Writing About Works of Art: Ekphrasis
The goal of this literary form is to make the reader envision the thing described as if it were physically present.  It emphasizes the possibilities of the verbal and the limitations of the visual. The subject being described comes to seem real in the imagination of the reader.  

Homer’s description of Achilles’ shield in Book 18 of the Iliad stands at the beginning of the ekphrastic tradition in the 8th century BC.  Many writers in subsequent centuries followed Homer’s lead and wrote ekphrastic descriptions.  During the Italian Renaissance, the rhetorical form became an important literary genre.

Elements of Poetry:

Poetry is difficult because very often its language is indirect. But so is experience - those things we think, feel, and do. The lazy reader wants to be told things and usually avoids poetry because it demands commitment and energy. Moreover, much of what poetry has to offer is not in the form of hidden meanings. Many poets like to "play" with the sound of language or offer an emotional insight by describing what they see in highly descriptive language. ​
Title - Provides clues to the heart of the piece

Imagery - use of figurative language: similes, metaphors, symbols, personification (see Figurative Language Below)

Plot - the action or conflict

Diction - word choice

Rhythm and Metre ("measure") - a pattern created with sound, like the number of syllables or alternating stressed and unstressed syllables

Rhyme - repetition of similar sounds, the most common being an end rhyme, which occurs at the end of two or more lines
​
Stanza: a series of lines grouped together and separated by a line

Figurative Language:

Simile is the rhetorical term used to designate the most elementary form of resemblances: most similes are introduced by "like" or "as." These comparisons are usually between dissimilar situations or objects that have something in common, such as "My love is like a red, red rose."

Metaphor leaves out "like" or "as" and implies a direct comparison between objects or situations. "All flesh is grass." 

Symbol is like a simile or metaphor with the first term left out. "My love is like a red, red rose" is a simile. If, through persistent identification of the rose with the beloved woman, we may come to associate the rose with her and her particular virtues. At this point, the rose would become a symbol.

Personification occurs when you treat abstractions or inanimate objects as human

Perspective:

A perspective is a literary tool, which serves as a lens through which readers observe characters, events, and happenings.
The following approaches often used with Ekphrasis or Art Inspired Poetry:
• Write about the scene or subject being depicted in the artwork.
• Write in the voice of a person or object shown in the work of art.
• Write about your experience of looking at the art.
• Relate the work of art to something else it reminds you of.
• Imagine what was happening while the artist was creating the piece.
• Write in the voice of the artist.
• Write a dialogue among characters in a work of art.
• Speak directly to the artist or the subject(s) of the piece.
• Write in the voice of an object or person portrayed in the artwork.
• Imagine a story behind what you see depicted in the piece.
• Speculate about why the artist created this work. 

Identify the elements of poetry, use of figurative language, along with perspective and explain the literary approach.

"The Starry Night," June 1889
by Vincent Van Gogh (March 1853 - July, 1890)

Picture

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Vincent Van Gogh painted "Starry Night" in 1889 from a room in the mental asylum at Saint-Remy de Provence in the South of France where was recovering from mental illness and his ear amputation.  This was the most difficult year of his life, but also his most creative.  After he completed this painting, it would be less than a year before he took his own life at age 37.   

Below is the actual scene Vincent saw from his window.
​"Starry, Starry Night" reinterpreted by Ellie Goulding, 2017

"Starry, Starry Night"
by Doc Mclean. 1970

Starry, starry night 
Paint your palette blue and gray 
Look out on a summer's day 
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul 
Shadows on the hills 
Sketch the trees and the daffodils 
Catch the breeze and the winter chills 
In colors on the snowy linen land

Now I understand what you tried to say to me 
And how you suffered for your sanity 
How you tried to set them free 
They would not listen, they did not know how 
Perhaps they'll listen now

Starry, starry night 
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze 
Swirling clouds in violet haze 
Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue 

Colors changing hue 
Morning fields of amber grain 
Weathered faces lined in pain 
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand

Now I understand what you tried to say to me 
And how you suffered for your sanity 
And how you tried to set them free 
They would not listen, they did not know how 
Perhaps they'll listen now

For they could not love you 
But still your love was true 
And when no hope was left inside 
On that starry, starry night 
You took your life as lovers often do 
But I could have told you, Vincent 
This world was never meant 
For one as beautiful as you
Starry, starry night 
Portraits hung in empty halls 
Frameless heads on nameless walls 
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget 

Like the strangers that you've met 
The ragged men in ragged clothes 
A silver thorn, a bloody rose 
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow

​Now I think I know what you tried to say to me 
And how you suffered for your sanity 
And how you tried to set them free 
They would not listen, they're not listening still 
Perhaps they never will


​More Examples of Ekphrasis:

The Scream
by Edvard Munch,1893

Ekphrastic Poetry Challenge:


Now, it's time for you to write your own ekphrastic poem that engages a work of art.  Begin by gaining some context about who the artist was, when the art was made, and why.  Then explore all of the visual qualities of the piece.  Take inventory of what you see, what it makes you think, and how it makes you feel.  Think through your specific angle or approach to your poem and let it all unfold from there!

Source: ​http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/ekphrasis-using-inspire-poetry-1093.html?tab=3
Emily Dickinson's Herbarium
​This was your ambit and palette--
the inclined sloping gardens
and Susan’s Eden next door
Downstairs, adjacent to the library
The Homestead’s conservatory

The august row of hemlocks
neighborly white oaks and white pine
nearby fields, meadows, woods
arrays of honeysuckle vines
the orchard’s cornucopia of drupes
New England’s opulent bounty

Your bequest, this Arcadian heirloom
tints of rose, ochre, gold, and blue
cherry scarlets and crimson rouge
all ripening at the summer’s crest

And you, a singular inflorescence
with a keen passion for naming

You wandered and collected
and pressed, with paper and glue
arranged petals, keels, bracts, and spathes
the effected volume realized
delicate and sweeping
catalogued and perceived 
​
And so your anemophilous mind
communed with nature’s compass
while, in tandem, your lanceolate pen
jotted poems for the ages
literally pedicels, lyric umbels

Reverse Ekphrasis:  Try working ekphrasis in reverse!  Begin with one of your favorite songs or poems and search for one of your own artworks that captures the meaning, mood or overall sensibility that the message evokes.  You can also start with your own poem and find a famous work of art that aligns with it.  Just be sure at least one element is your own orignal work.

In the Garden
Emily Dickinson

A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.

And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass.

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad, --
They looked like frightened beads, I thought;
He stirred his velvet head

Like one in danger; cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home

Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, splashless, as they swim.