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El Bosque de las Lineas Para José Luis Cuevas Saltas por la ventana de tu mano con tus vivos y tus muertos al bosque de las líneas: las que separan las que juntan las de ser joven o viejo Quieres desenredarlas: unas para tus vivos otras para tus muertos Pero desobedecen como vida: es el jardín de las rosas lo que deslumbra bajo el pudridero Pero desobedecen como muerte: y al amor loco se le nota el polvo debajo de los besos Y por líneas tejidos destejidos cesan y recomienzan tus vivos y tus muertos se buscan unos en los otros intercambian sus máscaras se calzan innumerables cuerpos de sus cuerpos hacia una semejanza—ya has tendido una red de mirada, pincel, lápiz y tinta: tiempo tatuado y pacto melancólico en que se transparentan mutuamente tus muertos y tus vivos y tú pierdes el cuerpo ** The Forest of Lines for José Luis Cuevas You jump through the window of your hand with your living and your dead to the forest of lines: those that separate, those that join, those of young or old You want to untangle them: some for your living others for your dead But like life, they disobey: the garden of roses dazzles under the rot pile But like death, they disobey: and crazy love can taste the dust under the kisses Through lines woven and unwoven they stop and start again, your living and your dead, they look for themselves in each other swapping masks, slipping into their bodies’ innumerable bodies till they all look the same—you have already set a snare of gazes, brush, pencil, and ink: the tattoo of time and its sad bargain in which they see through each other, your dead and your living, and you lose your body Ulalume González de León Translated by Terry Ehret, John Johnson, and Nancy J. Morales This poem first appeared in Plagios / Plagiarisms (2020) by Ulalume González de León, translated by Terry Ehret, John Johnson, and Nancy J. Morales. Poet, essayist, writer and translator, Ulalume González de León (1928 – 2009) believed that “Everything has already been said,” and thus each literary creation is a rewriting, reshuffling, and reconstructing of one great work. For this reason, she chose the title Plagios (Plagiarisms) for her book of collected poems. Her poetry and other writing earned her many awards, including the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize, the Flower of Laura Poetry Prize, and the Alfonso X Prize. Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz called her “the best Mexicana poet since Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.” Nancy J. Morales, a first-generation American of Puerto Rican parents, earned her bachelor's degree from Rutgers College, a master's in teaching English as a Second Language from Adelphi University, and a doctorate in education from Teachers College at Columbia University. She has taught at Dominican University, College of Marin, Sonoma State University, and other schools, from elementary to graduate levels. Currently she is a board member for the Northern California Chapter of the Fulbright Alumni Association, and teaches Spanish to private clients. John Johnson’s poetry has appeared in many print and online journals, including Boxcar Poetry Review, Clade Song, Triggerfish Critical Review, and Web Conjunctions. He is a long-time student of the Spanish language, and has studied letter-press printing with Iota Press of Sebastopol, producing chapbooks and bilingual broadsides. Terry Ehret, one of the founders of Sixteen Rivers Press, has published four collections of poetry, most recently Night Sky Journey from Kelly’s Cove Press. Her literary awards include the National Poetry Series, the California Book Award, the Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize, a nomination for the Northern California Book Reviewer’s Award, and five Pushcart Prize nominations. From 2004–2006, she served as the poet laureate of Sonoma County where she lives and teaches writing.
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 The Salmon Are Running Free Ice Sculpture, by Jamie Wardley (UK) 2014 from Sand in Your Eye. Click image to learn more about Sand in Your Eye projects. 1. Ice salmon leap ice rapids. Airborne, these transparent, frozen fish. Salmon shine chandelier light. Translucent in their scales. Immortal as a diva’s dress in spotlight, a bride’s diamond flash. Mercury sequins gleam on glassy bodies. Fionn licked the wisdom of the world from a salmon’s silver skin, led the Irish to victory. Giants: our war against a warming world. Ice salmon drip on the wedding platter. Salmon battle. Time and heat melt. Glaciers in sun. ** 2. I have walked the Columbia ice field. Each crevasse a blue abyss. Peer in. A river carries ancient sediment. Whirlpools, caves. Till-strewn edges, debris, dregs at the terminus. The glacier retreats. Each year five metres. Dirt absorbing heat, quickens the thaw. In Peru, men cover Pastoruri glacier. Sawdust shovelled from trucks. Spread by donkeys. Ice shelves soften, calve great chunks into the sea, icebergs ever bigger, ice cap ever smaller under a shaky polar vortex, an unsteady jet stream. Skadi, goddess of winter, weakened in her realm of ice and cold. Her caribou, her foxes and bears confront the warming world. ** 3. What do we find in thawing ice? Mammoth, meteorites, ice core evidence. A nascent world, our atmosphere of gases and ash. Frozen where they died: foxes, diving birds, dinosaurs, crocodiles, fish. Otzi Man, murdered on a snowy Alp. Juanita, Andean sacrifice, leaves her ice grave for a museum in Argentina. Where is our Goddess of Winter? Our deity of divine cold? She who could freeze glacial water, primeval, pure. For sale. the price rising as oceans rise. Icecaps shrink at the poles. Ice salmon melt at a wedding dinner. Watch the ever hastening thaw. Dance on, hot and happy. Anne Hopkinson Anne Hopkinson lives in Victoria BC and writes about her time in Algeria, Rwanda, and the Dominican Republic. She is president of Planet Earth Poetry, a reading series of 26 years, a nature lover, and water rat.  Still Life with Apples, by Paul Cezanne (France) 1895-1898 Still Life with Apples, 1895-1898 The Museum of Modern Art The table tilts, the bowl’s lopsided, the pitcher’s leaning for a fall: Cézanne’s still life, unstill. Inheritor of calm Dutch oysters and flowers, English pheasants and dead hanging hare, yet he didn’t finish dashing the ochre into the corner, left, or filling the blue tablecloth’s patches. The apples are teetering, too, tender red skins about to bruise, anxious for Mme. Cézanne’s steadying hand… And we, the gazers at the gallery, are the guests in the adjacent room, hearing this roll of nervous fruit, table rocking - and afraid to enter - meet the trembling tail of the 19th century, the rumbling snout of the 20th barging through the door, the kitchen floor boards shaking and upsetting everything. Jill Solnicki Jill Solnicki has two published collections of poetry: This Mortal Coil and The Fabric of Skin (Penumbra Press), as well as a published memoir of teaching at-risk kids: The Real Me is Gonna be a Shock: a Year in the Life of a Front-line Teacher (Lester Publishing Ltd.). Her poetry has appeared in a number of journals: pending publications for 2023 include poems in The New Quarterly, and Plath Profiles. Balloon Gods "Very simplistic, don't you think?" I want to shout, "It's like rai-ain!" But I know you won't get the joke. Looking at their knotted noses; their fat, shiny cartoon sausage ears, my smile inflates. The warmth of their whimsy radiates through me. It reminds me of the space heater I had when I was twelve. When my parents couldn't afford to get the boiler serviced. I haven't thought about that for years. Nothing in the catalogue says these are therapy dogs! Blue Remember the lava lamp Mum knocked over before bed one evening? How its lapis liquid fell like a waterfall beneath the carpet, causing a power cut. How Dad went mental. Back further still, to the deepest shark-infested waters of your monthly National Geographic. To holidays in France, where you could actually see the sky. Time travelling in a police box, half-behind the sofa. Shopping centre slush puppies; your tongue afterwards. The bedroom walls your grandad painted, insisting you needed "a boy's colour." Magenta Or maybe the sweet shops you saw in movies, a candyfloss dream too sick for reality. Bubblegum you couldn't make pop! That time Dad took you to the funfair and he entered a contest where he ate 13 jam doughnuts without licking his lips and won. The prize? A free doughnut. Plus, the Type 2 diabetes, although replacing his usual 40 a-day with as many party rings probably didn't help. Neon signs welcoming you and other "likeminded" souls down rabbit holes that echoed the pleasure-squeals of animals and queens too violent for fairytales. The first doll you ever mothered. Orange What about the Vitamin C tablets Mum made you swallow every day, Before & After school? Dad's childhood bedroom that, according to him, made hangovers 100x worse. Also, his go-to properties on the Monopoly board. Cheese puffs you were meant to save for lunchtime but almost always ended up eating during break. Your phlegm whenever the house got mould. You taking a bite out of a satsuma with the skin on, in public; people laughed, but nobody ever taught you how to peel. Red From various Christmas tins, the strawberry chocolate wrappers. The cores of your premature scabs; their quick-rising centres. Her favourite dress and cardigan combo, which you loved too much. Fearful dawns and relieved sunsets. Your grandmother's engagement ring, which you gave freely but couldn't bring yourself to claim back. The gunfire you're glad kept Grandad awake at night. Yellow Watching sunlight on the grass despite an urgent walk-of-shame piss. Breakfast bananas. Exercise books, specifically Year 4 and GCSE English. Ancient Egypt: its sand, its gods. Most of all Anubis, a candle holder of whom Mum bought you because you thought it was an action figure. The two good Mummy movies, skipping past the bit where someone has their eyes and tongue ripped out. Even now, you won't make that mistake again. "Phil?" You tug my sleeve. "Huh?" "I said they're simplistic, right? Basic, even. I mean, what does anybody really get out of them?" I stare upward, conscious I'm not grinning anymore. Each totem peers ahead, eyeless yet somehow all-seeing. "Probably someone's idea of a joke," I suggest. Robert Keal Robert Keal lives in Solihull, UK, just outside Birmingham, where he works as a copywriter. His fiction and poetry have appeared in various publications over the past several years. He loves walking the tightrope between strangeness and reality.  For years I have been wanting to pen a collection of poems on the early works of van Gogh, where everything is both existential search and haunting expressiveness. Lately I discovered that the short, sketchy manuscript probably has disappeared in the dungeons of changing computers. Luckily you are never quite on your own with poetry on Van Gogh. Here are ten very successful attempts of seeing Van Gogh. Jakob Brønnum ** Tina Schumann: Van Gogh in Chicago There is such a thing as a Van Gogh-moment. Like when you see him somewhere he has never set foot https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/van-gogh-in-chicago-by-tina-schumann ** Denise Bundred: At Eternity’s Gate The poet Denise Bundred envisions the possibly finest achievement of Van Gogh: His ability to see existential emotion in things https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/at-eternitys-gate-by-denise-bundred ** Rhett Watts: Field Work What are the qualifications of a saint? Somebody who in the spur of the moment forget themselves https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/field-work-by-rhett-watts ** Lee Woodman: To Step Inside His Mind Large scale Van Gogh: A 16,000 square foot installation on Pier 36, NYC (2021). All the dots and strokes of longing for something as yet unknown become visible https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/to-step-inside-his-mind-by-lee-woodman ** Mary Moore: To the Miscarried Child, Van Gogh’s Irises At Arles There was never a Van Gogh that did not contain an - if often labyrinthic - path to empathy https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/to-the-miscarried-child-van-goghs-irises-at-arles-by-mary-moore ** Barbara Crooker: Ears of Wheat, 1890 The artist at work; the observer observed: "no blade too slight for his attention: long swaying brush strokes" https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/ears-of-wheat-1890-by-barbara-crooker ** Barbara Crooker: Van Gogh's Crows The black bird remain the unsolvable mystery. The crows, the timeless raven, even the jackdaw, every autumn filling the sky with the black waves of the giant flocks over my city https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/van-goghs-crows-by-barbara-crooker ** Crystal Snoddon: With Van Gogh, I Hear Music Lots has been said. Here it is said in a very concise way: a spirited thirst/ a scream of controlled turbulence https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/with-van-gogh-i-hear-music-by-crystal-snoddon ** Robert Walicki: On Seeing a Stranger Witness Wheatfield With Crows The crows again, with the notion of time, embedded in their flight: "... when I first saw you,/ frozen into a past ..." https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/on-seeing-a-stranger-witness-wheatfield-with-crows-by-robert-walicki ** Christian Reifsteck: This is the Last Picture that Van Gogh Painted Before He Killed Himself The crows for the last time. And the wheatfield: "What if we looked into everything and saw only ourselves ..." But luckily we don't. If in Van Gogh the confused flight of the crows are our latent state of mind, the wheat is always also a prayer https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/this-is-the-last-picture-that-van-gogh-painted-before-he-killed-himself-by-christian-reifsteck ** Jakob Brønnum has published 45 books of poetry and prose as well as other work in his native Danish. His work has appeared in La Piccioletta Barca, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review and the anthology New Contexts 4 (Coverstory Books, 2022). One of his books is translated into the Norwegian, one into Serbian. In 1992 a poem appeared in the legendary Literaturnaja Gazeta (in Russian). His first collection in English, A Little Book of Transcendence, was recently published by Cyberwit. He lives in Sweden with his family  Jakob Brønnum, 1975 We Want Your List of Favourites From the Archive! There are almost eight 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 highlights 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 around 10 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, 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 [email protected]. Also, send a vintage photo of yourself! Oval Sculpture Egg and open. The elm a surface rubbed to shine, a forest luster. The inside is both inside and tilted towards your gaze. What to make of in there? Another kind of smooth. A moving through. A body’s memory made ripe but not for the taking. Can you feel the air around it bend and still? Neither music nor silence. A whole note. Laura Donnelly This poem was written after Oval Sculpture, by Barbara Hepworth (UK) 1943. Click here to view. Laura Donnelly is the author of Midwest Gothic (Ashland Poetry Press) and Watershed (Cider Press Review). Originally from Michigan, she now lives in Upstate New York where she teaches and directs the Creative Writing Program at SUNY Oswego. Current obsessions include gardens, great lakes, and attempting to learn the birds.  Solar Music, by Remedios Varo (Mexico, b. Spain) 1955 In Praise of Bells, Strings, Flute, Sap, and Moss As words and their feckless Tower of Babel fall to doom moon ascends, chills dew’s droplets into Emily’s beryl bells that ring ecstatic forest fanfares. Sun, focused on kissing strings, plays day’s lissome minuet. Wind’s funneled flute tones call even stones to twilight’s ballroom while tree sap taps its timeless ostinato and bark’s moss pillows continuo’s counterpoint joust. Nancy K. Jentsch Nancy K. Jentsch’s chapbook Authorized Visitors and the collaborative ekphrastic chapbook Frame and Mount the Sky, in which her poetry appears, were published in 2017. Her collection Between the Rows debuted in 2022. Since beginning to write in 2008, her work has appeared in journals such as Amethyst Review, Panoply, Tiferet Journal, and Zingara Poetry Review. In 2020 she received an Arts Enrichment Grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. She has retired after 37 years of teaching and finds a bounty of inspiration in her family and her rural home. More information is available on her website: https://jentsch8.wixsite.com/my-site. |
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