In anticipation of sitting in on Bert Almon's creative writing class at U of Alberta next week where the topic for the day is ekphrastic poetry, I thought I'd put together another post with links on the subject. A previous post on ekphrasis can be found here.
I was most immersed in all things ekphrasis while writing my first book, All the God-Sized Fruit. This book is the subject of an M.A. thesis (Ekphrasis in Shawna Lemay: 'To Make Something Mythical of My Life') as well as several papers by Ariane Souza Santos. I'll be writing an upcoming post that will include links to all the paintings referred to in this book and my second book, Against Paradise. Man, I wish I'd had a handle on this crazy internet thing back in the day.
In the meantime, here are a whole herd of links - to books, blogs, essays, and other random ekphrastic goodness gleaned from the web. Enjoy!
Definition
A definition here, on the U Chicago, Theories of Media site.
Examples of Ekphrasis
I love those sites that link up a poem with the image. Check out Ekphrastic Excursions. The article, "Ekphrasis: Poetry Confronting Art" on Poets.org is excellent - be sure and look at the sidebar - there are quite a few links to ekphrastic poems (no links to the works of art though), and links to 'related prose.' The online journal Qarrtsiluni describes itself as "an experiment in online literary and artistic collaboration. The title comes from an Iñupiaq word that means "sitting together in the darkness, waiting for something to burst." If you scroll down you can see some samples of that collaboration. Brushwork is site that showcases Christopher's Guerin's ekphrastic poetry, images included. Here's another: In Ekphrasis.
Blogs
The blog Ekphrasis (Poetry on Art) by Therese Broderick is a treasure trove. Calamity Jane Takes Aim does a very decent run through of the conventions of ekphrasis. Here's a post on a blog called The Exponent - "Ekphrasis: The Sister Arts of Painting and Poetry." Scroll down to read a poem by Charles Wright on The Scream and one by Adam Zagajewski on Degas' The Millinery Shop. Another post on ekphrasis on This Recording. A relatively new and intriguing blog is Digital Ekphrasis. From the first post on Digital Ekphrasis:
"The project aims at rethinking the dynamic relationship between word and image with a special focus on how digital technology shapes, transforms and reconfigures literary representation. The significance of the rhetorical concept and genre of ekphrasis (the verbal representation of a visual representation) will be re-examined through contemporary print novels, where the digital has left its mark (i.e. through strategies that require digital processing, and through thematic and formal explorations of the digital), as well as through electronic literature (computer-programmed literature meant to be read on a screen)."
As well, my other blog Calm Things (about still life) occasionally includes ekphrastic poetry.
Magazines
Ekphrasis "is a web magazine devoted to the arts, be they visual or literary" And then there's Ekphrasis : A Poetry Journal which notes that "Acceptable ekphrastic verse transcends mere description; it stands as transformative interpretational statement." Word and Image is a journal of Verbal/Visual Inquiry.
Articles/Essays on painting and poetry
"Drowning in a Sea of Love" by Cole Swenson
"Ekphrasis and Ekphrasis" by Tim Liardet
"Notes on Ekphrasis" by Alfred Corn
"Ekphrasis" on Writing About Art by Marjorie Munsterberg
"A Concert of Paintings: "Musical Ekphrasis" in the Twentieth Century" by Siglind Bruhn
"Ekphrasis and the Fabric of the Familiar in Mary Jo Salter's Poetry" by Jonathan F. S. Post
"Redeeming my faith in Ekphrasis" Eileen Tabios reviews Serious Pink, by Sharon Dolin
"What to Do Besides Describe it: Ekphrasis that Ignores the Subject" by Cole Swenson
(presented at Conceptual Poetry and Its Others Conference, University of Arizona, Tucson)
Books
As with the other categories, this list is just a sampling of what's out there.
Tranforming Visions by Edward Hirsch
Picture Theory by W.J.T. Mitchell
Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery By James A. W. Heffernan
Icons, Texts, Iconotexts: Essays on Ekphrasis and Intermediality By Peter Wagner
Getting the Picture: The Ekphrastic Principle in Twentieth-century Spanish Poetry
By Margaret Helen Persin
How Poets See the World: The Art of Description in Contemporary Poetry by Willard Spielgelman
Shooting the Works: On Poetry and Pictures by W.S. Di Piero
Poets on Painters: Essays on the Art of Painting by Twentieth-Century PoetsBy J. D. McClatchy
What Do Pictures Want?: The Lives and Loves of Images
By W. J. Thomas Mitchell
The Gazer's Spirit: Poems Speaking to Silent Works of Art by John Hollander
Twentieth-Century Poetry and the Visual Arts ed. byElizabeth Bergmann Loizeaux
A list of poets who more than occasionally write ekphrasis? Cole Swenson, Stephanie Bolster, Sharon Dolin, Charles Wright, Eavan Boland, .....so many more.
Feel free to leave anything you'd like to add in the comments. I like to think of this post as a work in progress.
Excellent post! Ekphrasis plays a big part in my latest manuscript. I look forward to visiting all these links!
ReplyDeleteGreat post, Shawna. Whenever I think of ekphrasis though, I wonder how Stein fits in. What about abstract ekphrasis?
ReplyDeleteThanks to you both - it was fun putting together. I think there should be a category 'abstract ekphrasis.' I wonder how Stein fits in too. Have you read what she says about Millet's Man with a Hoe? "But I still know exactly how the Man with a Hoe looked. I know exactly how it looked although having now lived a great deal in the french country I see thhe farmers constanty hoeing with just that kind of a hoe......But I still know Millet's Man with a Hoe, because it was an oil painting. And my brother said it was a hell of a hoe but what it was was an oil painting."
ReplyDeleteLH - I've added a link to an article that quotes Cole Swenson - I think she gets at the Stein question:
ReplyDelete"Increasingly, the visual arts and some poetry have worked to distill subject matter so that core structural elements and their dynamics are laid bare or at least made much more apparent. but it seems that the visual arts have been more successful at this than poetry, and in part, it's because, after a very promising start, epitomized by Gertrude Stein, who recognized that there was something to be gained in translating cubism's geometric and perspectival shifts into writing, poetry took a turn which confused distillation with simplification, turning precisely away from that which would expose underlying dynamics apparent through rhythm, echo, juxtaposition, etc. and toward simpler language, where 'simpler' was understood to be both 'clearer' and 'truer,'" with the result being poetic language dominated by subject matter, by information.
Awesome list Shawna. I've got many of these on my thesis bibliography right now, and a few others such as Murray Krieger's Ekphrasis: The Illusion of the Natural Sign.
ReplyDeleteBaltimore 1992 and Yacobi, Tamar.
Interart Narrative: (Un)Reliability and Ekphrasis.
I also found myself listening to Marshall McLuhan's The Message is the Medium on ubuweb, http://www.ubu.com/sound/mcluhan.html.
I agree that writing ekphrasis is similar to a translation. I'm not sure I would differentiate "abstract ekphrasis" from any other form of ekphrasis, and that ekphrasis can encompass many variations/forms. As W. J. T. Mitchell states in Picture Theory “the ekphrastic poet typically stands in a middle position between the object described or addressed and a listening subject” (164) and lets the reader “see” (164). Thus, the relationship is not a binary one, but rather triangular.
Have fun in your class!
Yes, Swenson's quote does get at it. There's an essay to be written. I find it very interesting that people think description is necessarily realistic. Or, simplistic. Or haphazard. Or at least any more haphazard than conventional description might be.
ReplyDelete