Ekphrasis

 Ekphrasis: written representation of visual representation. A precise, vivid literary description of art intended to bring that work of art to life before the audience. Ekphrasis uses words to paint a picture of a work of art. It's a kind of translation. 

It's a work of art that describes a work of art.

Etymologically .... Ekphrasis meant: to speak out, and ekphrastic poetry typically involves interpretation of the image toward making a new work of art with its own meaning and intentions. 

Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, no. 2, 1912

Nude Descending a Staircase

BY X J KENNEDY

Toe after toe, a snowing flesh,

a gold of lemon, root and rind,

she sifts in sunlight down the stairs

with nothing on. Nor on her mind.

We spy beneath the banister

a constant thresh of thigh on thigh;

her lips imprint the swinging air

that parts to let her parts go by.

   

One-woman waterfall, she wears

her slow descent like a long cape

and pausing on the final stair,

collects her motions into shape.

Gustav Klimt, The Kiss, 1907, oil and gold leaf on ganvas, 71" x71"

Sasha Pimentel’s The Kiss

Published on March 30, 2020 Author njk5440Leave a comment

The Kiss

Do you really think if you bend
me, I will love you? You
crack my chin up, your hands
brown pigeons scheming reunion

at my cheek and temple, your jaw
cragged at the end of your thick neck
of longing. I claw onto you
as the only tree here, your

swing. I’m mad for gravity though
I’m bound, diagonally, to
you. Let me. Push from your trunk towards
the edge and my freedom. Leave me

to wither while moss weeps
in the corners, our halo liquid
as yolk, waving from our bodies’ heat,
our divinity melting. My dress

blossoms loudly. You are still
wrestling me closer. If only I could
release to you my mouth just this
once and you would leave me,

but the shadows of your robe are
so haphazard. I know you will try
to smother me again. The poppies scratch. My feet
reach beyond spring.

based on Gustav Klimt’s painting 1907 -1908

Musée des Beaux Arts

WH Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus

william carlos williams

According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring

a farmer was ploughing

his field
the whole pageantry

of the year was
awake tingling
with itself

sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings’ wax

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning

Charles Demuth, I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold, 1928, oil on cardboard, 90.2 x 76.2 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

“The Great Figure,”  William Carlos Williams:

Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city.

Edward Hopper, Hotel Room, 1931. Oil on canvas. 152.4 x 165.7 cm Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Edward Hopper Study: Hotel Room 

BY VICTORIA CHANG

While the man is away   

telling his wife   

about the red-corseted woman,   

the woman waits   

on the queen-sized bed.   

You'd expect her quiet   

in the fist of a copper   

statue. Half her face,   

a shade of golden meringue,   

the other half, the dark   

of cattails. Her mouth even—   

too straight, as if she doubted   

her made decision, the way   

women do. In her hands,   

a yellow letter creased,   

like her hunched back.   

Her dress limp on a green chair.   

In front, a man's satchel   

and briefcase. On a dresser,   

a hat with a ceylon   

feather. That is all   

the artist left us with,   

knowing we would turn   

the woman's stone into ours,   

a thirst for the self   

in everything—even   

in the sweet chinks   

of mandarin.

Night Magic (Blue Jester), 1988, by Carlos Almaraz

 

Night Magic (Blue Jester)

BY LORNA DEE CERVANTES

After Federico García Lorca

Blue that I love you

Blue that I hate you

Fat blue in the face

Disgraced blue that I erase

You lone blue

Blue of an alien race

Strong blue eternally graced

Blue that I know you

Blue that I choose you

Crust blue

Chunky blue

Moon blue glows that despise

You — idolize you

Blue and the band disappears

Blue of the single left dog

Blue of the eminent red fog

Blue that I glue you to me

You again and again blue

Blue blue of the helium

Bubble of  loveloss

Blue of  the whirlwind

The blue being again

Blue of the endless rain

Blue that I paint you

Blue that I knew you

Blue of  the blinking lights

Blue of  the landing at full tilt

Blue of  the wilt

Flower of  nightfall

Blue of  the shadow

In yellowed windows

Blue of the blown

And broken glass

Blue of the Blue Line

Underlines in blue

Blue of the ascending nude

Blue before the blackness

Of  new blue of our winsome

Bedlam Blue of the blue

Bed alone: blue of the one

Who looks on blue of what

Remains of cement fall

Blue of the vague crescent

Ship sailing blue of the rainbow

Of  wait blue that I whore

You — blue that I adore you

Blue of the bluest door

Blue my painted city

In blue (it blew.)

Untitled, 1965, by Alberto Valdés

Field of Moving Colors Layered

BY TINO VILLANUEVA

I’m not easily mesmerized.

But how can you not be drawn in by swirls,

angles and whorls brought together to obey

a field of moving colors layered, muted    ...    

others bright that make you linger

there?

Just look at those Carpaccio reds.

Right then my mind

leaps to Cezanne:

his dark-blue vest in Self-Portrait (1879–1880);

the Seven Bathers (ca. 1900) wallowing in blue;

his blue beyond in Château Noir (1904).

Consider now the three, or is it four figures

in Alberto Valdés’s Untitled (ca. 1965).

They are wayward energy, moving right

to left (the right one more sensuous than the rest)

about to dive

into the deep-blue waiting — call it the unknown.

I’d like to be there when they meet that blue abyss

head on.

Will they keep their shape, I wonder,

or break up and rearrange themselves

into a brighter, more memorable pose

...    into a bigger elemental thing?

I’m really asking this:

When they run into the landscape of  blue,

will these figures lose their logic of  luster?

Will they lose their lucid argument of color,

their accumulated wealth of geometry?

Will they still engage the entire me,

hold me,

keep me mesmerized?

Breakfast Tacos, from the series Seven Days, 2003, by Chuck Ramirez

Last Meal: Breakfast Tacos, San Antonio, Tejas

BY LAURIE ANN GUERRERO

Let me be your last meal.

Let me harvest the notes

I took from your mother’s

watery hands, street vendors

in Rome, Ms. Rosie

from our taquería, you:

in the sun, in the open air,

let me give you zucchini

and their elusive blossoms —

my arms, my hands.

Pumpkiny empanadas

of my feet, pulpy as a newborn’s.

Guisada’d loin of my calf

muscle. On a plate white

and crisp as the ocean,

lemoned eyeballs like two

scallops. The red, ripe

plum of my mouth.

Perhaps with coffee,

you’d have the little lobe

of my ear sugared as a wedding

cookie. The skin of my belly,

my best chicharrón, scrambled

with the egg of my brain

for your breakfast tacos.

My lengua like lengua.

Mi pescuezo, el mejor hueso.

Let me be your last meal:

mouthfuls of my never-to-be-digested

face, my immovable femur

caught in your throat

like a fish bone. Let my body be

what could never leave your body.

Edward Hopper Study: Hotel Room 

BY VICTORIA CHANG

While the man is away   

telling his wife   

about the red-corseted woman,   

the woman waits   

on the queen-sized bed.   

You'd expect her quiet   

in the fist of a copper   

statue. Half her face,   

a shade of golden meringue,   

the other half, the dark   

of cattails. Her mouth even—   

too straight, as if she doubted   

her made decision, the way   

women do. In her hands,   

a yellow letter creased,   

like her hunched back.   

Her dress limp on a green chair.   

In front, a man's satchel   

and briefcase. On a dresser,   

a hat with a ceylon   

feather. That is all   

the artist left us with,   

knowing we would turn   

the woman's stone into ours,   

a thirst for the self   

in everything—even   

in the sweet chinks   

of mandarin.