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Topic: Ekphrastic Poetry, a rant (Read 2187 times)
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Gregor Milne
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Posts: 72
The best friend I ever had
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There are very few good examples of this genre. If you don;t know what it is, go here:
http://www.puddinghouse.com/ekphrastic.htm
Basically, Ekphrastic poetry is poetry about other art forms
Auden's Musee des beaux arts is probably the worst example of this genre, closely followed by William Carlos Williams' series Pictures from Breughel. Interestingly enough, both poets take Breughel as their beginning.
Here's "Musee.."
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
If that poem doesn't have the intelligence of a fourth-grade essay on Breughel I'll eat my shorts. The painting has already said its piece: it's a work of art. Why does Auden need to tell us what we can see from the painting? He adds nothing. "Musee" is an example of banal mimetics: Auden has merely duplicated the theme of the poem in another art form. He has not taken the sense and built upon it.
This sums up my opinion of Auden in general: a cheap trick who posited "universal" statements in an average fashion, and made a reputation doing so. He couldn't pull off Ottava Rima in his poem to Byron, so he chose seven line stanzas, not the beautiful eight that Byron so effectively and comically used. Don Juan is famous for its ottava rima.
The Lawyer and the critic but behold
The baser side of literature and life
And nought remains unseen, but much untold
By those who scan the double vales of strife
While commen men grow ignorantly old
The lawyer's brief is like the surgeon's knife
Dissecting the whole inside of the question
And with it all the process of digestion.
Oh and BTW, you can see a response to D.J. in PL: http://www.projectedletters.com/poetry/juan.html. One could call it Ekphrastic, except it's the same medium. A response, then.
Here's the original Breughel:
Here's Williams:
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring
a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry
of the year was
awake tingling
with itself
sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax
unsignificantly
off the coast
there was
a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Again, our man adds nothing. In fact this whole series adds nothing to the painting. A fourth grader could pull of the sense. In fact, when I was the equivalent of fourth grade we did a "study" of Breghel's Icarus. My fourth-grade mind pulled off a feat as great as Auden's and Williams' combined. I DESCRIBED THE PAINTING.
To be fair to Williams, he write one of my favorite poems, "Song":
SONG
beauty is a shell
from the sea
where she rules triumphant
till love has had its way with her
scallops and
lion's paws
sculptured to the
tune of retreating waves
undying accents
repeated till
the ear and the eye lie
down together in the same bed.
Simplicity and beauty. He plays the ear wonderfully in this poem: and while it doesn't have the intellect of an Olson, it nevertheless reaches a level of austere profundity by a perfect measure of sense and arrangement.
Maybe soon I'll talk about Keats' incredible quasi-Ekphrastic work in his use of medieval paintings. If the method is to work, it needs to be a response that takes the original and utilizes it. Simply describing a work of art is not enough.
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« Last Edit: May 18, 2006, 01:47:34 PM by Gregor Millen »
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Alaina Schneider
Full Member
Posts: 3
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Can a response not be in the form of description? Before I play devil's advocate:
I had never heard of Ekphrastic poetry before a few minutes ago. So, it can be guaranteed that whatever I say is without any true knowledge of Ekphrastic poetry.
I agree wholeheartedly that Auden's poem reads like a fourth grader's essay. That analogy is quite remarkable in its accuracy. Discussing a sophistocated painting in the way Auden did brings the painting down a notch. I especially loved the "doggy life" and "innocent behind" itching bits-- great imagery, right?
But. But, I do not agree about Williams. While Auden's poem is juevenile and horribly written on many levels, Williams' is beautifully written. Maybe it's a different type of "bad" Ekphrastic poetry, if you're going to say both are ill representations of the poetic form. Auden's poem has no merit. Even if he had followed the best definition of ekphrasis, his poem would be unsavory 'cause it's just ugly and poor. Williams' is not.
He responds to the painting with imagery. And I fail to see how horrible that is. Maybe my lack of understanding about Ekphrastic poetry is to blame for my disagreement, but the way I see it Williams commits no crime.
Poets are artists. Artists bend rules here and there. The definition of any art form should be followed with a... malleable backbone, at least to some extent. Personally, when viewing some art, the only response I can produce is a row of images and color and the feeling of beauty coming from those images the art creates, in me. When I read Williams' poem, I read beauty, which could have been easily evoked by the painting. It was less an essay about the painting and much more a translation from canvas to paper.
If so, if this is the case, what rule has Williams broken?
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Gregor Milne
Administrator
Poster Monkey
Posts: 72
The best friend I ever had
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Hey Alaina,
Welcome to Projected Letters! Alaina's poem, "Pronominal Adjective," can be found here:
http://www.projectedletters.com/poetry/pronominal-adjective.html
My problem with Williams isn't his imagery, which in his Icarus isn't quite so perfect as his "song"--but his approach to the painting: he simply describes the painting as it is. I didn't feel he went beyond the meaning of the painting and said anything new--or went beyond the meaning into new meanings. It was a more adept version of Auden's poem. This was my main issue.
Thanks!
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