Ekphrastic Poetry

by Virginia Dehn

Ekphrastic poetry is that which is inspired by visual images: paintings, photographs, graffiti, etc. Good poetry generally relies on strong images, so the two arts seem to me to go hand in hand. I often write in relation to a painting or another type of image.  Here are a  few poems in that category.

Kandahar
After Virginia Dehn

Single handprint on the wall
where so much has been erased.
In the breath of a whisper
a candle flickers.
The carpet’s Intricate patterns
a language beyond words, a history,
a genotype, generation of dreams,
one laid over the other, over the other.
 O Kandahar, the woman who painted you
 is gone, the man in the whitewashed house
is gone.  My lanky son in goggles
that make him strange, a helmet
clamped over his thinning red hair,
why is he there--
in the whirlwind of your refusal? 
The cloth on the wall is frayed.
Behind it a fretwork of messages.
Red dots, blue boxes, cuneiform.
What is history, Kandahar?
What is love? When will we remember
what it is to be human? In this
charged world of our own making,
how will we grow the right kind of skin? 

Gas, 1940 
 after Edward Hopper


Instead of a flag
     on the tall pole, a white sign
           swings back and forth, Mobil gas

and Pegasus poised
     to leap past this bright emptiness,
           fly beyond this road edged with sand

back to the realm of his birth,
     that place wondrous strange. 
           Anything could happen there.

In an instant a woman turns
     into a tree, a gargoyle, a fly.
          A young man buckles his sandals,

stuffs a blade in his satchel
     and follows the hero road
          to death or immortality.

Pegasus could fly off
     past that huddle of trees
          into a story. His wings are spread--

but something stops him.
     Every time.
          It’s the man, his loneliness,

the mortality of his bald head,
     the way he leans into
          the bubble-headed gas pumps

as if they could save him.
     Across the narrow road the trees
            are dark and thick—they crowd
  
in close. The man retreats
     to a small white hut, straightens
          the candy, freshens the coffee,

waits for the next stranger
     to arrive. He glances up,
          watches the road darken.

by Vincent van Gogh

.

Wheat Field with Crows
after Vincent van Gogh

From fields lush with wheat
they rise up, those old black
sorrows, crying out my name,
taking pleasure in it too. Like the stiff
straw men abandoned there,
coming unhinged, they flap
and stir the chaff to storms

of golden dust. What crooked rut
is this that wanders, a little green,
into the grain toward
the squawking of crows?
Even when I believe I’ve left
the world’s restless errands behind,
an agitation follows me.
In this incandescent world
the sky comes roiling closer,
bearing again its difficult night.
.


Optical Longings and Illusions
 after Man Ray

Kinetic energy, write this down, Mr. Lewis said.
Chemical reactions. Zigzagging
through the corridors, I colored myself in.

The blackboard marked with chains
of letters, pluses and minuses clustering
around them. Circles, arrows. Longing

as loss of electrons. I saw constellations
missing their lucky stars, random lines
connecting emptiness to emptiness

across the dark night that had us surrounded.
Oh Mr. Lewis. Big ears and bow ties.
But there was something he knew--

dark matter. Chalk dust to me. My elemental
landscape was tending toward train tracks,
bridges suspended over air. Snow, melting.

Gravitational laws, he said. Changing forms.
Desk to desk, we passed back the mimeographs
with their purple ink. Inhaled their fumes

as if life alone was not enough to make us dizzy.
My best friend turned into a paper doll.
I watched her disappear. Solar flare.
































.

.





...

by Edward Hopper

by Marc Chagall

Autumn in the Village
after  Marc Chagall


Everyone here is made partly of sky
so the fiddler’s lover ascends
barefoot, reclining, breasts uncovered

when he thinks of her.
In her hand is a golden cup
and levitating, she holds it up

to be emptied and refilled
three thousand times
by the leaves of a peppercorn tree,

leaves of indigo, deep night sky
and green as hope.
She’ll float in its languor--

the dream will carry her, music
waft through her skin.
A white goat, belly fat with kids, returns.

Young man in a purple shirt
with his heart that murmurs like a stream,
with his hummingbird lips

says dreams never lie.
Some of them blossom into stars.
Crooked shutters on his house

hang open. Clouds, memories,
sparrows, float out and in.
Over the rooftops, a small moon rises

curved like the tail of the goat.
It too is a golden cup, swollen with music.
It’s autumn in the village
but here the leaves never fall.

by Man Ray

RATTLE has a monthly ekphrastic challenge. They post a picture each month, and poets are invited to write something in response to it. Click here to see my poem "In the Museum of Cold Ideas," which won "Editor's Choice" for one of their postings, or here to see "Relic," which won "Artist's Choice" for another posting.