 Please join us at The Ekphrastic Review next week on Zoom for an evening of wine, art, and writing with Tarot inspirations! Did you know that the tarot was originally a card game? It came into use as an esoteric tool along the way and today is popularly used as a therapeutic tool because of the variety of symbols and archetypes. We will use it as a tool for creativity, doing some fun and meaningful exercises in a generative writing session. Come and write with us. Bring your own Merlot, or a pot of tea as we get cozy and banish the winter blues in community and creativity. Also coming up: The Pre-Raphaelites, The Erotic Muse, and Leonora Carrington https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrasticwritingworkshops.html
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 Adoration of the Shepherds, by Philippe de Champaigne (France) 1640s Winter Light Even Sunday, the city is a frenzy. All scowl and growl, eyes cast low. January’s slush and freeze fresh, slick and slippery. The banshee winds spooking shrill through skyrise corridors. Still, you are standing. Still here to count the day a blessing. This time last year, it was possible, likely even, that you would die. Still fragile, you watch carefully for ice patches in the parking lot of St. Seraphim of Sarov Orthodox cathedral. The church is half empty but your heart is full of mystery as prayer fills the room. The Christmas trees and poinsettia remind you of the reason. On every wall, icon paintings of saints and intricate vines, dusty pinks and rusty reds. Ancient symbols and acronyms like ciphers. A cloud of warm frankincense. The rites here are as indecipherable to you as the Cyrillic on vellum, an unfamiliar choreography. It is the dancing light from bouquets of beeswax candles, slender stalks bundled at either side of the altar. It is magical how it flickers against the gold leaf of Mary’s halo: Theotokos, and the elaborate inlaid gold framing the icons that are doors between the narthex and the nave. There was a time when you were outraged by such ornaments, when some people went hungry. But today you think about the woman washing Christ’s feet with rare perfumes. The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have Me. Gold is a gift, like life, and beauty is profound and rare. A taste of heaven. In this space, it belongs to everyone. The whole city can step inside to pray and partake of it. This gift of life. You do not know these traditions, how gold symbolizes purity, the unperishable, the precious, or that it reflects the eternal light, but you feel something about it in its glow. The lowly manger, the splendor of glory, two different aspects of the same winter light. The Divine Liturgy: men in white and gold cloaks and crosses, with candle sticks, dikirion and trikirion, glowing the unwaning light of God. Their ecstatic, mournful incantations meld with myrrh and balsam, rich and sweet as angels in the honeyed air. Lorette C. Luzajic This first appeared in Heart of Flesh. Lorette C. Luzajic is a writer, editor, and visual artist in Toronto, Canada.  Wonderland Two, by Karen Elias (USA) contemporary House vs. Home Bright among pines, dark bark, full backdrop of heart-high fields, the surreal uncurls a wild secret, opens its bird-sized entrance to call you to the shadowed insides of the blue tin house where not once have swallows emerged above each precisely crafted rose—one fuchsia, one salmon—their metal petals peeking out in fern-filtered daylight to lush woods that’s aren’t actually there, everything real and green sprouting only from the verdant trails of mind you’re just beginning to travel beyond your kitsch-decorated garden and manicured lawn where even painted pink flamingos parade themselves beyond suburbia and into the allure of woods. Marjorie Maddox This poem and image is forthcoming in Small Earthly Space (Shanti Arts). Marjorie Maddox has 16 collections of poetry—including How Can I Look It Up When I Don’t Know How It’s Spelled? Spelling Mnemonics and Grammar Tricks, Seeing Things, as well as the ekphrastic collaborations Small Earthly Space and Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For (both with Karen Elias) and In the Museum of My Daughter’s Mind (with daughter Anna Lee Hafer www.hafer.work, a 2023 Dragonfly Book Award in photography/fine arts and American Fiction Winner Award in poetry) and others. She's also published a story collection, 4 children’s books, and the anthologies Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania and forthcoming Keystone Poetry (co-editor with Jerry Wemple). Assistant editor of Presence, shehosts Poetry Moment for WPSU. www.marjoriemaddox.com After teaching college for 40 years, Dr. Karen Elias is an artist/activist, using photography to record the beauty and fragility of the world and to raise awareness about climate change. Her work is in private collections, has been exhibited in galleries, and has won numerous awards. She is a board member of the Clinton County PA Arts Council and curates the annual juried photography exhibit. In addition to Heart Speaks…, her collaborations have appeared in many journals, including Valiant Scribe and About Place. Her plays have been chosen by the Climate Change Theatre Action and performed in 8 countries.  Ten Knots by Arthur Briscoe, (England) 1926 Ode to Knots Essential, to secure parts together & in place, as in 10 to keep sailboats afloat (square, cleat, figure-eight), as in sewing to hitch stitches, prevent seams from unraveling, fancy French knots in embroidery, macrame knots. As in knotting a scarf, a necktie, tying the knot of marriage. Since prehistoric times, symbolic of life cycles, connectedness, a promise of love, loyalty, faith, friendship. To eat: pretzels, garlic knots. A measure of speed: one knot denotes one nautical mile per hour. Burls in trees, formed in response to stress from an injury. Even our DNA contains molecular knots. You don’t want knots in your hair or pet’s fur, that uneasy feeling in your gut, or a spasm in a muscle. Now if you were a hagfish, an eel-like mucus-making sea creature, you could tie yourself in knots to slip through tight spaces, escape predators. Karen George Karen George is author of the poetry collections Swim Your Way Back (2014), A Map and One Year (2018), Where Wind Tastes Like Pears (2021), and Caught in the Trembling Net (2024). Her award-winning short story collection, How We Fracture, was released by Minerva Rising Press in January 2024, and her poetry appears in The Ekphrastic Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Lily Poetry Review, and Poet Lore. Her website is https://karenlgeorge.blogspot.com/.  La Chambre sur la Cour, by Gwen John (England) 1908 The Room on the Courtyard Room, Courtyard Windows open on a courtyard, the room's one source of light. A window in the facing wall frames another dusky room, the glaze of a hung picture. The light on that courtyard wall: you could search, as I have, among whorled tints of dahlias, roses, but never find an answering shade of gold. Look to the art of Byzantium, perhaps? – an icon of, say, Madonna and Child, calmingly present within a timeless radiance. Gold, a way for light to live in sacred darkness. Now, here, wearing this hour's fresh sunlight, ancient light enters, bestows an everyday transcendence. A Woman Sewing That living gold points up a woman in silhouette, a net curtain embroidering the window's pure gaze, and – muse on a wicker throne – her cat. The woman – who might be the artist herself or countless other women, then or whenever – is bent to the task of fabrication, of mending, remaking. She angles her body just enough to catch the visiting light, to work by it. The enigma of self-composure set forth in the painting is deepened by the black monotone of her gown – redolent of abnegation, yes, but richly enveloping, its power that of the boundless unknown. Fireflies I don't pretend to know anybody well. People are like shadows to me and I am a shadow. – Gwen John But true solitude allows for other kinds of companioning. In her life as an artist, Gwen John imaged women in serene, delving contemplation: seekers, sufferers, fellow-artists and the friends of her last years, the robed sisters of Meudon. And always, she dwelt in rooms such as this where shadows meet the given light softly, as if a pact had been made. Once, when young, holidaying in Dorset, Gwen John, out on the cliffs in moonlight, wove fireflies into her hair. The light of nature, of whatever kind, a revelation, always. Darkness: its backdrop and servant, its antagonist, its lover. Diane Fahey Diane Fahey, an Australian poet, is the author of sixteen poetry collections, most recently The Light Café, published by Liquid Amber Press in 2023, and Sanctuaries, published by Puncher & Wattmann in 2024. She has received various awards and fellowships for her poetry, including the ACT Government’s Judith Wright Prize, and has been short-listed for six other major book awards. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from UWS for her study, 'Places and Spaces of the Writing Life.' <dianefaheypoet.com>  The Return of the Prodigal Son, by Rembrandt (Netherlands) 1669 On The Return of the Prodigal St. Luke’s words brushstroked with Rembrandt’s light and shadows: the prodigal’s return for forgiveness, his life disheveled as his clothes, pig-cote clinging to his words. Come back, convicted, only to be a servant, one foot bare, head shorn, his face hidden, if full a tragedy too hard to bear. But it is the father who commands our eyes, his red cloak recalling the blood and rebirth of the Passover, God’s wings covering us from harm. For all his prominence, the father reveals a mother’s tenderness with those soft hands and fertile blessing as the prodigal buries his head in his father’s womb and heart, reborn now in that embrace. Still, the figures in the shadows tell a different story. The tall, glowering older brother stands proudly erect, his hands tightly clasped in unforgiveness, his rod a sign of his coveted power. Another figure may be the father’s skeptical advisor. And the other the mother, likewise removed from the father’s unrivaled love. And where do we stand? Penitents before the loving father? Or in the shadows jealous of the father’s forgiveness. Philip C. Kolin Philip Kolin who taught Renaissance and modern literature for over 40 years at the University of Mississippi has a long history of teaching ekphrastic poetry and writing it, too. Poems and paintings are the sister arts and he applauds this family of imagination and spirituality. He has published numerous ekphrastic poems, long and short, in many of his fifteen poetry collections—cotton fields in Delta Tears; abbeys and convents in Benedict's Daughter; and medical facilities in Americorona: Poems about the Pandemic.  The Clock Maker, by Johann Hamza (Germany) before 1927 The Cuckoo Clock I confess, I bought it as much for me as for my parents on my travels in Europe, still more daughter than woman, still living at home between college semesters. I wanted to witness the heart-carved attic doors of its latticed chalet body open for the cuckoo’s hourly call. Each time the delight of it, never mind knowing it was coming, the way a child laughs over and over at Jack popping out of the box. From a clock maker somewhere near the youth hostel nestled in the Alps, I sat and watched him fix watches, tiny instruments fitted into equally tiny spaces, all to make time tick on, for us to count the hours and days and get from here to there. My days not so tightly wound, I went to Europe to feel history, Eurail pass in hand, long Indian print dresses and knapsack. Time was on my side and I knew it, in no hurry to become something other than myself. (Years later, startled when asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, my son replied, won’t I still be me?) I loved the not knowing, how I could be as intricate as the gold-plated handles on the drawers in the clock maker’s shop, my gears not yet meshed to move in one constant rotation. The art of time, never wasted, passed down to the clock maker from his father, and his father before him, knowing each second relies on the one before to get its bearings. Joanne Durham Joanne Durham is the author of To Drink from a Wider Bowl, winner of the Sinclair Poetry Prize (Evening Street Press 2022) and the chapbook, On Shifting Shoals (Kelsay Books 2023). Her poetry appears in Poetry South, Whale Road Review, Vox Populi, and many other journals and anthologies. She teaches workshops in ekphrastic poetry online and in person. Joanne lives on the North Carolina coast, with the ocean as her backyard and muse. Visit her at https://www.joannedurham.com.  Marley’s Ghost, by John Leech (England) 1843 Jacob Marley Appearing early in the night, The Spectre brings no sweets or toys. His chain makes such a horrid noise It gives his living friend a fright. Thus, Marley urges Scrooge to change The way he is accustomed to. The bill for stinginess comes due, A reckoning routinely strange. Past partner drags odd evidence Of opportunities gone wrong. He warns the day may not be long Enough to offer recompense. With notice of three Spirits more, This Ghost leaves Scrooge much as before. Jane Blanchard This sonnet in tetrameter by Jane Blanchard of Augusta, Georgia, was first published in The Penwood Review. Jane's work has appeared previously in The Ekphrastic Review and recently in The Classical Outlook, The French Literary Review, and The Wallace Stevens Journal. Her latest collection is Metes and Bounds.  Nutcrackers. Photo by Pinke. CC BY-NC 2.0 via Flickr. Wishing you and yours a very happy holiday season, from The Ekphrastic Review.
It has been a tremendous ninth year as we continue to bring a wealth of literary talent in fiction and poetry to the world. Thank you to every writer in our archive, to all the artists now and in history, to all of our readers, and to our editors and social media managers: Sandi Stromberg, Kate Copeland, Christa de Brun, and Kate Bowers. THANK YOU. Here's to another wonderful year of creativity, art, and literature ahead. wishing you all peace, beauty, and creativity, Love, Lorette  Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, by Joos de Momper (Belgium) 1620s What Daedalus Did; or, What Joos de Momper Saw (a poem about a different Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, or what Auden, Williams and Breughel didn’t see coming) Fathers struggle to do the right thing. Their intentions are good, and Daedalus is no different. His face, turned up to the sky, flushes with pride as everything stills, everyone pauses to stare in awe at his beautiful, beautiful boy. The morning is pristine, a fresh palette hooked on a painter’s thumb; as if every daub of colour swirled from a new tube -- a red so red it seems to pulse straight from the vein, a blue so clean and untarnished, it could be the memory of blue before the invention of fire, before curls of smoke marbled the atmosphere, greens before they were green enough to be called green but were understood to be the reflection of holy gold when it still poured forth from the sky, scattering its beams, lighting the sea and the trees bent forward on the shore; the miraculous and mundane, side by side, on this stretch of simple canvas where he finds his light in the glorious glow of the youthful face, the youthful shape, as it soars beyond a father’s craziest dreams. Even as the body begins to plummet, twisting and torqueing towards him, his features remain dumbly fixed as if the boy still soars, as if the plowman hasn’t turned from churning rich clods of earth, as if the shepherd had not already gathered his flock to higher ground, for safety and a better view. The fisherman’s rod goes slack in his hand, and everyone, sheep included, senses that something ominous is unfolding in the early summer sky. They turn from their tasks and wait; ships unfurl their sails only to crowd into the mouth of a safe bay, maneuver for a spot alongside the sturdy quays Daedalus reaches for his tumbling boy whose arms and legs, half screened by black smoke and blue flames, spiral around the nucleus of his torso; the distressed, shredded wings flash before folding helplessly to gravity and Daedalus, the inventor, finally sees the tsunami, the titanic rogue wave opening its unimaginable maw inhaling ships, towns, shepherds and flocks; plowmen and the hard--worked tilled earth just before the splash that will change everything. Lisa Sloan Lisa Sloans lives and writes poetry in Charleston, SC. She enjoys the challenge of writing ekphrastic poems and of finding something new and surprising in a piece of art. de Momper's piece particularly intrigued her because Pieter Bruegel's work of the same name inspired W.H. Auden ("Musee Des Beaux Arts") and William Carlos Willliams ("Landscape With the Fall of Icarus") to write two of the most well known ekphrastic poems of the 20th century. She chose to write about the de Momper work because she saw a portent there that was not in the Breugel, and certainly not in Auden's or Williams poems about the work. |
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January 2025
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