Get thee to a museum, poets! Or to the Internet. Or just crack open one of the big coffee table books collecting dust in your living room. Today we’re seeking inspiration in art. Here’s your daily (optional) poetry prompt.
Ekphrastic poem. “Ekphrasis” means “description” in Greek. Write an ekphrastic poem—a verbal depiction of a work of art. The classic example is Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” But modern ekphrastic poetry finds lots of other ways to interact with art besides just describing. What would you tell us if you were this piece of art? What would you want people to know if you were the artist? Interpret the art for your reader. What is going on in that painting anyway (see Victoria Chang’s poem “Edward Hopper’s Office At Night”)? What happened just before the moment that is captured (see Marianne Boruch’s “Still Life”)? What is going on just outside of the frame?
If you can, sit with the piece of art and just look at it for … well, a long time. Then go somewhere else and try free writing for 10 minutes about all of the details you remember. Go through what you’ve written and circle words or phrases that you like to be the building blocks of your poem.
Need more inspiration? Browse the Academy of American Poets’ collection of ekphrastic poetry.
My poem today employs a persona of my own invention, inspired by a finely rendered portrait of a lively gentlemen done by a Loyola University Chicago art student, which is now on display at LUMA, the Loyola University Museum of Art. The museum is free to the public and is currently showcasing two amazing collections of photography and collage, in addition to some student works.
Melancholy
(after a graphite-on-paper portrait with the
same title by Amanda Lovelace)
Melancholy?
What this?
L’il funny mouse neck-wattle
low-reposed in my shirt collar?
Hen-pecked holes like dice pips in my chin?
Ravaged lip-ruff pucker mouth
puff suck hollow cheek bellows
fixin’ a blow a raspberry?
That look melancholy to you, girl?
Melancholy here?
Nose like a creepin’ newt sal’mander thing
seekin’ its home? Slidin’ down
the worried rivets a my crease-case
old church window glass
gettin’ thick at the bottom.
What we call The Slow Melt,
half-set Jello puddin’
boiled milk skin clingin’ to the pot.
‘Bout here?
L’il oyster eyes, settin’
in their frame shells,
each worryin’ a shiny black pearl?
Dry river bed all ‘round ‘em
Grand Canyon cliff scape,
techtonic face plates
shiftin’, shiftin’.
Keep goin’ girl?
Whirled-circuit cart’lage gnarls
drawn low long-lobed
ears tuggin’ em down.
And risin’ ‘bove it all
Mount Melancholy his self!
Spotted birds-egg dome
haloed white fluff quiver shimmer
floatin’ in the breeze
like sea anemones,
just goin’ in their current.
Melancholy!? Nuh uh!
Gotta think of another name
for this one honey!
But ya do gotta way
with a pencil baby girl,
Ya do. Gotta. Way.