Ekphrasis is one of my favorite kinds of writing play. It gives you permission to be anyone and say and feel anything. It unlocks the locks and throws the doors and windows wide open. It’s great for when you are stuck; when you’re playing it too safe; when you want to break free. And when you want to have fun and challenge yourself.
The Poetry Foundation defines an ekphrastic poem as:
“a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art. Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the ‘action’ of a painting or sculpture, the poet may amplify and expand its meaning.”
Ekphrasis began as a Greek rhetorical term referring to a passage that described something in prose or poetry. Horace first connected visual and verbal art in his Epistles with the words, “ut pictura poesis” or “like a picture, poetry”.
Don’t let Horace intimidate you! The encounter with the work of art will be a form of contemplative and creative exercise. Your seeing may be both sacred and profane, and the smallest thing that catches your eye – an image, symbol, color, brushstroke, shadow—is a portal through which you can explore the whole work and its meaning—in the moment, for the world, or just for you. There is no truth and there are no lies.
Here are some of my favorite examples:
(I’ve shared one of my own at the end of the newsletter.)
The Starry Night by Anne Sexton:
The town does not exist except where one black-haired tree slips up like a drowned woman into the hot sky. The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars. Oh starry starry night! This is how I want to die....
The Brooklyn Museum of Art by Billy Collins
I will now step over the soft velvet rope and walk directly into this massive Hudson River painting and pick my way along the Palisades with this stick I snapped off a dead tree. I will skirt the smoky, nestled towns and seek the path that leads always outward until I become lost, without a hope of ever finding the way back to the museum.
Read U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s poem “All the Tired Horses in the Sun,” commissioned for a book about the artist T.C. Cannon (see his painting as well).
As you can see, these poems can come from any perspective. Ekphrasis is best approached organically rather than using a mechanical structure. That doesn’t mean you can’t impose a form on it if it’s coming through as a sonnet or triolet, but try to resist that and don’t sacrifice the piece to form (if you’re writing a poem; this could be a prose exercise as well). Let the work unfold and each development in the piece inform the next.
Writing Adventure #2: Ekphrastic Field Trip
In this adventure, you will go on a field trip to a museum. You can choose any museum, but I recommend picking one you aren’t familiar with. Maybe one that’s an hour away so you can have the full field trip experience. Go with a few of your writer friends and make a day of it, exploring somewhere you haven’t been before. New places, new sights, and new experiences open the mind.
Have a good wander, alone, through the museum. Don’t actively search for something, only stop when you encounter a work of art that you have a strong reaction too—excitement, confusion, unease, fear, wonder, maybe even disgust.
The artwork can be anything: porcelain, jewelry, clothing, furniture, photographs, film, sculpture, textiles, paintings. Don’t think you need to find a work that is beautiful or inspiring or a “masterpiece.” All that matters is that you connect with it, that you are drawn to it.
The Exercise
Choose how you’d like to perform this exercise. First, I’ve listed some approaches you can take. Pick the one that appeals to you, that feels right, and start writing. After these, I’ve shared an exercise called The Hermeneutical Circle.
Start with dialogue, with description, an immediate image, a question you have about the work.
Write in the voice of someone depicted in the piece, or a imagine a dialogue between people if there is more than one person.
Write in the voice of the artist.
Speak to the artist directly about the piece.
Write in the voice of the person who used the object or posed for the sculpture, or who bought the sculpture from the artist. What’s the story behind it?
Write about the scene itself if it’s a painting or photograph, tapestry.
You can also give voice to a part of the landscape, or an object in the work.
Fill in the blanks: I am…. I feel…. I think….
The Hermeneutical Circle
The word “hermeneutical” is ancient Greek for “interpret” or “interpretive understand”—what we do when we translate one language into another (literally), and the language of images and symbols as well – including paintings, photographs, sculpture, dance, music, etc.
It’s derived from the name of the Greek god Hermes, who was the god sent to interpret Zeus’ law to humans. From then, a ‘hermeneut’ was someone who interpreted messages.
(You may be asking: what’s with all the Greek references? Look, language is old.)
Let’s try it with a painting. Make your selection, remembering that it’s more about the piece choosing you than you choosing it.
First: Don’t read the info next to the painting. Don’t read the title, the name of the painter, background, materials. Nothing. You need to be a clean slate.
Second: We start with looking, of course. We’re do this in three parts.
Take in the picture as a whole, quickly – five seconds. Then look away and write down what you remember of it, the impression you received (include feelings, questions, and thoughts).
Next, look again. What detail catches your eye? Explore that one detail. It can be something that attracts or repels you (the latter will be the richest vein, usually).
Spend at least a minute focused there. Then, again, look away (turn your back if the temptation to keep looking is too great) and write down a description of it and again include thoughts, questions, and feelings that arise. If a memory or an association or allusion comes forward, write that down as well.
Lastly, look at the picture for at least several minutes. Sit down in front of it if you can to really focus. List other elements that catch your attention (these are secondary, but might help flesh out the poem and the angle/story you end up going for). Get a sense of the whole vibe of the painting. The atmosphere, the feeling.
If you like, do this one more time—quick glance, focus on one detail, take work in as a whole. See if anything changes. This zooming in and out when taking in a work of art is the circle.
Go ahead and read the info next to the painting. Note the painter, title, materials, medium, year, etc. At this point, you can now ask questions. By asking a question of the piece, it can respond to you (now that you’ve responded to it).
Some questions:
What question is being explored/answered by this piece?
Or, what problem?
If there are people, who are they? What is happening to them? What might they want? What do they feel?
Consider the setting: a landscape or house or room – where are we? Why here? What might have just happened here or is going to happen? Who might walk into the painting? Who has just left?
Enter the Emotional Field
The poet Robert Creeley said that presenting people with both poetry and visual art "shifts the emotional center." Speaking of artist Francesco Clemente, he said, "Any person reading what I've written and seeing what he's made is moving back and forth between two emotional fields…It's not a question of understanding the paintings, but of picking up their vibes—more like playing in a band."
What is the emotional field of the painting? What is your emotional field looking at it? How has it changed from what you were feeling before you looked at the painting?
As you look at a work of art, its world is intersecting with your own, creating various responses in you—visual, auditory, kinesthetic (do you feel warm or cold, heavy or light, for example?). Memories and associations come up.
This reaction is you having a conversation with the artwork. The important thing is to try not to let the filter (your world) overwhelm your reaction. Try to stay open. It might be helpful to acknowledge in the poem whatever is showing up from your thoughts, experiences, etc. to ‘explain’ the painting to you, and express how you move beyond these.
Your assignment at the museum, write three poems (or short prose pieces):
one on a painting (any kind, but most people like to try a portrait)
one on an object (clothing, masks, pots, baskets, glass, porcelain, cloisonné, textiles, furniture – you get the idea)
one on a sculpture
Each will challenge you in different ways.
Try writing a series of ekphrastic poems. Organize an ekphrastic poetry reading!
Some advice:
If you have time, go to the museum café or somewhere on the grounds and shape as much of the poem as you can before leaving. Don’t buy a postcard of it or take a picture. Trust that you captured what you needed in the moment and let it expand from there into its own thing.
In ekphrastic poetry there’s you, the artwork, and the poem (or the thing created by the encounter with the artwork that makes the poem necessary. That made you choose the artwork in the first place). Taking a picture or buying a postcard distances you from the experience, which is integral to the piece you created.
Try these various forms of ekphrasis too:
The poet John Hollander describes four different kinds of ekphrasis:
Actual Ekphrasis - focusing on an actual work of art
Notional Ekphrasis - writing about a fictional work of art
Unassessable Actual Ekphrasis - about a work of art that once existed but is now lost
Emblem Ekphrasis - an image with text to connect them, as well as the shaped poem—where the poem itself forms the shape of its subject.
Prepare to amaze yourself! This type of writing is very liberating, allowing you to say, feel, think, and imagine things outside of your own personal experience.
One of my own ekphrastic poems is below after a photograph.
Happy writing hermeneuts,
Chris
When you’re ready, meet my self-portrait mannequin Solange.
PROLOGUE TO A SAD SPRING
After a photograph by Edward Weston
We might mock the gothic, silent
movie look of it except for the tree.
In this light she can’t hide it—
the lines of body and branches,
the black lightning of it, the writing
on the wall. She is tired of being
careful. Maybe it's time he sees
it’s a premonition. Not a shadow.
Illustrations:
(c) Can Stock Photo / Artisticco
(c) Can Stock Photo / Archideaphoto