November Poetry Challenge: Ekphrastic Poetry

[Angeline]

Julien Opie
Bijou Gets Undressed No. 1

Lines are meant to be curved.
Circles change position. Think
of the Sun moving in the sky,
dipping lower as if to suggest
a head turned slightly, the chin
lifted as day gives in, gives
herself over to darkness. Lift
your skirt. Now pause. Turn this
way. Take your shirt off,
and the aspect changes. Twilight
is time for yielding the cloths
of day, bit by bit, until the night
is naked before you, wraps you
in its opaque embrace and beams
particles of light. The moon waits
mysterious, barely detached, close
enough to kiss your skin, opalescent
blue where a line curves to itself.​

 

[sophieloves]

stunning! how well the image and words work together.. goodness!

 

[sophieloves]

a baleful
cyclops eye

fetal
petal
fade

this is art

oh yes it is - ps, i just took those lines as ones that made most impact on me.

 

[sophieloves]

oops, commenting a bit too early. sorry

 

[Tzara]

White Painting (Seven Panels)
Robert Rauschenberg, 1953

It is a white painting, Bob,
I'll give you that. But

I don't understand why
how life shadows your canvas

makes that your art. Can
you pull up your white socks,

Bob, uncross your legs, and
quickly, now

....................t-t-tell me?
I need to sign your check.

 

[sophieloves]

just testing this link

http://images.uk.ask.com/fr?q=moder...Fq%3Dmodern%2Bart%26page%3D2%26pstart%3D&qt=0



blinking perspective


at first i saw a dark dark fin
a dark shark fin in
silhouette
against an oceanic blue
not moving towards me
but moving away in the view
the blue became sky and the red the red of
carnage-water, reflecting the fin as it
slid away

then blink
and it becomes instead
a pinnacle cutting the still of eve
the red a red of sandstone - sand
wet sand to bear the echoe of the spire
no
a lightless lighthouse
casting shortened shadow on a beach

but then another blink and all i see
all i can think to see are
two bums
a blue bum sitting on a red bum

this is a two-bum poem
for a two-bum picture.

 

[Angeline]

http://images.uk.ask.com/fr?q=moder...Fq%3Dmodern%2Bart%26page%3D2%26pstart%3D&qt=0



blinking perspective


at first i saw a dark dark fin
a dark shark fin in
silhouette
against an oceanic blue
not moving towards me
but moving away in the view
the blue became sky and the red the red of
carnage-water, reflecting the fin as it
slid away

then blink
and it becomes instead
a pinnacle cutting the still of eve
the red a red of sandstone - sand
wet sand to bear the echoe of the spire
no
a lightless lighthouse
casting shortened shadow on a beach

but then another blink and all i see
all i can think to see are
two bums
a blue bum sitting on a red bum

this is a two-bum poem
for a two-bum picture.

Darn. I really like your poem (though I think you should lose the last two lines), but I can't access the picture. Who's the artist and is there another way we can see the pic?

 

[sophieloves]

Darn. I really like your poem (though I think you should lose the last two lines), but I can't access the picture. Who's the artist and is there another way we can see the pic?

doesn't the image show when you click that link? as a small picture top left of screen? it does for me i used the link to the Ask.com page showing that image because the url's given here take me to 'can't display the page' screens. i'll post the urls and maybe they'll work for you where they didn't for me. and i'll see if i can't find the image anywhere else. i'd have to guess the artist might be Laffanki?

File Name: composition-2.jpg
Image URL: http://www.laffanki.com/images/composition-2....
Source URL: http://www.laffanki.com/royal-academy-arts-su...
ah, hold on - i can do better - i'll use it as my av for a day


and there it is - the picture as my avatar.

 

[Angeline]

doesn't the image show when you click that link? as a small picture top left of screen? it does for me i used the link to the Ask.com page showing that image because the url's given here take me to 'can't display the page' screens. i'll post the urls and maybe they'll work for you where they didn't for me. and i'll see if i can't find the image anywhere else. i'd have to guess the artist might be Laffaniki?

File Name: composition-2.jpg
Image URL: http://www.laffanki.com/images/composition-2....
Source URL: http://www.laffanki.com/royal-academy-arts-su...
ah, hold on - i can do better - i'll use it as my av for a day


and there it is - the picture as my avatar.

Very interesting. The link you used for the Image URL was the only way I could get to it, though using it in your av certainly gets around that.

I like the idea of writing about something so abstract that you can make whatever you want of it. And I love being introduced to artists I'd never have heard of otherwise.

 

[sophieloves]

here's another link - it's to his gallery, but i can't see that particular painting there...

http://www.laffanki.co.uk/?Laffanki_Prints

unless, of course, it is a print by another artist he is selling through his outlet. sorry. don't know.

 

[Tathagata]

,,,,,

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

It's all here
in black
.............and white
wrong
............ or right
we use it
for our own devises
secret vices
day
........ and night
for the record
a groovy Hansard
of our sins.​

 

[Angeline]

It's all here
in black
.............and white
wrong
............ or right
we use it
for our own devises
our secret vices
day
........ and night
for the record
a groovy Hansard
of our sins.​

Image isn't showing (I see the red x). Got a link?

Never mind. You must have fixed it.

 

[twelveoone]

DALI

A note scribbled on a repurposed secretary

Take a memo Miss Pussy.
I love your red brassiere
and the way your mons
rises up to support
my wrist while my fingers
draw the lines
of communication
open.​

way cool, some might think it shallow
all hail shallow

count me TZ; I generally fail at deadlines, let's see if I break my own rules. I did Van Gogh once, nobody got. If I can only move into shallower territory Warhol?
Ode to a soup can?
Oh hallowed goodness, red and sweet
the kind of shit my mother'd greet
me for lunch, made me look forward t' chipp'd
beef, Oh good grief, what rhymes....flipp'd

AH fuck Keats anyway.

 

[TheRainMan]

Three Sisters


The ground is cracked with summer. Already,
in the dim burning of dawn, I say hurry sundown.
Already I long to step into the shade
of every tree, to find the divine
calm that comes to a resting face at twilight.
And when it appears, it is a charmed night—the peaks
of the sisters are so true I could leave everything
for them. There is a beauty beyond conception,
made and being made always. It sets
the roughest man on his best behavior—by it
I am fed, and under the influence
of that fullness I see the spaces between pines
thick with seeds and cones. These too are food.
Food is everywhere. On the ground and in
the streams, in the mountains where the rivers
take their rise, on the delicately swirled slopes,
white and dark as fine marble,
and in the sky, in its soft blessings of rain
that replenish me and every living thing
like the lakes, that engrave vows
on the rocks, whether we take them or not.

.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Sarcophagus from Cerveteri
Etruscan, 6th C. BCE



Afterlife

We know that once
this flesh cage is opened
an eternal feast
awaits.

Yet more is here
than just good food and wine;
this languorous pose
is clear.

She smiles because,
between her thighs, his juice,
still warm, trickles when
she laughs.

His solid arms
are tired from holding him
aloft over her
just now.

She is about
to run her fingernails
lightly down his arm
again

She’ll arch her hips
slightly, back against him,
her motions hidden
by robes.

What they’ve just done
is still fresh in their minds;
that archaic smile
is new.

And even now,
though enjoying the feast,
they want to escape
again,

to sneak away
to some rich, darkened room
and bring their bodies
to life.

 

[Angeline]

Vincent Desiderio. Woman in White Dress. 2003

She’s not looking at the wallpaper.
Even if her eyes rest there, she’s not
seeing it. Is he nearby, just past
our range of vision? He could be
watching her without seeing
anything either, lost in five minutes
before. On her, the dress pushed off,
heaped against the wall, on green,
smothering those gentle farmers,
obscuring their view. Do they wonder
as we do at the shared heat, her soft skin
and his hard grasp, the glorious outcry
of their animal voices, the rhythm
of abandon, the limp surrender
that blushed her limbs until she melted
to a shadow, chiaroscuro, veiled,
framed, bound to the art that holds her?

 

[l8bloom]

The Stevenson Memorial

She was never meant to murmur
glad tidings of life into Mary’s ear;

neither line up, stamped, impassive,
one of a gross of gold-colored look-alikes
pincushioned in a thin display
at the check-out

destined to guard your car
or glint from the shoulder of the WalMart clerk.

Nor was she popped from a mold in China, product of some wide-eyed kid’s attempt to supplement family income,
wrapped in an AirPak and

flown

over the earth

so another wide-eyed kid could wire her,
fish-hook fashion,
onto the real tree Dad and Uncle cut down.

It is not in her to
smile
a wavy dot-tipped line
from a handpainted wooden plaque for sale on eBay
whose maker’s friends say
is adorable.



Holding one knee,
she balances

in a place we bury more deeply
than a risky flirt at work

on a stone headboard
in the intimate spot
that lovers don’t touch—

the lightless retreat we all have but
don’t speak:

the wound that gushed,
ebbed to a saline trickle,
laved to a
permanent
basalt
ache.

She waits.
I’ll hold my son again.

 

[Tzara]

This challenge is rocking, people!

Well, not rocking people, of course. That doesn't really make sense. Nor is this catering specifically to senior citizens. Not that I want to exclude them, of course, being like one myself oh I see I am wandering off track again sorry....

Perhaps I mean merely that this challenge rocks. The results rock. I am a rock. Or something like that.

Anyway, as this here thread's instigatory Challenger of the Unknown, I thank all yew fabuloso poets for your precipitation and urge/beg/cajole/whine at all others to consider participating in This Fine Challenge™.

Here's where we are to date, in chronunlogical order:

• MET: "Mable Sue" (Artist: Al Capp)
• Fifth Flower: "The Difference Between Ovid and Brueghel" (Artist: Pieter Brueghel the Elder)
• Tzara: "Il Deserto Viola" (Artist: Eric Fischl)
• champagne1982: "A note scribbled on a repurposed secretary" (Artist: unknown; subject: Salvador Dalí and unknown model)
• FifthFlower: "Etching by DeAnn Prosia" (Artist: DeAnn Prosia)
• Tathagata: "Van Gogh's 'Sunflowers'" (Artist: Vincent van Gogh)
• Tristesse2: "Visitation" (Artist: Pierre Surtes)
• Tzara: "An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump" (Artist: Joseph Wright of Derby)
• unpredictablebijou: "Plethora of Cats" (Artist: Theodore Geisel)
• Angeline: "Bijou Gets Undressed No. 1" (Artist: Julian Opie)
• Tzara: "White Painting (Seven Panels)" (Artist: Robert Rauschenberg)
• sophieloves: "blinking perspective" (Artist: Laffanki)
• Tathagata: untitled (Artist: Katsushika Hokusai)
• Tristesse2: untitled (Artist: Charles Beeler and Dan X. Solo?)
• TheRainMan: "Three Sisters" (Artist: TRM (I'm guessing here))
• unpredictablebijou: "afterlife" (Artist: Unknown Etruscan sculptor)
• Angeline: untitled (Artist: Vincent Desiderio)
• l8bloom: "The Stevenson Memorial" (Artist: Abbot Handerson Thayer)

O, people. Eighteen some poems, lovely, interesting, fun. Thank y'all.

Write some more. There's, what? Basically ten days left in the month? We are only two-thrids-thru our Ekphrastical Mystery Tour!

Sign up now, or be a walrus! Goo goo g'joob!

 

[l8bloom]

Silly Question

OK, I'm a Noob. What happens at the end of the Challenge? Do we vote?, or just meet somewhere for a glass of dry red?

 

[Tzara]

OK, I'm a Noob. What happens at the end of the Challenge? Do we vote?, or just meet somewhere for a glass of dry red?

(Ahem.) Yes, you meet me in a nice, candlelit restaurant for a glass of dry red and "enjoy" my clever conversation and gropy hands.

The original theory was that people commented on the poems. Commenting being difficult at best, and people not wanting to say anything bad 'bout poems (however that is interpreted), the comment thing has kinda wended it's way into extinction.

Buck this trend, l8bloom! Pick a poem posted here and say something meaningful (or even snotty) about it. Hey, afraid of offending someone? Pick at one of mine.

Just remember, I own an official MLB Cubbies hat. Oh, and a Pirates one, too, not that that matters, along with several from my beloved, incompetent Mariners.

Yours was a good poem, by the way. I may even pick at it later.

Peck. Peck. Peck.

 

[SxRx]

Never mind. Reread your start up post and answered my own question.


SxRx

 

[l8bloom]

Trend-Bucking

Visitation

She wonders if she got dressed up
for nothing,
that he won’t be here to see
the burgundy dress and jacket
with the sailor's collar.

Close to her ear the curtain
sounds like the sea and feels
like comfort.

She fights the urge
to put her thumb in her mouth
for even one second
in case he comes.

Outside the window
Rue de la Paget unfolds
beneath her but she’s looking
across the street at me
solemn and still.

She doesn’t return my wave
or leave the window
just in case he does come today.

Back in Time lithograph by Pierre Surtes 1992

In that case I'll comment freely on this gorgeous assembly of words. Tristesse's poem yanked me into the child's reality before I even scrolled down to see the image. The curtain that sounds like the sea in her ear, comforts her with its size and familiarity -- I hear it. More importantly, overall, T. has succinctly captured the experience of waiting from a child's perspective -- you know the way kids fasten onto one hope, one wish, often involving what a grownup might grant, especially the favor of time.

Where does that feeling go, when we are older?
Do we become socialized to give up?

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Thank you so much l8bloom, I'm intensely flustered and flattered. I have to honest and say it is always a suprise to me when some one I consider far more talented than I am praises a poem of mine and I appreciate your view.

That said, I'll try again - your fault Tzara-vitch for opening this particular Pandora's box.

Band Drawing Compostion by: Catherine Sarlatte


Sibling Rivalry

Hers was the orderly way
the clever point that
won our arguments
I blustered through
knowing it was hopeless
anticipating her smug retreat
Try as I might I could never control
my passion using dramatics to illustrate
the righteousness of my crusade
it never worked I always lost
she was amused
she tells me now so much
that she would instigate a set-to
just to watch me scramble my reality.

​

 

[Angeline]

Weekend at Firenze
Adriano Cecioni

Miss Viola is shocked
at the wanton excess
of sister Violetta. She’d run
if a thought occurred, tear
her eyes from the bed,
that white dress manhandled
askew, the terrible disinterest
(so casual!) of the coltivatori
as if to suggest Violetta
no more than dumb beast
at rut. The thoughts swell
her cheeks, purse her lips
to a fine confused point,
and she feels rather limp
in her own linen shift, forgets
galleries that awaited, fingers
her beads with something
akin to jealousy.