
LILACS IN A WINDOW
call to one another—
lilac in a window
call green; green
beg relief from
green—each
thing the other’s
name? No lilac
without end?
Lilac,
my mother’s choice,
one bush
by the desert house
against sand and
bitter wind
called to her
green, green
without end.
Maybe
I’m wrong to think I ever really wrote ekphrastic poems. I have always found
“material” (such as the content of a picture, or a story from my life or anyone
else’s) very hot to stand on; I’ve had to jump off pretty fast.
Ekphrastic poems. Norris
Palmstreick asks if I write them. Well, now that I have looked up the word and
determined that an ekphrastic poem is one that describes another work of art,
usually a painting but also possibly sculpture or music, I am prepared to say
that I have done so, after a fashion, but not recently.
I should start by admitting that I
have a certain prejudice. I am inclined to see poems-about-paintings as easy
poems, or exercises, or trainer poems. The writer is playing tennis against a
nice, solid backboard. The artwork is already there; all the poet has to do is
dance around in front of something both fixed and culturally valuable. One
feels a sense of pre-approval if one writes about Great Art.
But please, I don’t want anybody
throwing Rilke’s torso in my face. Of course there is no “kind” of poetry that
one can really say is “easy” or any such thing. We all just have approaches
that rub us mostly the wrong way.
Twenty years ago, yes; I
demonstrated definite ekphrastic tendencies: poems treating of Hopper, Van
Gough, Matisse, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Chagall, even Giotto and El Greco.
And why wouldn’t poets write about artists of all kinds? One is alone and
cherishes the struggles (ending in triumph, of course) of others who were
alone. Also, there is the pleasure of jobbing out one’s aesthetic musings.
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