 Still Life, by Giorgio Morandi (Italy) 1956 Arranged Order The table Wears it all - Contour, space, Dust, shape - Like an amulet John Stickney John Stickney is a poet and writer, newly relocated to Wilmington, NC from Cleveland, Oh. ** life still rises it’s still life alone even if we don’t celebrate or meet together anymore it’s still all right to share a drink or talk with grandma at the home suspended in a box people softly chatting smiling and strangers mingling virtually our friends connecting through the phones we press our face into the screens zooming conversations they wear the shock they wear a mask or not still quiet lonely let’s celebrate what joy we can before our time dissolves on earth before our souls arrive with God let’s drink to fragrant memories and vibrant hopeful days don’t conjure thoughts of coffined graves or moldy asiago cheese. instead let’s shine the light of God let’s storm in spite of Covid-fears the gates of courage not defeat in pixelated homes and solitary prose because life still rises Patricia Tiffany Morris Patricia Tiffany Morris gravitates toward inspirational messages of hope and encourages others to find their inner artist. An eclectic Christian creative with a geeky-tech affinity and a poet with three names, Patricia writes fiction, picture books, and prose, using both sides of her brain. She discovered her love for digital artwork and now creates acrylic and alcohol-ink painting illustrations on her iPad. Patricia Tiffany adores hashtags and Pinterest but finds Twitter quirky. A member of Word Weavers International, ACFW, WFWA, SCBWI, OCW[TI1] , and loads of FB groups, Patricia runs Tiffany Inks Studio. ** Bacchanal Cheese: Havarti Kashkaval Port-Salut round of Brie Drink: Beaujolais Chardonnay Zinfandel jug of beer Feast: gormandize lift a glass laughs, bellows raucous dances Judy Oliver Judy Oliver: "After retiring from teaching elementary and middle school, I joined a poetry group that was offered by LifeVentures Adventures in Learning; Roy Beckemeyer was the leader. Those weekly writing and critique sessions encouraged me to try different poetic forms." ** Still Life One stopper, three bottles. Holding a six year Barbera Or the blood of Christ? You tell me, it depends If it’s the Sabbath Or a day for sinners. Seeing as how I can’t remember Which day turned over the Horizon, nor where I placed The two missing stoppers; I assume it is a weekday And I am late for work. Mike Mortensen Mike Mortensen is a mental health therapist who specializes in trauma and addiction. Grand Prize Winner of the 1st annual Provo-Poetry competition, his work can be found in various journals such as Ink & Nebula, Gasher Journal, and 15 Bytes. His work has also been displayed in a multiple discipline art gallery at the University of Arizona, Tucson for poetry and printmaking. He lives in Southern Utah with his dogs and family. ** An Empty Life There you are standing still waiting for guidance. Unsure. Unable to move-only to be seen. The vessel of faith and hope so close. Complete your destiny. With the blessings of the world. You may endure pain and judgment. A star or a crucifix. All things are open. All options possible. We must choose. We must choose well. To caress with kindness this still and empty vessel. Sandy Rochelle Sandy Rochelle is an award winning Internationally published poet. Her film, Silent Journey, streaming on Culture Unplugged is dedicated to films of social and spiritual significance @ http://www.cultureunplugged.com/storyteller/Sandy_Rochelle ** Looking Hard at What You See I am going to simplify my life, wear muted clothes, brown skirts and white shirts, sensible shoes a gray hat. Who wouldn’t want to be that humble in harmony with those leaning in to touch another quietly and experience how supple an edge can be. How shadow suggests the rounding out of surface. To be both squared and solid containing the salt of the earth. and a vessel to keep oil ready to pour. I don’t need to stand out in red heels or consider if purple earrings go with a pink pencil skirt, always the painted lady running errands in bright sun. I had my heyday, now I must blend in rest, welcome a diffused light, the illusion of space with no need to move through it. To be still, allow dust to accumulate on lips. permit myself to float free of the shelf, the table and become a pure geometry. Diana Cole Diana Cole, a Pushcart Prize nominee, has had poems published in numerous journals including Poetry East, Spillway, the Tar River Review, the Cider Press Review, Friends Journal, Verse Daily, The Ekphrastic Review and the Main Street Rag. Her chapbook, Songs By Heart was published in 2018 by Iris Press. She is an editor for The Crosswinds Poetry Journal and a member of Ocean State Poets whose mission is to encourage the reading, writing and sharing of poetry. When she is not writing, Ms. Cole is a stained glass artist. ** Three Blocks and a Round White of pitcher handle and a bottle beside balanced by rind of a round of cheese below How do you achieve aesthetics in a row of four? By making it about the two Rows By concentrating on the couple the tension between the two Enough to spark the night with neon over the colour of the beach where they always laid Created three children possibility of a fourth just there off to the side Waiting Kyle Laws Kyle Laws is based out of Steel City Art Works in Pueblo, CO where she directs Line/Circle: Women Poets in Performance. Her collections include Ride the Pink Horse (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019), Faces of Fishing Creek (Middle Creek Publishing, 2018), This Town: Poems of Correspondence with Jared Smith (Liquid Light Press, 2017), So Bright to Blind (Five Oaks Press, 2015), and Wildwood (Lummox Press, 2014). With eight nominations for a Pushcart Prize, her poems and essays have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Germany. She is the editor and publisher of Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press. ** Plainsong I do not want to eat the artist's cheese. I do not want to drink the artist's wine. I would consider accepting a glass of clear water from the copper pitcher in the plain still life of the plain still room with its plain still table if I were allowed to return the pitcher to its perfect spot and if I were allowed to return to my place and watch quietly and learn how it is one moment eternally rests. Shirley Glubka Shirley Glubka, whose work has appeared often at The Ekphrastic Review in the past, is a retired psychotherapist, poet, essayist, and novelist. Her most recent chapbook is Reflections Caught Leaping: poetry and related prose. Her latest novel: The Bright Logic of Wilma Schuh. Shirley lives in Prospect, Maine with her spouse, Virginia Holmes. Website: http://shirleyglubka.weebly.com ** Still Life, Real City Emptied of pride, Prosecco, and flowers, pitchers, vases tower over squat rectangles leading to the round piazza of perfection hugging the horizon line of still life, where table meets the wall. In my mind, I have trekked this path, past the high and low to that place of rotund solace where lovers, freed from rigid lines mingle, laugh, watch fountain, by day grab a quick espresso, or in pomeriggio, with appertivi indulge in a Prosecco, gifting flowers to fidanzati. Joan Leotta Joan Leotta tells stories on page and stage. Her fascination with art began at an early age and she loves to write and tell about paintings, sculptures and more, Her ekphrastic poems and tales have been presented on these pages, on Visual Verse, at the Ashmoleon Gallery in Oxford England and the Phillips Gallery in Washington DC and others. She, like Morandi spent a lot of time walking among towers, pitchers, rectangles and circular piazzas--Bologna's main piazza is not circular, but that of Sienna is a well-known circle. ** Still Life The sky is beige and free of blandishments. Soon, I am off to the Muses -- his bottles and jug on a stage arranged like tailors’ dummies. On a plaza in Ferrara — or maybe just a table -- I am seeing cheese and a tub of margarine. Since lockdown, mystery exudes in rooms with no loving presence. Bare minimalism. I’ve tried hard, though I can’t stay here forever, off again to thoughts of futurism or long afternoons in front of a mirror: pushing my lips against the true stillness, tilting the glass, seeing the floor slide away, praying for an escape to another dimension. Patrick Wright Patrick Wright has a poetry collection, Full Sight Of Her, forthcoming by Eyewear (2020). He has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, and his poems have appeared in several magazines, most recently Agenda, The High Window, and Wasafiri. He is currently working on a Ph.D. in Creative Writing, on the ekphrasis of abstract and monochromatic art, supervised by Jane Yeh and Siobhan Campbell. He teaches English Literature and Creative Writing at the Open University. ** be still be calm escape chit chat, politics, long-distance travel, parties, anything modern, glamour, wealth, notoriety, lust think simplicity, shape, space, light, colour, humble gradients of grey, shadows on white, village ochres, browns focus on bottles, boxes a dull jug, this room, the pattern, order, the shift, back and forth, up, left, swivelling angles slightly create harmony in line, in rows, in shade, tone, brushwork, right now, with hands, eyes and brain together, make art, be calm be still Dorothy Burrows Based in the United Kingdom, Dorothy Burrows enjoys writing flash fiction, short plays and poetry. This year her poems have been published on various ezines including Words for the Wild, Another North and Nine Muses Poetry. ** The Poverty of the Affluent They will never know the sponsors and investors the buyers and admirers that the purest lines contain the widest worlds emotions fathoms deeper than their sparkling pools. They will never feel the cool of limewashed walls in afternoon heat the smell of new bread and ewe’s milk cheese basil in pots on a sunny window sill hear the peaceful drone of cicadas above the poolside chatter and the air conditioning. They will never know what it is to feel the pulse of the day in clay the clean sharp folds of white linen and the way the light falls slantwise beneath the half-closed shutter across a floor pattered by a child’s bare feet. Jane Dougherty Jane Dougherty lives and works in southwest France. Her poems and stories have been published in magazines and journals including Ogham Stone, Hedgerow Journal, Visual Verse, ink sweat and tears, Eye to the Telescope, Nightingale & Sparrow, the Drabble, Lucent Dreaming and the Ekphrastic Review. She has a well-stocked blog at https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/ ** The Pecorino in Still Life, 1956 responds to Giorgio Morandi’s Nudge I’m khaki-topped again, almost camouflaged, without even a hint of shine and now you shunt me off to the side behind this row of uneven boxes? For all to see? Forever? Really? You know you could arrange me on a fancy porcelain platter and slice me open to release a heady aroma? Why not take a bite or two to show how irresistible I am? But who’s going to discern that? It’s always just the same old muted palette – beige, grey, pale, powdery. If only you’d wrap me in parchment or crimson batik, drape cheese cloth round my curves begging to be torn off and place me downstage-centre, spot-lit. No? Even after all these hours of tweaking? So here I sit, the epitome of Everyday Cheese Wheel skulking among these familiar utensils that no-one is ever going to oooh and aaah over. Have you even forgotten that I’m edible? The bottles never gurgle with Chianti or Lambrusco and I’ve just heard the white vase sigh. It’s desperate for a peony or sunflower. I dread to imagine what the boxes will have to say when they emerge from their tight-lipped sulk. Don’t you reckon it’s the hod though, that could be redeemed? I do. Snuggled close to the white vase, its handle, like a cat’s tail curling round in ownership, makes it beam. And possibly those two black bottles angled together? With hats and coats on like an ageing couple, they’re heading out for a stroll round the block, leaving me on the shelf turning blue. May mould flourish in your walls with reckless abandon and may the stench of ammoniated cheese permeate your monastic quarantine forever. Helen Freeman Helen has been published on several sites such as Ink, Sweat and Tears, Red River Review, Barren Magazine, The Drabble, Sukoon and the Ekphrastic Review. Her instagram page is @chemchemi.hf. She lives in Durham, England. ** Private Arts Monaco springs with vibrant pulse, spin low tax, grand-prix, roulette wheels, sum wealth, full fashions for display. Il Monaco, the monk, as known, Bologna cell for eremite; here brush the tranquil of still life, years spanned as Studiorum stands. Bottles and boxes, vases, jugs, as dun baked village on the hill, San Gimignano and the sky. The monumental brought to ledge, all labels gone, letters erased, glare glass reflections glazed with matt. Provincial tag, intended slur, but early buds showed renaissance, light slowly passing into night, serial time encapsulate. So paint the seen and not the scene - that is the space that needs the art - as most find time for neither part. Some private prayer externalised. Stephen Kingsnorth Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales from ministry in the Methodist Church, has had over 150 pieces published by on-line poetry sites, including The Ekphrastic Review, printed journals and anthologies. https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com/ ** Luna Moth Spare still life shades of taupe grey oil on canvas body no longer that soft white colour I wanted to give it a clear night with a full moon take it up a mountain close by allow the same light to fall on its grave pale bleached grass distances increase I place the moth in my hand and tell it how sorry I am her life is ending shredded sea green wings frayed. Worked, muted take it up there to be released. The day after my sister died in the time of blue plum. Ilona Martonfi Ilona Martonfi is an editor, poet, curator, advocate and activist. Author of four poetry books, the most recent collection is Salt Bride (Inanna, 2019). Forthcoming, The Tempest (Inanna, 2021). Writes in journals, anthologies, and six chapbooks. Her poem “Dachau on a Rainy Day” was nominated for the 2018 Pushcart Prize. Founder and Curator of Visual Arts Centre Reading Series and Argo Bookshop Reading Series. QWF 2010 Community Award. ** Il Monaco (The Monk) Afternoon light sifts through the bedroom window facing the street Via Fondazza. It falls on bottles of wine & blocks of cheese on the table. There’s nothing special about them, just every-day non-descript things from the kitchen. But in Bologna, the wine and cheeses are exquisite. They will go with the meal that his sisters (Anna, Dina and Maria Teresa) are preparing: roast lamb and un piatto di tagliatelle ready for the robust ragu, a Bolognese sauce for the delicate egg-pasta. The Parmigiano Reggiano, ready to be grated, and an uncorked bottle of ruby red Barbera is breathing in the rich air. Today he’s not a recluse. At the dinner table, Giorgio and his sisters discuss art, Natura Morta (Still Life), and the use of muted whites, grays, and tinges of colour for jars, bottles and pitchers sitting silent and humble, not boasting to be admired, somber with a dull matte appearance—utterly without pretension—arranged in deceptive simplicity, yet, it took weeks of obsessive shuffling to achieve the right composition. They talk about Mussolini. It was a good thing for Italy his execution eleven years earlier this month. They raise their glasses, nod with approval. A perfect balance is essential to enjoy life more fully in art, in food, and even politics. John C. Mannone John C. Mannone has poems appearing in North Dakota Quarterly, Le Menteur, Blue Fifth Review, Poetry South, Baltimore Review, 2020 Antarctic Poetry Exhibition, and others. His poetry won the Impressions of Appalachia Creative Arts Contest (2020). He was awarded a Jean Ritchie Fellowship (2017) in Appalachian literature and served as celebrity judge for the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (2018). His latest collection, Flux Lines: The Intersection of Science, Love, and Poetry, is forthcoming from Linnet’s Wings Press (2020). He edits poetry for Abyss & Apex and other journals. A retired physics professor, he lives near Knoxville, Tennessee. ** The Blocks and the Jug and the Bottles Dance It had taken days to choose them. The subtlety of their form. Their tones, the textures. How they would reflect the morning sun. It had taken hours to arrange them. The composition of the group. In front, behind, alongside. How they would complement each other. It had taken minutes to draw them. The finessing of the lines. Horizon with perspective. How their shapes etiolated my cartoon. It took me aeons to paint them. The colours, hues, shadows, the dark. Took me forever to sell it. Many flies have feathers out there. Yet it took death for recognition. Lung cancer won its battle. The blocks and the jug and the bottles dance beyond Bologna, beyond my tomb. Alun Robert Alun Robert is a prolific creator of lyrical verse. Of late, he has achieved success in poetry competitions and featured in international literary magazines, anthologies and on the web. He particularly enjoys ekphrastic challenges. In 2019, he was a Featured Writer of the Federation of Writers Scotland. ** Still Life We are lined up for our shapes and colours. We weren’t asked, but told, forced to stand here like women punished for obeying what we are, for complicity in madness, not capable of speech, though we say much. We’re given chalk to eat. And dust. And one hour that goes on forever. Stand there, he says, the man, who only yesterday fed his argument with life a few tubes of oil. Stand there and dance lonely until the light changes. We are tired of dancing and thirsty for yellow or even a touch of blue. Instead we're given stormlight, a dress made of shadows, old blocks of stone. We pray the light changes quickly. We pray it will be over soon. Lenny DellaRocca Lenny DellaRocca is founder and co-publisher of South Florida Poetry Journal. He has four collections of poetry. His has a poem forthcoming in Mom Egg Review. Other poems have appeared in various literary magazines since 1980. He lives in Delray beach, FL where he wears a mask. ** Gardens I pour two glasses of wine and wish I had made the time to stomp grapes with you. I nibble at herbs in olive oil and remember when you begged me to start a garden. The apartment was too small, I had said. Fresh rosemary now sprouts from the kitchen’s windowsill. I use it when following your recipes––you were a better chef than I will ever be. Niko Malouf Niko Malouf: "As a teenager living in Los Angeles, I enjoy writing about the things that surround me, stimulate me, the events of my adolescence as well as the happenings of the world. I hope to share my experiences and perspective with others and inspire them to do the same." ** Sky Over Bologna
"...if we could see all wavelengths simultaneously there would be so much light that we couldn't see anything. Or rather we would see every- thing and nothing simultaneously. The excess of light would leave everything in a senseless glow." the poet contemplating light and physics "What interests me most is expressing what's in nature, in the visible world, that is." Giorgio Morandi i. Landscape In the brash collision of clouds over the Porta Ravegnana, the summer sky was ignited by sheet lightning... To Maria Theresa, Anna and Dina Morandi, sitting under awnings in the arcade as they waited for the rain to come, the sky's sharp contrast was unlike their brother, Giorgio, a quiet man, and shy, his art created with unexpressed emotion, his paint pigment filled with so much light his Natura morta is more subtle than the storm, painted in colours of unbleached linen and silk, a memory of textiles rationed when art was a component of fascist society, a strange lifeless bubble without tones of grey to white, waves cresting when storm threatened the Adriatic in the girls' memory of a trip made to the beaches before winter came. Giorgio did not like travel, and escaped the heat in mountains south of Bologna until he returned to his studio on the Via Fondazza to work alone -- Il Monaco -- The Monk -- his metaphysical identity as he created empty city squares -- Scuola Metafisica -- with their sense of stillness, the nostalgia of the infinite hidden in light and shadow, mysterious, melancholy and poignant, perhaps, as the death of his younger brother, "architecturally" like the smaller medieval tower, Garisenda, adjacent to the Porta Ravegnana, and leaning closer, in time, to the taller tower, Asinelli, although both Towers were still and silent beyond the arcade, the only visible movement in the sky, the churning clouds out of reach and imagined in Giorgio Marandi's art, ghosts permeating his landscapes, dream-like and eerie. ii. Still Life The main purpose of a telescope is to gather light, so the deliberate use of pale colours by Morandi creates inward-looking paintings sensitive to the objects portrayed, the artist's eye an objective lens focused on an interior image, as when a bucket of afternoon sun is emptied on a high, arched window in Morandi's studio, and its profusion is steadied by a pitcher, a bowl, three jars and three bricks on an olive-grey shelf braced by a wall, its paint colour a pigment called pale dove's wing. The pitcher & the bowl are a signal of spiritual innocence, the three bricks (one ecru, two skin-tone buff) are made with colours of the Italian earth, sun-dried symbols to build a visible definition of house walls -- the outside -- coming inside where the pitcher, if filled with holy water, could be poured in the bowl to baptize new life with the colours of day and night, one jar in white, and two in black, jars where colour and movement are hidden in a potential created by the vessels contained in the painting, the possiblity of jarring in Morandi's Natura morta, the vases and bottles created with an invisible essence, objects arranged in a unifying atmospheric haze, light coming to life on a winter night when the moon is metaphysical and full, a ripe canvas in the sky over Bologna where nature hides colour, like a hat, wearing a lunar halo. Laurie Newendorp Laurie Newendorp lives and writes in Houston. Her book, When Dreams Were Poems, 2020, has ekphrastic poems, one a still life with a bowl-shaped soup tureen painted by an artist who served moon soup as a child, reading fairy tales where pumpkins become coaches for Cinderella, and the household cook makes pumpkin soup in the French countryside. Listed with ten Ekphrastic Fantasics, she finds art an inspiration where still life is animated by its artist.
1 Comment
8/1/2020 08:06:12 pm
Jane Dougherty, Most stunning imagery and sounds. I was there. Thanks. Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
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