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. |
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. |
"The Starry Night," June 1889
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"Starry, Starry Night"
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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 |
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. |