​Beginning Again
 
When, finally, she accepted his absence,
she dared to gaze out the window.
 
The River Elbe, 
ascribed to the northwest lane 
and its draughts
(the mind of the ship 
having taken that route, too)
commences in the mountains
of the Czech Republic, 
twines through Germany,
is even Bohemian for a moment,
(which piques her interest)
and even after all these years,
the breeze dreams in lurid colors
before emptying 
into the North Sea at Cuxhaven,
all of which inspires her 
to follow the poplars
dancing graciously 
in dreams of the southeast,
the Sandstone Mountains, the Ores,
the Lusatian Mountains,
and the loftier Bohemian Massif, 
its conspicuous brickwork,
arboreal highlands, 
and abundant marble creations 
from which she,
she believes,
she will feed,
and live,
for a time.
 
John L. Stanizzi

John’s books are Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Chants, High Tide-Ebb Tide, Four Bits, Hallelujah Time,  POND, Tree That Lights the Way Home, Sundowning, Feathers and Bones, and SEE. His new collection, Entra La Notte, will be out next month.Johnnie is a former New England Poet of the Year, a Wesleyan University Etherington Scholar, and he received a Fellowship in CNF in 2021 from the CT. Office of Arts, Culture, & Diversity. He took first place in The Ekphrastic Review’s Ekphrastic Marathon in 2024. He is currently among the poets nominated for the honour of Connecticut Poet Laureate.
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Ekphrastic poetry is something I've been doing for a long long time--much before I knew there was a term for  it. As a child, I used to imagine myself entering paintings and having adventures there--the book  The Counterpane Fairy by Katherine Pyle (A boy "travels" into quilt squares and has adventures) was an influence. My aunt was an artist and the Carnegie Museum awas free to enter--and I went often.. 

My first awareness of writing ekphrastic work came with the website Visual Verse where writers were challenged to prepare a piece within one hour. I was one of their most frequent contributors, and was asked to write a couple for them before they closed up shop a few years ago! When I found The Ekphrastic Review, Lorette, I knew your gentle way of working with writers, made it a place I wanted to be.published.

Each time my work appears in TER, I am so excited! And when it appears in a cohort with others as in the bi-weekly challenges, or contests, I am simply amazed by the variety of ways people respond to the art--it is enlightening and exciting to read them all!

One of my favourite stories to tell as a performer is one in which the artist paints pictures people can enter! I've never quite given up on that idea it seems.

Here are three of my personal favourites from my ekphrastic poems on this site.

Joan Leotta

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Addressing the Lady, Wearing a Green Kimono as She Sits on the Blue Chaise

https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/nine-lives-marathon-poetry-responses

"The kimono is so like things she wore--
'Redheads look good in green,' she would often say."

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Magritte’s Apple Explains It All

https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/magrittes-apple-explains-it-all-by-joan-leotta

​"Dreams, those moments when the conscious mind relaxes
when life’s everyday reality joins with matter deep inside..."

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The Golden Day

https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/the-golden-day-by-joan-leotta

"My friend, on seeing my photo 
of dawn’s bright gold spilling into our pond..."

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Piece by Piece

after Beach Scene, by Eric Fischl (USA) contemporary
https://www.1stdibs.com/art/prints-works-on-paper/landscape-prints-works-on-paper/eric-fischl-beach-scene-beach-eric-fischl-aquatint-etching-nude-woman-ocean/id-a_5643452/

Oh, the ease of waves this morning, mimicking the skyline of low Shenandoah mountains, soft in their aqua green blouses. Waves shy at first with filigree at their tips, unsure, their bellies nervous underneath. Then the shiver before they fall. An inevitable overreach. In this case, the explosions are rather modest, foam reaching to the shore, withdrawing, skein-like, stretching that filigree. A heartbeat of three before the next release. 

Green and white striped umbrellas quivering in the wind, the fluttering edges like an emerald skirt. Gusts are the principal directors lifting the borders, skywards. Palm trees bowing, recovering. The lounge chairs match the umbrellas, empty and silent. For suddenly all the children and their parents have vanished. Headed to school, most likely, the beach replaced with elders—their thinning, gentle-gray hairs. She watches them as a breeze picks up, displacing their longer strands. The beach has a strand too. Close to the water where the sand is packed, hardened, much easier to walk on. The upper half of the beach, however, is full of hummocks. Tottering, staggering on this sand isn’t easy, an ankle might twist. 
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Or, once in a while, a broken sliver of shell works its way to the surface of the strand, slicing into a walker’s foot. There is blood. There is no place without blood. And clam shells, mostly, with no clams. She too was falling apart, inch by inch, the seam of her bathing suit worn till it broke open. Words abandoning her. She felt like that exhausted bit of clothing, no chance of recuperating. Why not just walk, walk, step by step into the ocean, swim with the fish, piece by piece. 

Sarah Gorham

​Sarah Gorham is a poet and essayist, with a recent essay collection, Funeral Playlist, from Etruscan Press. She is the author of Alpine Apprentice (2017), which made the short list for 2018 PEN/Diamonstein Award in the Essay, and Study in Perfect (2014), selected by Bernard Cooper for the 2013 AWP Award in Creative Nonfiction. Gorham is also the author of four poetry collections— Bad Daughter (2011), The Cure (2003), The Tension Zone (1996), and Don’t Go Back to Sleep (1989). Other honours include grants and fellowships from the NEA, three state arts councils, and the Kentucky Foundation for Women.

Reeds, Hall's Pond Sanctuary
 
At the pond a heron uses backs 
of terrapin to cross October's jaded silt 
 
in the mottled shade under paperbark birch
breeze vibrates reeds tuning an orchestra 
 
a geometry of origami birds trace 
an elegant cursive       
 
our paired bodies faking decomposition 
moving the mobius strip of fate back to start

Kerry Loughman
 
​Kerry Loughman writes about nature in the city, fractured families, long marriage, and small moments. She  loves connections, but also the spaces in between. Her spirit animal might be a Great Blue Heron. Her poetry has appeared in The Main Street Rag, Nixes Mate Review, Lily Poetry Review, and Jackdaw Haiku. A retired photographer and educator, she lives in the Greater Boston area.  

Kalman Zabarsky is an artist and professional photographer now retired. He still uses a 35 mm camera to take photos. He also lives in the Boston area.

​Review of Blue Lovers by Elizabeth Paul (Yavanika Pr. 2024)
 
Elizabeth Paul’s ekphrastic chapbook, Blue Lovers, is a homage to Marc Chagall and an incredible series of love poems describing the speaker’s love for her partner, and Chagall’s love for his first wife, Bella. The chapbook interweaves the two sets of lovers in fourteen prose poems. For example, in “Birthday,” the speaker compares quirky details, such as the orange floor in Chagall and Bella’s house to “our first one” (10). Similarly, in “Lovers Over Paris” the speaker announces:

Our love makes postcards of every place, bouquets of trees, music of sky  Every other person is a witness of how you can’t hold me close enough, of how my feet can’t find the floor (3)

This description could be one of many of Chagall’s paintings of lovers waltzing through the sky.  Like other prose poems in Blue Lovers, “Lovers Over Paris” is titled after a painting by Chagall. Paul’s poems are not simple descriptions of Chagall’s paintings, but impressionistic pieces in the spirit of the paintings. The poems have minimal punctuation (commas, question marks, but no periods), which enhances the tone of dreaminess, similar to the dreamy, floating tone of Chagall’s paintings.

Although the poems in Blue Lovers are titled after works by Chagall, they do not follow the chronological order of his paintings. Instead, the sequence is a loose expressive order based on the chronology of the lovers’ relationship. The first poem, “Time Is a River Without Banks” describes the lovers’ “beginnings” as a time of “charmed hour of quietude and all questioning hushed” (1). This first poem sets the comparison between the speaker and Chagall through the repetition of the phrase “I would be that Chagall couple.” 

By the sixth poem, the lovers have moved into “middle age,” an era described as a surprise which “feels swampy, landlocked with a view in every direction but no opening” (“Paris through the Window” 6). The middle poems also move into dreams, including the speaker’s dream that her lover has lost an arm, and a dream that “[y]ou were me and I you” (6). Another poem describes a dream of separation in which she has “almost forgotten [her lover]” (7). 

The speaker misses the world and longs to be alone or separate in “Les Amoureux de Vence” (4). This theme of merging and separation constitutes a major tension in the lovers’ relationship. In “The Poet Reclining,” the speaker addresses the painter: “Marc, I imagine we don’t have much in common, but I see we both chase the feeling of skying pink or greening nubile to a forever twilight and romantics that we are we both seek it in someone else” (5). The poem asks: “How do you thrive on the conundrum?” In other words, how does one accept the merging with another? By the end of the collection, the speaker is at peace with “sinking into the shape of us” in a stillness that reflects “perfect maturity, not one waiting bud, not a spent bloom” (“Lovers in the Lilacs” 13).

As suggested by the title of the chapbook, the emphasis is on blue. For Chagall, blue is not a colour symbolizing depression (as in Picasso’s blue period), instead, blue symbolizes the imagination and the sacred. In both Chagall’s paintings and Paul’s poems, there are “blue lovers,” who float “in an all-consuming Blue—something much bigger than adoration, something humbling, making holy clowns of us” (“Blue Lovers” 7). Likewise, in “Cirque Paris,” the speaker has “relaxed in my daring acrobatics” and come “[f]ace to face with you in this beautiful fall that is ever a fall and never a fall” and has learned “to think in light and shadow, breathe in the Big Blue” (12). 
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The relationship between the lovers is sacred and fleeting, as Paul indicates in “Paris through the Window”: “We often stand and look out the window  I thought it was for the view, but it’s for this image of us, the waking dream to create to see what we need to know” (6). The speaker and her lover use everything in the mundane world to express their love, just as Chagall does in his paintings. These everyday objects may or may not rise to the level of the symbolic. In “Birthday,” Paul declares with a painterly eye that 

when we try to show our love, we have to use everything  The street we walked down, the park, the cherry and apple blossoms, the chill pinking our cheeks. The embroidered coverlet, the fringed window shade, block stool, the small white plates with the painted flowers, the condensation on the glass of cold milk (10)

As in Chagall’s paintings, the lovers exist to be witnessed; like the paintings, the poems exist to witness love. The final poem, “Couple in Blue,” shows acceptance of conundrum and change in the line “I’m part man, part spirit  You’re part beast, part bird” (14). The poem shows reconciliation to the mysteries and mystical qualities of love and growth, to the lack of boundaries and certainty: “I’ll take any messy, monstrous, hybrid answer to such a never-ending question” (14). Paul’s exquisite prose poems revel in the spirit of love, and like the paintings of Chagall, are quirky and playful, passionate and vulnerable, reminding us to honour and celebrate those closest to our hearts, and to “breathe in the Big Blue” (“Cirque Paris” 12).
 
Susan Ayres

Susan Ayres is a poet, lawyer, and translator from the Spanish. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and has appeared in a variety of literary and scholarly journals. She has studied Spanish in Cuernavaca, Mexico, practiced karate for nine years with her son, and now spends time in Texas writing, collaging, teaching, and practicing tai chi. Her chapbooks are Walk Like the Bird Flies (Finishing Line) and Red Cardinal, White Snow (Main Street Rag). Visit www.psusanayres.com.

​Elizabeth Paul's work has appeared in The Carolina Quarterly, The Briar Cliff Review, Duende, and Sweet Lit, among other places. Her chapbooks Reading Girl (Finishing Line Press) and Blue Lovers (Yavanika Press) are ekphrastic explorations of the work of Henry Matisse and Marc Chagall, respectively. She teaches at George Mason University in the English Department where she serves as the International Students and Programs Coordinator and on the Composition Program’s Linguistic Justice Leadership Team. You can learn more about Liz and her work at elizabethsgpaul.com.

Don't miss this week's Zoom on French Academy master William Adolphe Bouguereau. This artist resisted the sweeping tide toward modernism and continued working in and teaching the traditional classical techniques of draughtsmanship, composition, and mythological subject matter. He was driven by beauty alone.  We will discuss his body of work and his biography and enjoy some creative writing exercises with selected paintings.

Our workshops are all about connection, conversation, and creativity. Join us and become part of this learning community. It's a great way to learn more about artists you love or haven't yet discovered.

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Testimonial:

Lorette's enthusiasm and wealth of knowledge about art combine to make her one of the most exciting and empowering workshop leaders I have ever had the joy of writing with. And the Hyperbole police would not arrest me for saying that!  I was exposed to art I would never have looked twice at, and have learned how to linger and engage with the work and the artist. Her preparation, presentations and written feedback were thoughtful, generous and encouraging. an absolute delight!  
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Susie Whelehan

​Tecpatl

An
obsidian
eclipse I blot out
the sun and send you north
you will not outlive this act
of kindness unblinking sharp
fissile missile I devour the
droplets of fresh fear on
my tongue gnashing
blood-eager bright
flake of darkness
I split you slip into
you a vicious
incandescent
fish sleek
swimming
upstream
seeking the
source I
bite your
heart I
bite your
heart

Peter Sullivan

Peter Sullivan is a poet and teacher from Stirling, Scotland who has been living and working in Madrid, Spain for over 20 years. The landscapes, culture, art and people of both Scotland and Spain inspire his work. He has been published in The Stony Thursday Book, a prominent Irish literary journal, and is working on his first full collection. 

Want to Write Stories and Poems Inspired by Art?  Europeana.eu is Your Free Go-To Resource

Europeana.eu is a vast database of European digital culture heritage that you can use for research or inspiration for your own writing practice, or to kickstart your writing workshops. You may have already explored it if you took part in The Ekphrastic Review’s prompt in February, using an artwork by Michael Schoenholtz. Here, Beth Daley introduces Europeana.eu and shares some creative writing prompts. 
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What is Europeana.eu?

Europeana.eu is a practical, accessible and free online resource, funded by the European Commission. It provides access to Europe's cultural heritage, digitised and online. Why? To inspire and inform fresh perspectives and open conversations about our history and culture. To share and enjoy our rich cultural heritage. To create new things.
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