Ekphrastic poetry takes an artistic perspective, and expresses it through lines which prompt the birth of new ideas. Sometimes it isn't enough to simply view a masterpiece; Ekphrastic poetry makes such works come alive through prose which stand alone as art themselves.
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It was hardly a high-tech operation, stealing The Scream.
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| Edvard Munch, The Scream (1863) |
That we know for certain, and what was left behind--
a store-bought ladder, a broken window,
and fifty-one seconds of videotape, abstract as an overture.
And the rest? We don't know. But we can envision
moonlight coming in through the broken window,
casting a bright shape over everything--the paintings,
the floor tiles, the velvet ropes: a single, sharp-edged pattern;
the figure's fixed hysteria rendered suddenly ironic
by the fact of something happening; houses
clapping a thousand shingle hands to shocked cheeks
along the road from Oslo to Asgardstrand;
the guards rushing in--too late!--greeted only
by the gap-toothed smirk of the museum walls;
and dangling from the picture wire like a baited hook,
a postcard: "Thanks for the poor security."
The policemen, lost as tourists, stand whispering
in the galleries: ". . .but what does it all mean?"
Someone has the answers, someone who, grasping the frame,
saw his sun-red face reflected in that familiar boiling sky.
Cutting off one's ear for someone else is wrong
Jenny Joseph
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| Vincent Van Gogh, Portrait of the Artist's Mother (1888) |
A man paid 110,000 guineas for Van Gogh's mother.
Not even for the woman who breathed, but a picture of her.
If he'd met her when she was what she was
I don't suppose he'd have given as much to her.
And if he had chanced to meet him would he have felt like supplying
The painter, even with enough sausage for the rest of his natural?
He probably wouldn't have wanted him in his house:
An ordinary functioning man, sleeping and glaring about him.
And although he has to pretend to value her
Saying he'd give his eye teeth or at least his worldly wealth to save her,
I daresay he wouldn't really have wanted to give all that money
To have his own mother sitting permanently on his sofa.
A dog would rather have another dog
Than a flat board;
And is just a dog.
Nighthawks
Samuel Yellen
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| Edward Hopper, Nighthawks (1942) |
The place is the corner of Empty and Bleak,
The time is night’s most desolate hour,
The scene is Al’s Coffee Cup or the Hamburger Tower,
The persons in this drama do not speak.
We who peer though that curve of plate glass
Count three nighthawks seated there—patrons of life:
The counterman will be with you in a jiff,
The thick white mugs were never meant for demitasse.
The single man whose hunched back we see
Once put a gun to his head in Russian roulette,
Whirled the chamber, pulled the trigger, won the bet,
And now lives out his x years’ guarantee.
And facing us, the two central characters
Have finished their coffee, and have lit
A contemplative cigarette:
His hand lies close, but not touching hers.
Not long ago together in a darkened room,
Mouth burned mouth, flesh beat and ground
On ravaged flesh, and yet they found
No local habitation and no name.
Oh, are we not lucky to be none of these!
We can look on with complacent eye:
Our satisfactions satisfy,
Our pleasure, our pleasures please.
In a Blue Wood
by Richard Levine
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| Vincent Van Gogh, Undergrowth with Two Figures (1890) |
The couple in Van Gogh's blue wood is walking
where there is no path, amid tall,
seemingly branchless blue and pink trees. The tree crowns
are beyond the frame, reaching up into our mind's eye—
because we know where trees go and that they are full
of wind and a thousand softly stirring
machines that are alive. Equally out of sight,for
nests of intricately woven strength and fragility hang
like proofs that there are no diagrams or maps
for life's most important journeys. The horizon
at the couple's back, between the trees, is black.
They walk toward light. Crowds of waist-high flowers,
on thick-leaved stalks, sing in stout slurries of pink and white.
The couple cannot think of anything good
ever coming from anger, so they are more happy than not.
That could be true. Maybe I want it to be
true of me, of us. And like us, they may have worn paths
to the most forest-deep secrets in each other's lives.
Or perhaps they are only now on their way to the place
where they will become lovers, the excitement of their flesh
through their clothes singing, making them careless,
giddy, and light as birds in flight.
Of course, we can't know any of this. Perhaps, even Van Gogh
didn't know anything about them: so many unseen possibilities
lived in a blue wood, so like ours.
Sources:
- Munch, Edvard. The Scream. 1863. Oil, tempera, and pastel on cardboard. National Gallery, Oslo, Norway
- Van Gogh, Vincent. Portrait of the Artist's Mother. 1888. Oil on canvas. The Norton Simon Museum of Art, Pasadena, California.
- Van Gogh, Vincent. Undergrowth with Two Figures. 1890. Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio.
- Hopper, Edward. Nighthawks. 1942. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.
- Levine, Richard. "In a Blue Wood." Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. 23 Mar. 2014.
- Yellen, Samuel, Monica Smith, and Harry Rusche. "Ekphrastic Poetry." Ekphrastic Poetry. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Mar. 2014.
- Joseph, Jenny. "Fables - Cutting off One's Ears for Someone Else Is Wrong by Jenny Joseph - Poetry Archive." Fables - Cutting off One's Ears for Someone Else Is Wrong by Jenny Joseph - Poetry Archive. The Poetry Archive, n.d. Web. 23 Mar. 2014.
- Press, Graywolf. "Stealing The Scream." Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. 23 Mar. 2014.
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Stealing The Scream
by Monica Youn
It was hardly a high-tech operation, stealing The Scream.
That we know for certain, and what was left behind--
a store-bought ladder, a broken window,
and fifty-one seconds of videotape, abstract as an overture.
And the rest? We don't know. But we can envision
moonlight coming in through the broken window,
casting a bright shape over everything--the paintings,
the floor tiles, the velvet ropes: a single, sharp-edged pattern;
the figure's fixed hysteria rendered suddenly ironic
by the fact of something happening; houses
clapping a thousand shingle hands to shocked cheeks
along the road from Oslo to Asgardstrand;
the guards rushing in--too late!--greeted only
by the gap-toothed smirk of the museum walls;
and dangling from the picture wire like a baited hook,
a postcard: "Thanks for the poor security."
The policemen, lost as tourists, stand whispering
in the galleries: ". . .but what does it all mean?"
Someone has the answers, someone who, grasping the frame,
saw his sun-red face reflected in that familiar boiling sky.
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16477#sthash.k3pIS2IJ.dpuf
Stealing The Scream
by Monica Youn
It was hardly a high-tech operation, stealing The Scream.
That we know for certain, and what was left behind--
a store-bought ladder, a broken window,
and fifty-one seconds of videotape, abstract as an overture.
And the rest? We don't know. But we can envision
moonlight coming in through the broken window,
casting a bright shape over everything--the paintings,
the floor tiles, the velvet ropes: a single, sharp-edged pattern;
the figure's fixed hysteria rendered suddenly ironic
by the fact of something happening; houses
clapping a thousand shingle hands to shocked cheeks
along the road from Oslo to Asgardstrand;
the guards rushing in--too late!--greeted only
by the gap-toothed smirk of the museum walls;
and dangling from the picture wire like a baited hook,
a postcard: "Thanks for the poor security."
The policemen, lost as tourists, stand whispering
in the galleries: ". . .but what does it all mean?"
Someone has the answers, someone who, grasping the frame,
saw his sun-red face reflected in that familiar boiling sky.
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16477#sthash.k3pIS2IJ.dpuf
Stealing The Scream
by Monica Youn
It was hardly a high-tech operation, stealing The Scream.
That we know for certain, and what was left behind--
a store-bought ladder, a broken window,
and fifty-one seconds of videotape, abstract as an overture.
And the rest? We don't know. But we can envision
moonlight coming in through the broken window,
casting a bright shape over everything--the paintings,
the floor tiles, the velvet ropes: a single, sharp-edged pattern;
the figure's fixed hysteria rendered suddenly ironic
by the fact of something happening; houses
clapping a thousand shingle hands to shocked cheeks
along the road from Oslo to Asgardstrand;
the guards rushing in--too late!--greeted only
by the gap-toothed smirk of the museum walls;
and dangling from the picture wire like a baited hook,
a postcard: "Thanks for the poor security."
The policemen, lost as tourists, stand whispering
in the galleries: ". . .but what does it all mean?"
Someone has the answers, someone who, grasping the frame,
saw his sun-red face reflected in that familiar boiling sky.
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16477#sthash.k3pIS2IJ.dpuf
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