Poetry Festival

Writing About Works of Art: Ekphrasis
The goal of this literary form is to make the reader envision the thing described as if it were physically present. It emphasizes the possibilities of the verbal and the limitations of the visual. The subject being described comes to seem real in the imagination of the reader.

Homer’s description of Achilles’ shield in Book 18 of the Iliad stands at the beginning of the ekphrastic tradition in the 8th century BC. Many writers in subsequent centuries followed Homer’s lead and wrote ekphrastic descriptions. During the Italian Renaissance, the rhetorical form became an important literary genre.

Elements of Poetry:

Poetry is difficult because very often its language is indirect. But so is experience - those things we think, feel, and do. The lazy reader wants to be told things and usually avoids poetry because it demands commitment and energy. Moreover, much of what poetry has to offer is not in the form of hidden meanings. Many poets like to "play" with the sound of language or offer an emotional insight by describing what they see in highly descriptive language.

Title - Provides clues to the heart of the piece

Imagery - use of figurative language: similes, metaphors, symbols, personification (see Figurative Language Below)

Plot - the action or conflict

Diction - word choice

Rhythm and Metre ("measure") - a pattern created with sound, like the number of syllables or alternating stressed and unstressed syllables

Rhyme - repetition of similar sounds, the most common being an end rhyme, which occurs at the end of two or more lines

Stanza: a series of lines grouped together and separated by a line

Figurative Language:

Simile is the rhetorical term used to designate the most elementary form of resemblances: most similes are introduced by "like" or "as." These comparisons are usually between dissimilar situations or objects that have something in common, such as "My love is like a red, red rose."

Metaphor leaves out "like" or "as" and implies a direct comparison between objects or situations. "All flesh is grass."

Symbol is like a simile or metaphor with the first term left out. "My love is like a red, red rose" is a simile. If, through persistent identification of the rose with the beloved woman, we may come to associate the rose with her and her particular virtues. At this point, the rose would become a symbol.

Personification occurs when you treat abstractions or inanimate objects as human

Perspective:

A perspective is a literary tool, which serves as a lens through which readers observe characters, events, and happenings.

The following approaches often used with Ekphrasis or Art Inspired Poetry:
• Write about the scene or subject being depicted in the artwork.
• Write in the voice of a person or object shown in the work of art.
• Write about your experience of looking at the art.
• Relate the work of art to something else it reminds you of.
• Imagine what was happening while the artist was creating the piece.
• Write in the voice of the artist.
• Write a dialogue among characters in a work of art.
• Speak directly to the artist or the subject(s) of the piece.
• Write in the voice of an object or person portrayed in the artwork.
• Imagine a story behind what you see depicted in the piece.
• Speculate about why the artist created this work.

Ekphrastic Poem Analysis

Identify the elements of poetry, use of figurative language, along with perspective and explain the literary approach.

"The Starry Night," June 1889
by Vincent Van Gogh (March 1853 - July, 1890)

Vincent Van Gogh painted "Starry Night" in 1889 from a room in the mental asylum at Saint-Remy de Provence in the South of France where was recovering from mental illness and his ear amputation. This was the most difficult year of his life, but also his most creative. After he completed this painting, it would be less than a year before he took his own life at age 37.

Below is the actual scene Vincent saw from his window.

"Starry, Starry Night" reinterpreted by Ellie Goulding, 2017

"Starry, Starry Night"
by Doc Mclean. 1970

Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul
Shadows on the hills
Sketch the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills
In colors on the snowy linen land

Now I understand what you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now

Starry, starry night
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze
Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue

Colors changing hue
Morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand

Now I understand what you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now

For they could not love you
But still your love was true
And when no hope was left inside
On that starry, starry night
You took your life as lovers often do
But I could have told you, Vincent
This world was never meant
For one as beautiful as you
Starry, starry night
Portraits hung in empty halls
Frameless heads on nameless walls
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget

Like the strangers that you've met
The ragged men in ragged clothes
A silver thorn, a bloody rose
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow

Now I think I know what you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they're not listening still
Perhaps they never will