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Poetry: Ekphrasis
Ekphrastic poetry is a response to a scene or a work of art, often a work of visual art. There are whole magazines devoted to ekphrasis, including Ekphrasis: a Poetry Journal and The Ekphrastic Review.
Almost all magazines or journals, however, publish ekphrastic poems at some point, and poets have been writing on artwork for thousands of years.
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats is an example of a well-known ekphrastic poem, as is “Edward Hopper Study: Hotel Room” by Victoria Chang and W.H. Auden’s “Musee des Beaux Arts,” on Pieter Brueghel’s painting, The Fall of Icarus, shown at left.
That painting, interestingly, has inspired quite a few poems. As you may be able to make out in the image, very little of the painting’s space is taken up by the actual fall of Icarus, which happens in the far distance. It’s as if the painter is telling us that we, the people in the foreground, seldom notice the tragedy around us, or the magic: Daedalus’ father is flying above. Perhaps that’s for the best.
