If you haven't noticed

I am beginning to post a handful of my own ekphrastic poems. I mean, why not? The course is over and it's my blog, right? Here's an older poem, one that I remembered while trying to write my own poem about David Hooker's ceramic work.


After Her Ceramics Class Results in Many Heavy Christmas Presents from Your Sullen Teenage Daughter

You try to break the gifts while she is gone: heavy, contorted bowls, mugs with no handles.
       Knock them to the floor with malice of accident.
The only lovely cup she made--one that curves like a young boy’s shoulder, 
       the one with blue glazes in several shades--leaks.
You learn how a green dish shines in the afternoon light as it flies, before it gouges 
      a smile in your stucco wall. 
I know you grieve, that you love the wall more than the deadly dish.
I know you wish--small suggestion you’ve held at the back of your throat--for her to give
     you something more delicate, something lighter than a human head.

dw

Have I mentioned this smart site?

An anthology of ekphrasis in poetry and fiction, complete with useful critical quotes, excerpts, and what not. Perhaps, if I were a web designer, this is what this site should look like. Thankfully, it's there all by the grace of Damian J. Rollison .


One of my favorite bits is where he layers criticism of the artist Parmagianino with excerpts from John Ashbery's Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.

On Hearing a Symphony of Beethoven--Edna St. Vincent Millay

Sweet sounds, oh, beautiful music, do not cease!
Reject me not into the world again.
With you alone is excellence and peace,
Mankind made plausible, his purpose plain.
Enchanted in your air benign and shrewd,
With limbs a-sprawl and empty faces pale,
The spiteful and the stingy and the rude
Sleep like the scullions in the fairy-tale.
This moment is the best the world can give:
The tranquil blossom on the tortured stem.
Reject me not, sweet sounds; oh, let me live,
Till Doom espy my towers and scatter them,
A city spell-bound under the aging sun.
Music my rampart, and my only one.

For more of Millay's poetry

For hanging

A Curse--For Hanging--dw

When you hang
your painting
may the hammer scar
your wall, a hole
behind the woman's
pretty head.

Notions: Matisse, a Parrot, and the Fate of Wallace Stevens

Matisse has fallen asleep
 in a puddle of pastels.

He awakens at a vast red table
 of his own making.

A bowl of blue lemons
 becomes the center

and also a flower 
 imported from a province

of green belief arranges
 herself as another

center—head and torso
 filled with blossoms

requiring no specific pigment
 or love.

So the parrot who rouses
 the prodigal to return

disappears in the  medieval
 sun—splash of several

feathers & losses—and carries
 away Wallace Stevens

dressed in his best white suit
 of cotton, with orchids

pressed in his pockets. Beauty,
 they sing, in a tongue

only the truest believers will know.

--dw

The Museum Guard--David Hernandez

My condolences to the man dressed
for a funeral, sitting bored
on a gray folding chair, the zero

of his mouth widening in a yawn.
No doubt he's pictured himself inside
a painting or two around his station,

stealing a plump green grape
from the cluster hanging above
the corkscrew locks of Dionysus,

or shooting arrows at rosy-cheeked cherubs
hiding behind a woolly cloud.
With time limping along

like a Bruegel beggar, no doubt
he's even seen himself taking the place
of the one crucified: the black spike

of the minute hand piercing his left palm,
the hour hand penetrating the right,
nailed forever to one spot.


From A House Waiting for Music by David Hernandez

The Painting--John Balaban

The stream runs clear to its stones;
the fish swim in sharp outline.
Girl, turn your face for me to draw.
Tomorrow, if we should drift apart,
I shall find you by this picture.


From Ca Dao Vietnam: Vietnamese Folk Poetry translated by John Balaban.