Showing posts with label Kay Ryan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kay Ryan. Show all posts

Friday, March 28, 2008

Trainer poems

Kay Ryan calls ekphrastic poems "trainer poems" here (scroll down a bit):

I should start by admitting that I have a certain prejudice. I am inclined to see poems-about-paintings as easy poems, or exercises, or trainer poems. The writer is playing tennis against a nice, solid backboard. The artwork is already there; all the poet has to do is dance around in front of something both fixed and culturally valuable. One feels a sense of pre-approval if one writes about Great Art.

But then, later, after exploring some of her own ekphrastic impulses, Ryan writes:

But enough complaining. An artist I’ve returned to over and over in poems is not a painter but the French composer, Eric Satie. In contrast to the thoroughly not-Cassatt poem above, the Satie poem that follows IS, I think, very Satie—and ekphrastic—even though it’s a pure fabrication. Because I’m going to define an ekphrastic poem as one that invokes the spirit of the artist (without having to describe features of any actual work.) Call me a cheater.

"Invoking the spirit of the artist"--how does that strike as a definition of ekphrasis?

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