Egon Schiele To account for their odd-angled, half-melted brokenness, imagine in the dark he cut his houses and rooftops into small pieces and glued them onto new canvas overnight, merely feeling for their places. Some errors of inadjacency, of upsidedownness. In a 24-inch painting, sparking and hissing at you, where rows of windows are rows of eyes – these assaults on placement and colour deliver a gaudy imbalance to buildings and rivers, almost every patch of buildings surrounded by black water. The painting Sunflower: the flower stalk rises from an island in space like a tiny neighbourhood. The flower head is black and blue-green – not clear if birds have taken the seeds, but surely they have – it’s late in the season, the flower so gaunt: he has eight years to live. It’s not a rehearsal, but find the photograph taken on his death bed. The painting called Sun Tree: leaves bound together like a woman’s pinned up hair, Edith’s hair, in the sand-coloured air. Four Trees: the landscape an ambush he saw when he had just a year to live. The red sun is crushed between layers of mortar – it won’t rise or set, and the four chestnut trees moving in twilight will surround him – soldiers and doctors. A sharp stretch of mountains, all ice, idles on the horizon. Add to these his startling architectural inquisitions of naked and semi-clothed women and girls, twisted like train wrecks, their clothes on fire, or unclothed they burn, dangerously or passively. Blue-green bruises on kneecaps and elbows, and the flames of their clothing! The saturated green stocking, slips and shirts falling through bodies half transparent. It was the flower of influenza that killed him at 28: its colour and fragrance. Edith died three days before him. I count it worse than the Luisitania. He made sketches of his wife, after she died. Robert Clinton Robert Clinton lives near Boston, has an MFA in writing from Goddard College, and has been a Fellow at the MacDowell Colony. Sarabande Books published his book of poems Taking Eden, and a new book of poems, Wasteland Honey, is forthcoming from Circling Rivers Press. He’s had poems in Wisconsin Review, Antioch Review, Stand and The Atlantic, among others.
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Restoring Pontormo's Veronica His phantom breathed down my neck – I smelled his pungent manhood, grimy crusts on his pant thighs he was no faint knight – his fortitude held a madman in artists clothing. I could see it in the swipes eroding at his angel’s feet - a brush thick as the Fire-eater’s brow – and swift with a dab of his thumb’s bravado he created Veronica’s smallest toe. I felt the energy of his prime, a storm conjuring Veronica’s purest form - womanhood enticing him, betrothed under her spell when holding the cloth of Christ’s Imprint, or perhaps his own. I hesitated then to be up there alone with the rumble of traffic below stripping us bare of time. I let go my brush so as not to touch the Veronica he guarded so much. His stormy emotions blew me down numb on the cusp of the scaffold board – my legs dangling as his breath pushed through his love’s stare and his own glare – My Veronica is not to be touched. But his lunatic ghost had no powerful stand over time’s clutch. I finally stood and began my fearful cleaning of centuries’ dust and history’s grime holding on to the last stroke of his hard caressing brush. Fruit of Thy Womb (tribute to the model in Caravaggio’s Death of the Virgin) You were born virgin, woman of a voracious nature where men had wet your legs and molded your nipples hard without the caress of a baby’s breath. Your pose in eternal succumbing spreads Virgin arms on the artist’s bed with the fruit of thy womb worn as a cross by many of those men crying who died for their own sins – mortal wants and crude departures thrown into a heavenly white release. If you had put them under your cloak with a mystical gift of having no scent you could have wrapped them into an immaculate ejaculation and freed their spirit in guiltless lust. Class Visit to Watch the Brancacci Video On the wall of the Carmine's refractory Adam and Eve appear in animated motion the way Lippi had painted them centuries before in the Brancacci next door - our headphones as pathways to merge pigments into light. The deep voice of an omnipotent narrator tells us how the story went: the flames of the pillars billowed and crackled densely through our ears, the church caved in, the walls heated, then melted into a violent condensed version of history. We, protected behind the Voice, control the volume of destruction's noise. We take the next step into the artist’s vision and watch the miracle revealed to Us: the reincarnation of Masaccio’s Christ. He walks with His shadow to heal the man – the one that stood with the concave leg – healed before our eyes there in the refractory where We, unknowingly, become visionaries. In virtual frescoed colors Masaccio eyes us, and through the deep majestic god-voice of time, he returns in transparent intonaco revived in a way that only We, Pharaohs of our own century, could bring movement to Adam and Eve. Then there is light upon us, in our solid world squinting from the light of day as we walk away from the refractory, the boy chewing his apple, the girl removing the Voice from her ears, each step weighing a hundred years. A Restorer's Spill Love has tainted everything, like that day Giò knocked over the bowl on the scaffolding when he grabbed your waist, spilling gold on Vasari’s knight, spreading dazzle on a hardened face – love’s warrior blinded by the sight of Giò dripping onto you, trusting the thrust of his original intent – then you removed the lustre with a rag of love’s lament. Restoration of a 13th Century Icon I may fill the lacuna with the exact colour between child and crown there on her throne and think to be part of that eternal art, I may write a poem because of her stare alone in the musty solvent smells of work leaving me to ponder what it’s worth – her glance may juggle time with eternity making light the intricacies of death because she survived the centuries – but the space between her eyes and mine holds humanity’s enduring struggle with art and will never depict the lacuna of life. Lily Prigioniero These poems were inspired "by working face-to-face with ancient masters and living in the cradle of the Renaissance." "Restoration of a 13th Century Icon" was first published in "Full of Grace" (Judith Dupre, Random House). Lily Prigioniero graduated from University of Michigan and moved to Florence, Italy, where she was hired by the Pitti fresco restoration team to work on some of Tuscany's greatest masters. She has taught writing and art conservation in study abroad programs for NYU, Brandeis, and Florence University of the Arts. She lives with her family in the hills outside Florence. The Threatened Swan Neither Zeus nor Leda figure here: no pregnant pause before the action, no rape, no god, no naked woman. Any political interpretations are only later stencilled in: an urge to spell out meaning and no chivalry toward history. This is no more, no less than a mute swan delivering her young from an unseen villain. You can’t read enough love or hate into her hoarse scream and depthless eye. Her heavy wings like two swords beat against feathered breastplate, beneath twilight sky and smoky cloud; webbed black feet set wide apart on the muddy edge. The stream not stopping for a moment for anything so common as a mother’s instinct. No gods or humans mar the scene. Daniel Goodwin Daniel Goodwin is an award-winning poet and novelist. Art often figures as a theme in his work. His new novel The Great Goldbergs is forthcoming. No Imagination My mother’s dream beach is wintry-bright and lonely like this one. A gruff wind pushes clouds aside, bullies the dunes into odd rises. I ask if this is Solís, with its long skies and sand so fine you can almost see through it, and she says no, no, I just copied it from a photo. I have no imagination. That’s what she will say when I pester her with my big ideas about what she should do with all that free time, with the art supplies she’s bought and left there to gather dust: I’m not like you. I couldn’t do that. You know I have no imagination. I never tell her it was her imagination stirred mine to more, the mind changed, thought picking up and stretching into substance like the shadows pressed by dipping light on a beach that could be Solís, the one we go back to and love, but is no place we know, oh no, just copied from some photo. Laura Chalar Laura Chalar was born in Montevideo, Uruguay. She is a lawyer and writer whose most recent poetry collection, Unlearning, was published by Coal City Press in 2018. Her short story collection The Guardian Angel of Lawyers was published by Roundabout Press in 2018. The new challenge is up!
Don't forget, all the challenges now appear under "Ekphrastic Writing Challenges" in the menu item above. Check there any time for the latest challenges and contests. Click here to learn about this week's challenge. The Makapansgat Pebble of Many Faces, by Deborah Bacharach Poet Deborah Bacharach contemplates a 2.5 million year old rock. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/the-makapansgat-pebble-of-many-faces-by-deborah-bacharach ** A Triptych, by Hedy Habra Award winning ekphrastic poet Hedy Habra takes us on a meandering journey through the valleys and mountains of love. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/a-triptych-by-hedy-habra ** What about Courbet’s Origin of the World? by Jacalyn Carley Courbet and Carley contemplate where we came from. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/archives/03-2017/2 ** The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Deijman, by Janiru Liyanage A fourteen year old poet considers Rembrandt. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/the-anatomy-lesson-of-dr-deijman-by-janiru-liyanage ** Remembering Breughel’s Massacre of the Innocents, by Ingrid Wendt A poet visits a room full of Breugels. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/remembering-breughels-massacre-of-the-innocents-by-ingrid-wendt ** Revelation, by Jo Taylor Poet Jo Taylor on spiritual and literal storms. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/revelation-by-jo-taylor ** Four Poems with Words, by kab A sequence of poems on Kandinsky’s art. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/four-poems-with-words-by-kab ** Vanessa Bell is Sending Me Dreams, by Patricia Goodwin A story of love, war, and grief. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/vanessa-bell-is-sending-me-dreams-by-patricia-goodwin ** TERcets Podcast Discover our new podcast series. Host Brian A. Salmons, a long-time contributor and our Facebook social media guy, reads selected works from our ekphrastic journal. They are fantastic! https://www.ekphrastic.net/tercets-podcast.html ** Ekphrastic Writing Responses- Omar Odeh A selection of literary responses to contemporary Iraqi-Canadian artist, Omar Odeh. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/omar-odeh-ekphrastic-writing-challenge-responses Call For Throwback Lists
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 features 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 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! Introducing Children to Writing Ekphrastic Poetry The Workshop At a time when galleries were closed, the National Gallery of Art (NSG) in Washington, D.C. continued its free children’s programming and Family Days via zoom. Last week’s session, part of the NSG’s Virtual Artful Conversations aimed at ages 7-12 was designed to help them learn to enjoy and experience art. Dena Rapoport, of the NSG Education department selected the painting, The Sportsman’s Dream, by C.F. Honor for the session. The NGA owns the painting, but it is not currently on display, The writing was guided by Ohio poet, Nancy Kangas, who has spent many years teaching how to write poetry to children through her work poet, teaching artist, and filmmaker. Her own work has been published in many books and journals, including Rattle (Poetry Prize Finalist), East Bay Review (Pushcart Prize nomination). For over a decade she edited the internationally distributed Nancy’s Magazine, a collection of comics, and today, among other projects, she writes humour for Muse, a magazine for young readers. Rapoport says she first became aware of Kangas through the poet’s work with Preschool Poets. “Her emphasis on empowering and inviting young people to have agency in their creative thinking is very aligned with our values in the education division at the NGA.” Although the NGA chose poetry as the “craft” for April because April is National Poetry Month, Rapoport adds, “We often use poetry in museum teaching as that interdisciplinary approach really enhances the experience of seeing a work of art. Participants are often surprised by how poetic they actually ware when encouraged to explore a work of art in a new way.” Although the children are the target, she welcomed my entry into the class. Rapoport notes, “We love seeing the whole family join the program , think together and create alongside one another. As with other sessions in this series, Rapoport started the class by posing open-ended questions to the young audience. In this class she started with, “What are the objects you notice in the painting? What do they perhaps tell us about the man in the painting?” She says, “The open-ended prompts invite participants to develop independent critical thinking based on their own observations.” The responses showed that no detail escaped these agile young eyes and minds. “Fireplace, the books, the dog, the newspaper, smoke from his pipe were just some of the answers. Then they went on to note that the fire likely made the room warm and cozy, that the man was blowing smoke in hunting and fishing scenes, connecting it to the equipment for those hobbies lying about in the painting. One participant expressed concern that the man’s pipe smoke might damage the books. The session seemed almost in-real-life, thanks to the way Rapoport and Kangas molded the attendees into a community that soon, with raised hands-on screen or in the chat, was very participatory. Rapoport notes, “Meeting families over zoom relaxes them. It means they can snack or drink water in the comfort of their homes, something they can’t do in the museum. Certainly, they miss being able to see the brushstrokes or texture of a work, but using zoom means we have been able to mine our collection beyond what is one the walls for sources paintings (like the one above).” Technology made the session accessible to folks, like myself who came from far away and even to locals who because of zoom did not have to drive into downtown DC, hunt and pay for parking, fight traffic, or wonder what to do with other members of the family too old or too young for the session. In fact, for this session instructor Kangas was in her home in the Columbus Ohio area while Rapoport shared facilitating duties from the NGA in Washington D.C. Kangas says that in addition to her work as a poet, “I’ve been a lifelong art lover, though I never thought of myself as an artist. So, using poetry to work with paintings is exciting to me. Before the pandemic closures, I worked with children three days a week on an Ohio Arts council grant and throughout this time have worked with a small number of students online.” She says that Rapoport suggested using the acrostic form, adding, “I thought it was a particularly good way to introduce poetry as well as the use of poetry in conversing about the painting.” After the initial introductions and questions, Kangas introduced the acrostic form, talking about it as a code—a poem with a main or subject work word hidden in the “poem.” She started out by showing the class with a very simple poem about a cat. (see illustration) and then moved on to some examples from books where acrostic went from word out to right, from left to endings of words forming the acrostic and to a form where the acrostic word was in the center of poem. Throughout the discussion, both Kangas and Rapoport were careful to allow shy participants a voice on chat or by calling on them. In the short tie the class became a small art study unit. After some more discussion the class then moved to write a poem using one of the words identified by the students as an object in the painting which with which they connected: BOOK was chosen.(see example). Truly educators (in the root Latin meaning of the word, to draw out), not simply instructors or facilitators, Kangas and Rapoport drew out wonderful thoughts from the participants, empowering the students by listening to their thoughts, assigning importance to all, and then giving each participant agency over the experience by encouraging each to write and then send in poems of their own. At the end of the session all were urged to send copies of their own poems to the NGA coordinator for possible inclusion in a booklet. Why did I attend a children’s workshop? My attendance at this workshop was part of my quest to continually cultivate a beginner’s mindset in myself about my work as a writer and performer. I came to the pleasures of interpreting art through my own observations and emotions as an adult. Actually, through storytelling performance. I was often asked to express the “theme” of an exhibit with a set of tales, mostly folk, to enhance connections to the art with children and adults—provide a cultural context. One time, I was given a truer ekphrastic assignment when the Phillips Gallery hired me to write a performance piece about the Luncheon of the Boating Party one of my favorite pieces of art in that wonderful gallery. After researching the painting, I then took off on a purely fictional course, aimed at the young audience who would be lined up in front of me and the painting. As I preformed, I got the feeling Monet was standing behind me , chuckling. Seeing a piece of art through the eyes of a child is a privilege and a prompt to one’s own creative processes (at least for me). However, after attending this workshop, I knew I also wanted to spread the word of using acrostic to introduce children to ekphrastic writing and so immediately after the class emailed the museum and Kangas to request permission to write the article—and The Ekphrastic Review graciously offer to publish it. Although I encouraged my Family Day Listeners that day to make up their own stories, I did not have the resources or permission to ask them to send me their stories. It is my hope that more children can be introduced to the rich joys of ekphrastic writing with workshops like this one. You can learn more about NGA programs at National Gallery of Art Washington DC (https://www.nga.gov/) and click on the Education tab. To learn more about poet Nancy Kangas’ recent work, check out her website and recent film: https://www.preschoolpoets.org/ Nancy Kangas used the Spring volume from a set of four books of art and acrostic poems by Steven Schnur to further illustrate acrostic and ekphrasis. His books are available online. Joan Leotta Joan Leotta is a writer and performer who loves art and often finds herself inspired by a work of art as well as what she sees and hears around her. She submits often to The Ekphrastic Review and has been a guest editor for one of the challenges. Read some of Joan's work in The Ekphrastic Review here. The Funeral Party The deflated patriarch turns his incongruous crimson tie and downcast gaze away from what has become his expanding pale-faced family now that his brother’s passed. The two men hadn’t been close since his brother wouldn’t made good on his loans. The wife has a mouth that stirs up trouble with Maud. The dim son, an uncoupled brake van, studies his tomboy sister as if bemused by this game he confuses with dodgeball. And who’s that removed woman, hands buried in pockets, gaze confronting us head-on? Her soft grey coat stands out among baggy glum sacks funereal black. What secrets would she divulge in a pub? Death will exhale its foul breath on every soul, yes, whether robust, boozy stout or broomstick sober, small or jousting with the sun. Yet off-guard we remain, gobsmacked by this visitor who makes no bones about dropping by. Don’t we prefer the Reaper appears unannounced, only to discover it’s poppycock, this being the wrong house or circumstance, poor timing, or a bleary bender. Then exits with neither child nor adult whimpering like one beneath its muscular unflappable reach, not even the anxious barking hound granted a brief stay of execution by the pound. Margo Davis This poem was inspired by the L.S. Lowry painting, The Funeral Party. View it here. When not walking off the isolation blues, Margo Davis immerses herself in the arts. Recent poems have appeared in Deep South Magazine, 50 Give or Take, Ekphrastic Review, Snapdragon, MockingHeart Review, & Odes and Elegies: Eco-Poetry from the Texas Gulf Coast. A three-time Pushcart nominee, Margo's forthcoming chapbook will be published by Finishing Line Press. Dear Ekphrasists, Welcome to the fifth installment of the Ekphrastic Writer’s column. As the author of the first comprehensive guidebook on multi-genre ekphrasis, The Ekphrastic Writer, I’ll be posting monthly musings, fielding your questions on ekphrasis (and beyond), and fostering a conversation on contemporary practices in visual-art-influenced creative writing. Last month, I had the privilege of attending a virtual generative workshop facilitated by the American poet, Dana Levin. During the class, we not only wrote both individual and collective poems, but we learned certain intimate nuances pertaining to Levin’s own creative process. One question she posed was, “is clarity the measurement of success?” In other words, in the workshop, do we downgrade a piece of creative writing if we as readers cannot soberly track the writer’s meaning? As a self-proclaimed Carl Jung fanatic, she asked us to write associatively, from where we dream, for it’s from that dreaming place that creative writing is best served—both in terms of creation and consumption. “Poems that move beyond the first circle of revelation” are poems that Levin encouraged us to write. I wondered: is negative capability the cornerstone of contemporary literary creative writing? In my guidebook on ekphrasis, I wrote that, “Stimulating the eye by rooting around visual imagery in the spirit of playful investigation can lead to ‘negative capability.’ Poet John Keats wrote about this particular state of mind that creativity requires, in which a person ‘is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts; without any irritable reaching after facts and reason.’” Unlike scholarly critics, creative writers who are drawn to ruminating on artwork are open to the creative possibilities of their gaze. Before an artwork, the experience might begin factual and reasonable, but it’s the creatives’ pleasure to then plumb the depths of uncertainties, exploring the mysteries of sight, mind, and context. What type of ekphrasist are you? Do you utilize the visual arts as a type of kaleidoscopic lens through which to structure your writing? Are you like an alchemist who uses specific material in order to yield your own gold? Does writing ekphrastically usher your writing to realms that exist beyond the first circle of revelation? Or, are you like me in that a visual interlude with a piece of art allows you a type of dreaming from which lyricism and associations can flower? I’d love to know: where exactly does ekphrasis get you? Join the conversation by sending your letters to E.W. at ekphrasticwriter(at)gmail.com. Signed, E.W. Post Script—Biographical Note: E.W. (Janée J. Baugher) is the author of The Ekphrastic Writer: Creating Art-Influence Poetry, Fiction and Nonfiction, as well as the poetry collections, The Body’s Physics and Coördinates of Yes. Recent work has appeared in Saturday Evening Post, Tin House, The Southern Review, The American Journal of Poetry, and Nimrod. Her writing has been adapted for the stage and set to music at venues such as University of Cincinnati, Interlochen Center for the Arts, Dance Now! Ensemble in Florida, University of North Carolina-Pembroke, and Otterbein University, and she’s performed at the Library of Congress. Currently, she teaches in Seattle and is an assistant editor at Boulevard magazine. www.JaneeBaugher.com. Follow her on Instagram: @ekphrastic_writer. Artists and writers have been fascinated by the moon for as long as we can recall. Here in this ebook we have curated an intriguing selection of forty moon-themed paintings, sculptures, etc to get your creative juices flowing. Great art prompts for flash fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction.
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