of the knickers as part of the ensemble was incalculable, but they were I noticed relatively inaccessible. Unobserved by an attendant a deft thief might seize the pantyhose, albeit memorialized on CCTV. In our business closed circuit surveillance is always a problem. We met in the Genesis Cinema on the Mile End Road. I disguised myself as metrosexual passé with owl-like spectacles and a Joseph Beuys homburg of grease-stained, felt. My companion, on the other hand, looked perfectly extraordinary. A packet of peanuts and twenty minutes later he assured me he had the means to temporarily disconnect the CCTV in the room in question. I did not enquire how. In my line of business we respect each other's professional secrets and pay a handsome price if we prove untrustworthy. Traffic accidents are not the only fruit of error and ingenuity. Winter passed into spring, and then into early summer, but still no knickers. I began to have second thoughts about the Royal College of Art. In the meantime I was working on the case of the missing Andy Warhol time capsule. Warhol left 600 plus boxes full of stuff. He was a lover of stuff: everything from acne medication to discarded photographs and letters. I recommend the online view of time capsule 21 if you are unfamiliar with the genre. Our own re-assignment consisted of a missing capsule from around the time of Warhol's attempted murder by Valerie Solanas. A radical feminist who promoted the elimination of the male sex, she shot Warhol – as a quasi representative of that group – on June 3rd, 1968. Warhol began his time capsule collection in the early 1960s. It was rumored a capsule went missing around the time of the Solanas' shooting. Radical psychotics and rumour, are a re-assigner's best friends. Collectors are readily prepared to believe in the existence of a missing work of art when it involves both a nutcase and a falsehood. My fabricator for the missing capsule was New York based and had an encyclopedic knowledge of the sort of trivia that interested Warhol. You need to realize that the making of such a revered relic is extremely difficult. It must contain no fingerprints, or human DNA not consistent with Warhol himself. Finding and including the objects is the easy part. They are after all trivial, although they must be of the period. And only a few of the capsules contain biological items of fine art value such as used condoms, or Keith Haring's underpants. But the whole thing has to be assembled on a biologically clean bench under sterile conditions. To add authenticity we included a piece of gum once chewed by Warhol, and presented to a busboy on a menu. This contained verifiable, mitochondrial DNA. It is the sort of fine art flourish that one needs in my business. Discovery of the missing time capsule was coupled with a book deal with movie rights. It is not everyday someone re-discovers the equivalent of the Sistine Chapel in a cardboard box. This is the only time I have worked with a media don – not to be confused with a ghost writer. The latter is a talented hack hired to actually write a book as part of the deal: think, Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal. The don conceives, contracts, hires and produces the whole show. He hires the celebrity who nominally writes the book authored by the hack. And that's just for starters because a separate syndicate manages the movie rights. The celeb and the hack both sign agreements of non-disclosure. The celeb does the personal promotion. Both are reunited at their funeral. One coffin will do. I have only done the one deal because collateral bereavement is frequent. Come the day, the Tate was very crowded. I noticed one or two fellow art critics in the crowd. There was a rumour that the artist herself might appear for some promotional reason. I nodded in the direction of the attendants. I was a familiar by then. There was that sense of awe that attends any great work of art. Everything was pretty much in place I noticed, and I stood captivated by the magisterial beauty of the work, although my inner eye ogled only the knickers. In my other pocket I felt their facsimile in a tamper evident bag. The key was to recover the originals and get the replacements on site without touching the replacements. Wearing latex gloves in the Tate would inevitably cause suspicion, and I was a familiar face. I would need to tip and arrange them within thirty seconds of the event. Would Gesualdo da Poco Prezzo aka Doctor Psycho do his bit? About the replacement knickers: the only way to gain sufficient data for their fabrication was to photograph them, and my fabricator from the Royal College of Art had difficulty in doing this. It had to be accomplished using a covert micro camera over a number of visits. Should the theft be revealed, anyone visiting the bed on a regular basis would, if the CCTV footage were intact, be at risk. I had my own alibi, of course, as an art critic writing for a respectable journal, and I advised my RCA contact to register for a PhD on late twentieth century art. That way he or she would have a handsome alibi for scrutinizing the Emin masterpiece a fair number of times. I also had a word with a behavioral psychologist about what we call in the business the ETB Effekt. The description "eye of the beholder" is commonplace, but art psychologists stretch it to signify the process of perceiving especial value in mundane items like knickers. Jeff Koons' vacuum cleaners encased in perspex represents the most brilliant artistic manipulation of the ETB Effect. However, it does raise problems for those of us in the re-assignment business. Let me explain. Common sense will suggest that one vacuum cleaner is pretty much like another, but this is not so. A vacuum cleaner on exhibition in MoMa acquires a significant number of artistic peculiarities. Now if Tracey Emin's knickers appear mundane to a "reasonable person", as we understand that phrase in common law, those same knickers look extraordinary to a person trained in Duchampian exceptionalism. I am not a psychologist, I don't know, but I do know that the ETB Effekt is very important to my clients. They do not want a vacuum cleaner in a perspex box, they want THE vacuum cleaner in THE perspex box. Therefore, my final and most difficult case did not rest upon the deft replacement of one pair of knickers with another, but with the substitution of Tracey's knickers with another pair, however humble, deeply reminiscent of her fundamental, artistic sentiments. This was a most delicate matter to manage. Fortunately the fabricator did manage it. Come the day, the Tate was highly crowded. I nodded in an amiable manner in the direction of the now familiar guardians of high art. One was already dozing off: familiarity with great works of art does not inure one to their real meaning. A large bum is a fat arse even if it is Rubenesque and surrounded by pudgy airbourne perversions of natural childhood. The congregation was as usual hushed and pensive. Occasionally a Moses would stretch forth a hand and cause the sea of calm to part with the odd remark about pantyhose or fluffy toy, but otherwise it was calm and unruffled. Modern Philistines, or ancient Egyptians, I don't want to be too picky, enter not the Temple of Post-modern Light. I checked my watch. The cameras would shut down in about a minute, providing a window of five, but still there was no sign of Dr. Psycho. Perhaps I had made a mistake in choosing him, although there was no one else with his performance credentials and psychoactive élan. There then occurred a murmuration. Perhaps "perturbation" is a better word. By the way, the better word has an interesting meaning in mathematics because it refers to an approximate solution to a problem. Well never mind the maths. There was a perturbation of the waters. The sea parted. Enter – all aflame in his underpants – Dr. Psycho. And his previous persona was alight with a line from Henry V: "Pistol's cock is up, and flashing fire will follow". Well not quite fire, or brimstone, but certainly there followed alarums and excursions. The Pharaoh, aka Dr. Psycho, drew nigh. He leaped from his proverbial chariot onto Tracy Emin's bed, seized a pillow and began whirling it about his head. Now Moses stretched forth his hand, and the assembled illuminati, nicely liberated from the tyranny of the style makers, seized upon the bed and "rent asunder its sluttish entrails". I quote from a contemporary rightwing blog. However, it was at this point that I reassigned the knickers and the good Lord conveyed Dr. Psycho to a welcome, posthumous life of infamy. A cracked skull, a subdural haematoma and a subsequent coma assured him of a cozy spot in history. Recorded on many an iPhone his art for art's sake went viral with an approving afterword from Tracy herself who arrived, in obedience to the rumour, not a minute too soon – with camera crew in tow – to applaud Dr. Psycho's "critical re-assessment" of her work. Fortunately, no one pointed a camera in my direction and my CCTV contact gave me six and not five minutes. In later re-arranging the bed and stock taking its items, I was very pleased to see Ms. Emin identified my knickers as her very own. In my business the wages of successful reassignment is absent praise. Wilf Tilley Wilf Tilley is a neurophysiologist, artist and writer living and working in Tokyo. A Moment of Reflection 27 September 2019, 6.22am. "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” The words were tolling bells, deep and powerful, thundering into the silence, heralding the beginning of time. Normally, they offered solace, the promise of light. But tonight they failed to comfort, and, as Holly’s sleepless eyes stared blankly at her reflection in the kitchen window, it seemed that the world and everything in it was conceived in darkness, that a fragment of that terrible void remained in every cell, every creature, every living thing. Was she so maudlin because the darkness in her was growing overwhelming? It had been there for the longest time, boxed up in the most arcane recesses of her mind. Mostly, she’d tried to ignore it, shying away from its very presence, pushing it further and further into the shadows until she could no longer remember the exact details of what it looked like or what was contained within. But she did know, was aware with every breath, of the presence of the box. It provoked a terror so nameless that her thoughts ran from it if she dared even acknowledge its presence. Nevertheless, the shadows cast by the box bled into her life, muting colours and rendering the brightest moments dark. Even so, she usually managed to keep the shadows at bay, to cling to beauty, to maintain just a small circle of light in which she could live. And it had worked, just about, until this week. A week when a strange congruence of events had occurred, as if by the design of a malign universe, to bring her to this point. A point where shades of memories and feelings long suppressed were rising up like long-dead corpses, threatening to consume her. 20 September, 2019, 8.45am. It had all started with a car crash. A miserable, funereal grey day with mizzling rain and poor visibility had resulted in an accident and a road closure. It had meant an arduous detour and the resigned certainty that she was going to be late for work. Had she not been, she would never have arranged for her class to be taken to the library, they would never have been writing a story, and she would never have had that conversation with Morgan James. It had begun innocently enough. Casting her eyes over Morgan’s story, she read a description of storm-swept trees and troubled skies. With the morning’s gloomy journey still at the forefront of her mind, she had suggested that she might use the adjective melancholy. Morgan, a sixteen-year-old with wide, kittenish eyes, had looked at her in bemusement and asked her what the word meant. “It means sad,” she’d said. “You know, when you feel kind of blue and depressed.” Morgan’s eyes darkened. “Melancholy. I feel like that. Every day.” And Holly had felt something stirring in the shadows. “You want to talk?” she’d asked, quietly. She’d sat in an empty room with Morgan. For four years the young girl had endured. For four years she had suffered in silence. And now she had decided that four years was quite enough. Admiration and envy at Morgan’s ability to speak combined with corrosive shame at her own inability to do the same. She sat and listened to the dark details, woundingly painful to hear. And all the while, inside herself, she hunched in the darkness, feeling the lash of Morgan’s words and the terror of the lengthening shadows. As the pain intensified, she whispered to herself don’t think, don’t think, don’t think, don’t think and nodded and listened and tried to ignore it all so she could help the girl in front of her. Finally, Morgan raised helpless eyes to hers. “He was just so big-” And unable to bear the guilt and anguish in Morgan’s tone, Holly forced herself to creep close to the box, to open it just a fraction, just for a fragment of a moment, so that she could remember a tiny shard of memory, so different to Morgan’s, but still – and find the right words, words that would ring true- And finally said, with absolute clarity, “You’re a young girl and he was a grown man. He was wrong to do that to you.” She had seen the relief in Morgan’s eyes, an acceptance of that clear truth. And Holly had, in bewilderment, listened to her own words, and for the first time actually heard them. 24 September, 2019, 6pm. Creative Writing Class, Teesside University. “Jot down a description of each picture,” Bob said, placing a sheaf of photocopied images of paintings face-down on the table. She picked up the first: an abstract painting of a couple, poised to kiss; then a futuristic image of twisting, writhing buildings reminiscent of Ghormenghast; and then… It was a painting of a figure, naked and vulnerable, curled like a foetus in the blue-black darkness, trapped in a small space. She stared at it, feeling the impact like a punch. Shit. Don’t think about it. Too late. Morgan saying “it was like being trapped-” Don’t think – Feeling his arm around her neck, choking her, dragging her backwards into the dark – hell, she couldn’t breathe – Don’t- It was all her fault, she shouldn’t have walked that way, she wanted to die – It’s not your fault it’s not your fault it’s not your fault- And Bob, announcing the homework “write about your own personal experience – what this picture says to you.” 24 September, 2019, 10pm. Like hell was she writing about her own personal experience of that picture. That box could stay firmly in the attic of her mind where it belonged. She wasn’t a masochist, she wasn’t going there again. No. She was going to research this picture, imagine the troubles of the figure depicted, write a safe story full of distance. The artist, as it turned out, was a masochist. Francis Bacon, who had painted the picture Untitled (Crouching Man) in 1952, had a penchant for pain. He’d escaped boarding school twice, his homosexuality making him a magnet for bullies. It was not difficult to imagine what he must have gone through there. His parents, too, had rejected him. He had entered into an abusive relationship with a violent man, Peter Lacy, and become a masochist. Did he, too, feel shamed and deserving only of punishment? Was he the man in the painting? Holly thought it likely, even though popular opinion suggested the figure was George Dyer, Bacon’s second lover, an ex-con of tough body and fragile mind. A mind which eventually disintegrated under the strain of being the famous Francis Bacon’s ‘bit of rough.’ Perhaps the figure in the painting was emblematic of both Francis and George, each bruised and suffering in their own ways, boxed into their respective torments. Or maybe of everyone, trapped inside their own minds. Maybe that was why the picture was bothering her so much. She surely wished she could get out of her mind. Away from- Don’t think. She should write as if she were Francis Bacon. How better to get out of your own head than to try to inhabit someone else’s? What the hell was he supposed to- He slapped the paint on the canvas furiously, pasting it on, layer upon layer of oils, thick and coagulating, choking and clotting, a body emerging out of the blue-black darkness, white, naked, angled awkwardly, agonised and crunched, curled awkward as a foetus – George, George, George. Damn it, the stupid, bloody, wonderful man- He felt the imprint of Peter’s fist against his cheek bone, his shoulders hunched as blows rained down on his shoulders, blue black bruises bursting blood vessels into the frail white flesh- He dropped his brush. Shit. Don’t go there. Don’t think. No need to go back there, to the time before George, to the time when he was George, weak and hurting- Blue. Black. Over the white figure. Hiding him in the bruise until the bruise was George… him… And darkness. Don’t we all want to hide? Aren’t we all afraid to be seen? And yet here he was, exposing George to the world – or maybe himself – naked and unloved, open to the cold and critical gaze of others… More blue, more black, trapped in the darkness… What was he going to do about George? Too much shit in his body, getting frailer by the day… to much booze, too much gambling, too many rent boys- Fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck. George’s body had been so beautiful, so strong, so intimidatingly powerful – he had loved it, loved it. He never fucking learned though, did he? Peter had put him through a plate glass window- But George was cutting him, slashing at him, destroying him as he destroyed himself by painful inches. More paint, dammit. Hide, hide, hide it. She threw her pen down in frustration. Damn, was she just writing her own hang ups into Bacon’s character? Was the unbearable truth that there would never be an escape from her own head? Or maybe that picture pointed to a darker, more universal truth: that everyone was caught up in their own personal hell, blue-black and bruised from the pain of life? Afraid, she cut off that train of thought. Don’t think - She was very much afraid it was getting too dark. 27 September, 2019, 6.23am. The darkness was absolute. Not shadows anymore but real, actual, visceral dark. The book before her blurred, the words unable to reach her. The box was open. The horrors were out. She could feel them, Morgan’s and Francis Bacon’s - Don’t think, don’t think, don’t think – -snapping and snarling at the edges of her mind, ready to devour her, leave her in pieces alone in the dark, she was going to die - Don’t think, they’re there, don’t think, in my head with me, don’t think – How the hell did people survive this? Hands reaching out -there were worse horrors than hers – she couldn’t breathe for the weight – breathe, just breathe – Morgan, how did she do it? And Francis Bacon? Survive their darknesses – She was suffocating, suffocating, she couldn’t move – Damn it, how did they do it? Think. Her eyes fell on the page before her – ‘…let there be light: and there was light.’ And then she knew. Morgan had broken her silence and told her story. Francis Bacon had put paint to paper and had drawn out his pain. They had opened the box and released the darkness within, and in doing so had found relief. She stared out at the garden. The first shades of morning were brightening the sky. She picked up her pen and began to write. Hazel Storr Hazel Storr lives in the beautiful cathedral city of Durham, England, with her partner and son. She is an enthusiastic teacher of English and Creative Writing and recently completed an MA in Creative Writing at Teesside University. After Rousseau’s The Dream Museum of Modern Art, 2016 Signature as big as two of his painter’s palms, he shares a flourish of river under the U, as if to claim: my body, my water, this planet. And you. Gabelou of too many tolls, he chose paint as proclamation, left the gates of Paris for the easel that promised nothing. It’s easy to look down the primitive nose, the veined foreground fronds as too craft in craft. Until the pachyderm eye, our own. Never mind that he never set foot in a rainforest tangle, relied only his hothouse eye, the transplanted specimens under the glass roof of Jardin des Plantes. How not to miss his penchant for menace, predilection for feral, the baited wait of crouch and hunt? And what of that odd hand—his own?-- ever unsatisfied, not reaching for flower but expecting absence instead? Rousseau, if I were to tell you, Starry Night hung beside your Dream, that more stopped for your sofa than his sky, would you have believed any of it? I doubt you would have doubted it. It is why we cleave to you, you who proclaimed it was until it was. They say Picasso’s famous eye unjungled you from the critic’s bite. But I’d like to think we see too—maybe in the cymbal plate of her breasts, or the thumbtack strike of her navel, or even in how you push against the bones, create humor in the ordained wisp of whiskers. How could we expect otherwise from a man undulled by the constant drop of coins? How could we not want to know what strings your violin hands played in your head as you stretched your body for this canvas? I will always be greedy for the underbelly of the snake, wishing it not hidden by the glade. But maybe I am wrong to want. That the serpent is undone under the imperfect moon should be enough. But then the lunar howl returns me to the sly pupiled nipple, her finger that points for the intentional leaves, woven into the shape of a dress, the hourglass that emerges only when we stalk against the positive space. These are the truths of your tricks and antics, And we wait for them— align our lion’s eye-- like the drop of an orange ripe from the primate’s hand. Julie E. Bloemeke This poem was a finalist for the 2020 Fischer Prize, Telluride Institute, and published on their website. Julie E. Bloemeke (she/her/hers) is the 2021 Georgia Author of the Year Finalist for Poetry. Her debut full-length collection Slide to Unlock (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020) was also chosen as a 2021 Book All Georgians Should Read, one of only two poetry collections selected statewide for the honour. Currently an associate editor for South Carolina Review, she also recently served as co-editor for the Dolly Parton tribute issue of Limp Wrist Magazine and was a finalist for the Telluride Institute's 2020 Fischer Prize. Her poems, essays, and interviews have appeared in numerous publications including Writer’s Chronicle, Prairie Schooner, Cortland Review, Gulf Coast, EcoTheo Review, South Dakota Review, and others. A 2021 fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, she teaches online workshops and is a freelance writer, editor, and guest lecturer. To learn more: https://www.jebloemeke.com Twitter: @jebloemeke American Dream Outside a gas station in the Mid-West, a middle-aged man sits in a chair. Behind him, a woman calls from the window; he can’t hear, perhaps he doesn’t care. We have an oblique view of the building, two gasoline pumps, red and yellow, horizontals of road, grass, trees and sky. That’s all, apart from sunlight and shadow. The poet is lured to enter the scene; she wants to interrogate Edward Hopper: "If this man had a dream, surely it is lost in his arrest and silence, in the rigid geometry of corners, angles and shadows, the torpor of brick and bone, where absence grows?" John Scarborough John Scarborough lives in Lincolnshire in the UK. He is a poet and a member of Louth Poetry Group. John's love of art was inspired by his late wife, a fine artist and teacher. John's poems have been published in various literary journals including Reach Poetry, Dawntreader, Spelt, Orbis and Acumen. John was trained in social work and worked with ex-offenders, including the homeless and rootless. His interest in Hopper is linked to the sense of isolation and alienation present in many of his paintings. |
The Ekphrastic Review
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