Ekphrastic Poem

Ekphrastic Poem

in response to another work of art: photograph, painting, sculpture, music, film

Years ago, Sharon Olds published this short poem in her book The Dead and The Living:

Photograph of the Girl

The girl sits on the hard ground,
the dry pan of Russia, in the drought
of 1921, stunned,
eyes closed, mouth open,
raw how wind blowing
sand in her face.  Hunger and puberty are
taking her together.  She leans on a sack,
layers of clothes fluttering in the heat,
the new radius of her arm curved.
She cannot be not beautiful, but she is
starving.  Each day she grows thinner, and her bones
grow longer, porous.  The caption says
she is going to starve to death that winter
with millions of others.  Deep in her body
the ovaries let out her first eggs,
golden as drops of grain.

The poem was inspired by a photograph (which I have never seen), and it allowed the poet to place herself in relation (or proximity) to someone who was far way in space and circumstance.

Then I read this one:

The Issues

(Rhodesia, 1978)

Just don't tell me about the issues.
I can see the pale spider-belly head of the
newborn who lies on the lawn, the web of
veins at the surface of her scalp, her skin
grey and gleaming, the clean line of the
bayonet down the center of her chest.
I see her mother's face, beaten and
beaten into thew shape of a plant,
a cactus with grey spines and broad
dark maroon blooms.
I see her arm stretched out across her baby,
wrist resting, heavily, still, across the
tiny ribs.
         Don't speak to me about
politics.  I've got eyes, man.

I was rather stunned by this one, but the force of it, and again it is a poem written in response to a photograph of someone unknown, far away in every sense.  In this poem, the speaker becomes the "I" present in the poem, as the one who sees ("I see  her mother's face), and then allows herself to make a last statement at the end, seemingly to address another about what she is seeing.  All from a photograph.

My favorite ekphrastic poem written in response to a photograph is "Sensationalism" by Larry Levis.  This poem was written in response to a photograph I will paste to this post, taken by Josef Koudelka.  When Larry Levis looked at the photograph, he either did not know or pretended not to know much about where it was taken or who the man was in the picture.  His poem is written in the meditative mode: beginning with the photograph, (announcing what he is doing), and then speculating about the man, and then moving off into his own life and memory and then returning.  He moves off into his life twice, journeying to two different memories.  His resolution (ending) involves an acknowledgement that the whole poem was, in fact, a reponse to something on a piece of paper.  Here is the poem:

Sensationalism

by Larry Levis

In Josef Koudelka's photograph, untitled & with no date
Given to help us with history, a man wearing
Dark clothes is squatting, his right hand raised slightly,
As if in explanation, & because he is talking,
Seriously now, to a horse that would be white except
For its markings--the darkness around its eyes, muzzle,
Legs & tail, by which it is, technically, a gray, or a dapple gray,
With a streak of pure white like heavy cream on its rump.
There is a wall behind them both, which, like most walls, has
No ideas, & nothing to make us feel comfortable. . . .
After a while, because I know so little, &
Because the muted sunlight on the wall will not change,
I begin to believe that the man's wife and children
Were shot & thrown into a ditch a week before this picture
Was taken, that this is still Czechoslovakia, & that there is
The beginning of spring in the air. That is why
The man is talking, & as clearly as he can, to a horse.
He is trying to explain these things,
While the horse, gray as those days at the end
Of winter, when days seem lost in thought, is, after al,
Only a horse. No doubt the man knows people he could talk to:
The bars are open by now, but he has chosen
To confide in this gelding, as he once did to his own small
Children, who could not, finally, understand him any better.
This afternoon, in the middle of his life & in the middle
Of this war, a man is trying to stay sane.
To stay sane he must keep talking to a horse, its blinders
On & a rough snaffle bit still in its mouth, wearing
Away the corners of its mouth, with one ear cocked forward
    to listen,
While the other ear tilts backward slightly, inattentive,
As if suddenly catching a music behind it. Of course,
I have to admit I have made all of this up, & that
It could be wrong to make up anything. Perhaps the man
    is perfectly
Happy. Perhaps Koudelka arranged all of this
And then took the picture as a way of saying
Good-bye to everyone who saw it, & perhaps Josef Koudelka was
Only two years old when the Nazis invaded Prague.
I do not wish to interfere, Reader, with your solitude--
So different from my own. In fact, I would take back everything
I've said here, if that would make you feel any better,
Unless even that retraction would amount to a milder way
Of interfering; & a way by which you might suspect me
Of some subtlety. Or mistake me for someone else, someone
Not disinterested enough in what you might think
Of this. Of the photograph. Of me.
Once, I was in love with a woman, & when I looked at her
My face altered & took on the shape of her face,
Made thin by alcohol, sorrowing, brave. And though
There was a kind of pain in her face, I felt no pain
When this happened to mine, when the bones
Of my own face seemed to change. But even this
Did not do us any good, &, one day,
She went mad, waking in tears she mistook for blood,
And feeling little else except for this concern about bleeding

Without pain. I drove her to the hospital, & then,
After a few days, she told me she had another lover. . . . So,
Walking up the street where it had been raining earlier,
Past the darkening glass of each shop window to the hotel,
I felt a sensation of peace flood my body, as if to cleanse it,
And thought it was because I had been told the truth. . . .
    But, you see,
Even that happiness became a lie, & even that was taken
From me, finally, as all lies are. . . . Later,
I realized that maybe I felt strong that night only
Because she was sick, for other reasons, & in that place.
And so began my long convalescence, & simple adulthood.
I never felt that way again, when I looked at anyone else;
I never felt my face change into any other face.
It is a difficult thing to do, & so maybe
It is just as well. That man, for instance. He was a saboteur.
He ended up talking to a horse, & hearing, on the street
Outside that alley, the Nazis celebrating, singing, even.
If he went mad beside that wall, I think his last question
Was whether they shot his wife and children before they threw him
Into the ditch, or after. For some reason, it mattered once,
If only to him. And before he turned into paper.

For your assignment, find a photograph that intrigues you in some way.  It can be a personal photograph (one you took yourself, or inherited, or found in an attic at home) or it can be one you have seen in a book or magazine.  You can imagine yourself as the photographer, or as someone in the picture, or as someone who was there when it was taken (but is outside the frame).  You can address someone in the photograph.  Or, if there are no people, then the photograph will be about a place (interior or exterior) and perhaps about something that happened there.  It's okay to leave some mystery in the poem!  (Not everything has to be "clear" all the time--readers enjoy mystery.)  Your poem can be long (like Larry's) or short (like Sharon's).  There are many, many poems written about photographs, especially during the '70s and '80s.  Go to your poetry shelf and you will see how easy it is to find examples.  What I like about doing this is the freedom it gives me.  I'm not my "self," necessarily, nor am I trapped in my own "memories" (necessarily).  You might want to use the Levis poem or one of the Olds poems as models, but this isn't necessary.  Happy writing!