Poets Online Archive



From Art

May1999

The Hunter in the Snow by William Carlos Williamson paintings and many other poets have been inspired by works of art. Ekphrastic poetry has come to be defined as poems written about works of art; however, in ancient. Greece, the term ekphrasis was applied to the skill of describing a thing with vivid detail.

Is there a favorite painting that you turn to and reexamine? Write a poem that begins in that painting. If the title and artist do not appear in the poem, let us know the source.

If you want to visit some virtual museums to look at paintings, you might try the New York museum guide at http://www.ny.com/nyc/museums/all.museums.html which can lead you to all of the city's museums.

For more on all our prompts and other things poetic, check out the Poets Online blog.


A POST MODERN SUNSET

Bearded workers
are too busy to notice
the sun's autobiography
through the layers of smog,
intensifying the light  spreading its fingers
over giant Domino buildings
is  too intense for  hurried motorists
waving their middle fingers,  moving along
an unfolding,  tar bellied highway
like items on an assembly line.

They have not asked for sunsets.

Wasted melting colors
shimmer in broken beer bottles.
Anticipation dissipates into
wasted  melting colors
teasing  a bum's  eyes
scanning the  headlines of
a thrown away National Inquirer.

A couple blocks down the street
a man hollers, "nice ass."
at a drag queen strutting out of a taxi
a police officer tucks his gun back into his holster
a kid dashes down a dark alley,
his eyes blinded for a moment.

It might as well be raining.

MARIE GRIFFIN

DO NOT MOURN FOR THEM
"Parable of the Blind" by Pieter Brueghel, (1568)

They see within through smell and hearing
A sense of being we cannot understand
They share senses we can only imagine
Their talent is love without demand.

They've given up their mortal sight
Becoming dependent on one another
They cannot paint painful pastels
but remind us to pray for each other.

KITTY JARMAN

DRAWING HANDS
  (from M.C. Escher)
 

            Simple
                   Harmonic
    Motion

One

grows
        (and forms)

defining
                its match.
while its

        Match

is defining it.

weaving into
        One
                another

intertwining

the
perfect
                        helix.

the
Purest

of all eternal

        paradoxical

            juxtapositions.

Harmony.

sara_beth@email.com

WINGED HOPE

I remember the day we bought it
or rather, they had it made
an airbrushed picture by
a gifted, poor man without legs
he was so beautiful
because even then, a little girl
knew he was more beautiful than me
he could create this mystical life
Like God
and I watched, as outside
in the warm rays of Helios,
he made the one constant thing in my
tumultuous life
The most glorious expression of hope,
their hope for me,
his hope for the sweet creature
he made for me
a winged horse in flight,
among the very stars,
those stars I longed to touch
and the mane held my name in letters
I was then too young to read
and colors flowed from the rainbow
and every morn
and every night
I lay my eyes upon it
and see the stars within my reach...

 BRANDI SEMLER

OPHELIA AND MILLAIS
He has floated her in the center of the mouth
of the river, and her skirt floats too,
a great trout.
Her arms are open at her sides,
palms up,
either begging for something,
or pushing it away.
At one point there were flowers.
She is just about to drift headfirst
into reeds
which could be hands.
In the thicket on the bank to her left
something with a paw is hiding,
and next to it,
at the edge of the bank, a tangle
of roots extends over her head
like a crown of close gold.
Fairies bend the branches of a white
flowering bush towards her,
but she already has everything she needs.

MARY DeBOW

DAY DREAM
Andrew Wyeth, 1980

Helga lies in the tempera bed
beneath the white net cover
on white sheets, a white room.
If there was a breeze through
the two small open windows,
we would not know now.
Her hair is braided, it hangs
like a rope around her neck,
her one hand holds the other.
The red bedframe bookends
her body and is the only color
but for her skin, hair, nipple.

I imagine he mixed the egg
for the tempera slowly for that flesh,
though he knew it well now,
after nine years of study.

Helga, you are a winter woman
even in this warm weather scene.
I passed your Pennsylvania house
and his farm and wanted to stop.
But what could I say to you?
I wanted to ask you to lie down again
naked and strong and clear all thoughts
so that I might lose myself in this world too.

CHARLES MICHAELS

THREE MUSICIANS

It is a masterpiece of poetic humor
and Picasso’s  first attempt
to compose three figures
within the constraints
of synthetic Cubism.

Three masked musicians: one plays
the clarinet, another the guitar
and a third holds the sheet of music
with small, small hands.

Unlike the Kahnweiler’s portrait,
(three pages previous) I SEE the table,
the faces, the hands and if I listen closely,
I can hear the ruckus of a lively duet
and the dull thud of the happy dog's
distant, impossible tail.

The flat surfaces of color, simple,
rectilinear, delineate the musicians’
bright costumes and their broad shoulders
make their hands look even smaller.

In 1921, Picasso painted in a villa
at Fontainebleau. Olga presented him
with Paulo, his first son. And I imagine
the artist's brown head hovering
over a spindled crib. His thick finger
slips into Paulo's infant grip to marvel
at its diminutive perfection.

(Unlike the monstrous proportions
of the Large Bather hunkered
on the next page.)

BERNADETTE LOPINTO-NEIL