Ekphrasis

On art about art

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In these dark recent days, I’ve been turning to poetry, finding in it a bit of a surcease from the hectic whirl of my thoughts. I’ve written a few poor efforts, but won’t trouble you by sharing them; instead, I want to offer a small selection of one of my favorite poetic modes, ekphrasis. This is the practice of taking inspiration from paintings or photographs and writing from that perspective. It’s a twinning of two art forms that often throws more relief into both, and offers the poet ready imagery just as it offers the augmentation of written insight to works of visual art.

The first poem I’ll share in this mode is one that, I think, offers insight into how so many of us feel right now: the way the world and business whirl on pitilessly in the face of suffering. In it, two masters are joined: The Dutch Master Pieter Bruegel the Elder and the American poet William Carlos Williams.

“Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,” by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1560

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
William Carlos Williams, 1883 –1963

According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring

a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry

of the year was
awake tingling
near

the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself

sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning