Selections from Gallery of Antique Art, by Paul Hetherington

Gallery of Antique Art, by Paul Hetherington, Recent Work Press, Australia, 2016.

Editor's Note: We recently discovered that a favourite writer, Paul Hetherington, widely known for his prose poetry and prose poetry scholarship, has a wonderful ekphrastic prose poetry collection from 2016. Ekphrasis is a recurring literary interest of Paul's, and this gem of a book imagines a gallery and a variety of experiences there. Paul says, "the gallery that the book walks the reader through is a notional construct rather than an actual place, drawing on artworks from various countries and art museums." He wrote it during a residency in Trastevere, Rome. Paul references a range of artworks in these poems, often multiple pieces inside each one, as well as the general experience of the museum. The images shown have been chosen by TER, drawing from the many possibilities in the poetry.  Some have been curated from Paul's general descriptions as illustrations, for example, one poem references Dutch still life in general and we show a particular piece by Floris van Dyck. 

​We are grateful for the chance to show a selection of  the poems in The Ekphrastic Review.

Sarcophagus of the Spouses from Caere, now in the National Etruscan Museum at Villa Giulia in Rome, by Etruscan artists (Italy) late 500s. Photo by Sailko, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Second Room (Perambulation)
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For minutes at a time we stand in different postures, trying them on for size. Anonymous men and women look back with oddly captivating eyes, yet they do not see us. In Caravaggio’s rendering, John the Baptist sits inside an abstract dream. Young though he is, he might be considering Salome. As he does so, lovers’ portraits beguile old walls like a confusion of memories. Hundreds of beautiful gazes and clothes. The Etruscan Sarcophagus of the Spouses is delicate in its reassembled terracotta. The figures look towards eternity, reaching for vanished wine.

Salome, by Titian (Italy) 1515

Main Corridor
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The meandering feeling in these corridors suggests there are too many depictions of the ideal—religious iconography supported by kneeling donors; courtly love; chivalric and civil grace. The poor are almost nowhere, performing bit parts in fields or as dark- faced executioners. Or they’re an aside in someone else’s conversation—servants who wait on the princely couple; witnesses to the righteous who have declined to ruin them. Fragility is the contrast between varnished gazes, damasked finery and the Baptist’s severed head. Salome looks puzzled. What is it to stand in perpetuity proffering an image of the famous dead?

Still Life with Cheese, by Floris van Dyck (Netherlands) 1615

Eighth Room (Special Exhibition of Dutch Paintings)

When you stumble on flagstones I seize your arm. We climb marble steps, feeling their old weight in our legs. As we enter, there are a hundred crowded Dutch paintings showing seventeenth-century fruit and meat. The ticket seller’s playing Bach’s inimitable Cello Suites, but the sound’s so low I query what it is. The largo speaks of Spain, where we listened and were entranced; where we sat on a balcony as you offered counsel. I’m reminded that affection’s often like this—a helping hand, music no-one expects. Someone says right words and the aftermath enthralls—like a painting one could eat.

Pieta, by Giovanni Bellini (Italy) 1505

​Ninth Room (Perambulation)

I’m standing quietly and a painting speaks—of how there were floods for nearly a week and not far from here the Tiber rose. But, after all, a tour’s arrived and a guide’s instructing her group: "It’s neat how he’s painted her feet." They move on and I examine again the Virgin with crucified child. Desert sun bakes the blue of her grief—it’s almost all she knows. And grace she carries; divinity that dies; the world’s long heaviness. She’d hold him forever if time would stand still. She’d let him go if she could.

The Tempest, by Giorgione (Italy) 1508

Tenth Room (Perambulation)

Believing in this past is no longer possible. Not with so many depictions of Saint Catherine’s broken wheel or the painterly zeal of righteous crusades—the meek inheriting loss’s deep umber. It’s a visual hagiography writ large, that afterwards our dreams irritatingly repeat. Yet Giorgione’s tempest makes of today’s storm an urgent poiesis and parable and the suffering Madonna strangely understands contemporary grief. Everywhere we look—implausible lies, improbable truth.

The Conversion on the Way to Damascus, by Caravaggio (Italy) 1601

Postcard: Santa Maria del Popolo

In Santa Maria del Popolo Saul is gasping on his back. Words enter his body like creatures; he embraces his interrogator in armfuls of puzzled air. Belief, knowledge, trust collide as light is taken from his eyes. His groom looks on uncertainly; his horse steps forwards, exiting the frame. Caravaggio suggests there’s no way back from such extremity—which his crucified Saint Peter underlines. "Beware of what you know," the paintings say.

Capuchin Crypt, Rome (Italy) 1630s. Photo by Dnalor 01, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

​Postcard: Capuchin Crypt

​The crypt is a delicacy of design; air remembers blood that lodged here. Shrugged dances of shoulder blades are Angels ceaselessly trying ascent. Rooms are full of smiles, each one a death’s head. Sing they say. Drive to eternal love via bony congregations. Take a hand that aggregates phalanges and metacarpals; feel its broken hold, leading into byways of knowledge; enshrinements of the body’s first geography. That bay of the skull; this coastline of rib. These bones stood up, fixed by intention. Now they are white noise.

Scene from The Scroll of Genji, 1130 AD. Imperial Court in Kyoto - Genji Monogatari Emaki Published by the Tokugawa Museum in Nagoya (Japan) 1937

Eleventh Room (Small Annex)

A twelfth-century scroll shows The Tale of Genji in aristocratic red and gold—and green "like sea grass steeped in brine." Outside in a Japanese Garden a thousand watery fingers are tapping on stone, as if counting centuries. Congregating koi are bundled scarves; autumn leaves spread like brocade. Genji’s thoughts are constellating pines and a sleeved river’s foam. At Nijo the Lady of the Orange Blossoms has moved into the east lodge. Genji remembers the speech of Akashi fishermen, as incomprehensible as birds.

Paul Hetherington

​Paul Hetherington is a distinguished poet and Professor Emeritus at the University of Canberra, Australia. Among his 47 creative and critical books, edited books, chapbooks and artist books, and numerous scholarly chapters and articles, he has previously published 18 full-length collections of poetry. His poetry has appeared in more than 70 anthologies and has won or been nominated for over 50 national and international awards and competitions, including Pushcart Prize nominations. He won the 2021 Bruce Dawe National Poetry Prize and the inaugural The Marion Halligan Award (2024) for Sleeplessness. He is co-founding editor of the international online journal Axon: Creative Exploration. With Cassandra Atherton he co-authored the authoritative Prose Poetry: An Introduction (Princeton University Press, 2020).