{"id":72,"date":"2011-04-15T17:47:26","date_gmt":"2011-04-16T00:47:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.InvisibleAdventure.com\/?p=72"},"modified":"2011-04-15T17:47:26","modified_gmt":"2011-04-16T00:47:26","slug":"fantastic-ekphrasis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog2.invisibleadventure.com\/?p=72","title":{"rendered":"Fantastic Ekphrasis!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wow, I see it has been a while since I posted! \u00a0Well, I can say I haven’t been idle since I was writing my thesis, As a Wave Is a Force<\/em>, which was a big endeavor, and for which I received my MFA from the University of San Francisco! \u00a0I was thrilled with my letters of acceptance from Brian Teare, my fantastic thesis advisor, and Aaron Shurin, the program director\/Big Kahuna at USF. \u00a0I will definitely treasure their reflections on my work forever. \u00a0There are all kinds of ways to become a poet, but the USF program was totally the right way to go for me. \u00a0A huge thanks to all my teachers, fellow writers, friends and family who were part of this incredible journey! \u00a0I learned things far beyond anything I had imagined–and I had the best time doing it!
\nNow I’m in post-MFA mode and happy to have a couple of things out in the world. \u00a0A set of four poems titled “Life in Necropolis,” in Issue 12 of Switchback<\/a>\u00a0and a book review in the March 2011 issue of Folly Magazine<\/a>. \u00a0Click on the links in the sidebar to check them out.
\nSwitchback is the online journal at USF and Folly Magazine is a beautiful online journal of art, aesthetics and poetry. \u00a0Enjoy the gorgeous paintings in Folly by Michael Raedecker<\/a>, a Dutch painter who works in acrylic and thread.
\nWhich brings me to a subject near and dear to my poetry: \u00a0Ekphrasis, poems based on other mediums and artforms. \u00a0One of the most famous examples of an ekphrastic poem is Rilke’s “Archaic Torso of Apollo”:<\/p>\n

Archaic Torso of Apollo
\nby Rainer Maria Rilke
\ntranslated by Stephen Mitchell
\nWe cannot know his legendary head
\nwith eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
\nis still suffused with brilliance from inside,
\nlike a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
\ngleams in all its power. Otherwise
\nthe curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
\na smile run through the placid hips and thighs
\nto that dark center where procreation flared.
\nOtherwise this stone would seem defaced
\nbeneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
\nand would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:
\nwould not, from all the borders of itself,
\nburst like a star: for here there is no place
\nthat does not see you. You must change your life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Like many readers, I love the way this poem moves, how it turns the light of perception back on us at the end, when it had been placed so intently on the statue of Apollo. \u00a0And yet, as much as I love the description of the artwork itself, I often find myself writing ekphrastic poetry that does not necessarily include description as part of its content. \u00a0My poem, “Life in Necropolis,” for instance, was inspired by a modern version of a Chinese terracotta warrior by the artist, Wanxin Zhang<\/a>, but you don’t really see the statue itself in the poem. \u00a0The first section of the poem is about the farmers who found the actual terracotta warriors in their field in Xi’an as they were digging for water. \u00a0Thinking about how the farmers were displaced from their home after the discovery led me to remember the people (including my grandparents) who immigrated to America, which led me to ponder the assimilation of my generation and then the dissemination of information and culture via that assimilation. \u00a0The journey of the immigrant became the journey of the poems embodied in the writing of the poems.
\nI also included ekphrastic poems in As a Wave Is a Force<\/em>, inspired by the work of two artists, Nick Cave<\/a> and William Kentridge<\/a>, who had exhibitions in San Francisco during the summer of 2009. \u00a0I thought of these as “translations,” rather than descriptions, but that brings up a whole different can of ekphrastic worms, so I’ll write about that in another post. . . someday.
\nAnyway, I am super curious about what other people think about using visual art as material for poetry! \u00a0What is your take on it, and do you have any ekphrastic poems you love?
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wow, I see it has been a while since I posted! \u00a0Well, I can say I haven’t been idle since I was writing my thesis, As a Wave Is a Force, which was a big endeavor, and for which I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[65,148,164,187,223],"class_list":["post-72","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ekphrastic-poetry","tag-nick-cave","tag-poetry","tag-sfmoma","tag-william-kentridge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog2.invisibleadventure.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog2.invisibleadventure.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog2.invisibleadventure.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog2.invisibleadventure.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog2.invisibleadventure.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog2.invisibleadventure.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog2.invisibleadventure.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog2.invisibleadventure.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog2.invisibleadventure.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}