Arting about art

Welp, it’s February again, which means I’m locked into my annual quest to find something that’s not a frickin sonnet for our poetry slam. Not that there’s anything wrong with sonnets (and in fact, I’m going to let you write a sonnet this month if that’s your jam) but it’s a pretty old form. Historical, even.

Speaking of history, here in the U.S. it’s Black History Month. So I considered utilizing a form popularized by black poets – but we just read Danez Smith for our Casting Call (or if you haven’t, you should) and while it’s been a few months since we did the Bop, I didn’t really want to recycle. Plus, frankly, inviting people to write poetry that centers an experience that isn’t theirs can be a poor call to make. It’s hard to write about the richness of someone else’s life, to handle the delicate questions of diaspora and longing, without making a misstep. We have these discussions  in the fiction world pretty frequently: what’s your story to tell? Are you the right person to be talking about what it’s like to grow up in a particular way? And it’s a hard line to walk. Nobody wants to censor anyone, but at the same time it’s difficult to say that a person with no experience of assault, writing in a vacuum, is going to produce something as complex and realistic as someone with personal experience (and someone who has studied comes in, usually, right in the middle of the two). One way to make sure you’re not over the line is to find someone who does have that experience or knowledge and ask them to show you where your work has missed the mark. Plan to compensate them somehow, whether that’s with chocolate chip cookies, a nice dinner, a reciprocal editing agreement, or sweet cash money.

But honestly, this is a writing site where you have about 5 days to make a poem, and you’re not always going to have time for that. So instead of putting one more thing in the way of you writing a poem this month, I’m going to offer you a library of poets and articles relevant to Black History Month. Take a glance through this list, and if you’re not familiar with anyone on it (or if you’re only familiar with Maya Angelou) I’m actually pretty excited for you, because you’re getting to read and enjoy these works for the first time.

So anyway, instead of that, and instead of sonnets, I thought we might go way way back in history, to a type of Greek poetry called ekphrastic.

What’s an ekphrastic poem?

The word ekphrastic comes from the Greek verb ἐκφράζειν, meaning to describe (or, more literally, to call out an inanimate object by name). So you might have guessed: the poem is descriptive. But descriptive of what? 

Usually (and for the purposes of this slam) an ekphrastic poem describes a work of visual art. So it might be about a painting, a sculpture, a drawing, an embroidery… you get the picture. Sorry for the pun. But here’s the catch: a good ekphrastic poem doesn’t just describe the art, it makes it into a scene.

That is, if you were describing this piece of art, you might say “A person with blonde hair is leaning against the wall to the far right of the painting, at the base of a staircase. On the left, people are seated.” (That’s not a particularly good description, or even a great caption, but you’ll see where I’m going with this in a minute.)

Or, if you’re Joseph Stanton, you might start your ekphrastic poem like this:

(Read the whole poem, it’s great; I just took enough for you to see what I’m talking about.)

See the difference? A good ekphrastic poem doesn’t just tell you what you see, it gives you the rest of the scene that you don’t see, the relationships between people and objects, where they came from, what they’re feeling and thinking. The piece of visual art you pick can give you a lot of clues to what those might be. Look at color, at the arrangement of people. Think about the artwork you pick as a scene you just walked in on, whether it’s a painting or a sculpture or the super-nifty miniature embroidered cup of coffee that Facebook keeps showing me a video about. What happened before you walked into the scene and started observing it? Who’s there? What time of day is it?

Ekphrastic poems are, well, easier to show than tell, so here’s an archive of more. Make sure that you take the time to look up the original piece of artwork as well as read the poem. What decisions did the writer make? What did they see in the image? Can you see it too?

To participate in the slam this month you’ll write a poem describing a piece of visual art (please give us a link to it if you don’t have permission to use the image, or see if you can find a copyright-free version), but ekphrasis is only one part of your poem. Once you’ve chosen what to write about, you need to think about form. So pick a form, any form, and write an ekphrastic poem in it. You’re free to do what our example poem did, and pick blank verse, or go wild and pick a challenging structure like a ghazal or a sestina. Here are a few forms we think would work well:

• Sonnet. Whether you pick Shakespearean or Spenserian, sonnets are a tried-and-true form. Told you I’d let you write a sonnet if you wanted.
• Blank Verse. Didn’t get enough last month? Try blank verse again!
• Rime Royal. Seven lines seems pretty manageable, right?
• Ballade. Scansion is appreciated, but not necessary in this form for folks who like to get a line stuck in their heads and repeat it.

Ready? Good. I’ll see you – and your art – on the grid!