In ancient Greece, the term ekphrasis was applied to the description or interpretation of an object using descriptive details. Thus, the definition of ekphrastic poetry is simple: poems written about works of art using vivid descriptors. Ekphrasic poetry is a means of bridging two artistic realms: the visual and the literary.
An ekphrasic poem often includes an explanation of how the writer is impacted by their experience with a work of art. There are no specific requirements regarding the form of an ekphrastic poem. It can be a sonnet, a haiku, or free verse. No rules!
Following are excerpts from famous ekphrastic poems.
Ode to a Grecian Urn by John Keats
It ends with these lines:
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to who thou say’st,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, ––– that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
Starry Night by Anne Sexton
It begins:
That does not keep me from having a terrible need of –
shall I say the word – religion. Then I
go out at night to paint the stars.
We would like to invite guides to submit their own ekphrastic poems, preferably based on works in our collection.
Below is this month’s poem, inspired by Rose, 1981, by Ken Price.
Rose, 1981 • Ken Price • Porcelain with acrylic and glaze
Gift of Bruce B. Dayton and The National Endowment of the Arts • 81.31
Above Roses
by Jeanne Lutz
Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.
Gertrude Stein, “Sacred Emily”
A friend told me she’d risen above roses.
Should I leave her there?
There is that fragrance that the tiny gland
makes when the petal hits the wind squarely
and the day opens with a sigh. There is
the fragrance of the heart galloping, of
someone savoring coffee, of the barista
making coffee, scooping green beans
into the roaster as if they are Milky Way gems.
There has always been the fragrance
of the stars, toasted and rum-soaked
beyond the summer clouds, and the moon’s
wise fragrance, owl-like and noticed only
by a timber wolf far from her den perusing
the wetlands for food and finds
everything out of reach and for a moment
wonders if she or the gods
have lost their way. Most holy
is the fragrance inhaled in sleep. That is the rose,
whatever we smell, even if it’s
only for a moment, zephyr
of breath, the lift and drag of lungs
as a sailboat on the whale road that must
always bring us home. Even if we
smell nothing, the scentless trellis
asleep, the garden mercifully at rest,
the sun a pilot light before dawn, and the wild
roses of the northern midwest scrambled, hot
and closed. All that we do not smell
and never can is the rose, and in the dark
the cosmos gets giddy over every bud
that peers into the breathing evening of a world
that has so much room for so much.
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