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Introduction
Introduction
This spring, the eleven students in my Introductory Poetry class were invited to compose ekphrastic poems about works in the 2021 senior show. Ekphrasis is a Greek word, meaning the practice of describing visual art in literature.
They prepared for this challenge by writing poems that depict familiar objects—a light bulb, a clothespin, a paintbrush—as if seen for the first time. They also wrote poems about photographs, shifting back and forth between the image, the moment it preserved, what might have happened before or afterward, and the viewer’s perception.
For the ekphrastic assignment, I paired each poet with an artist, based on my sense of their shared interests and affinities. My students explored all the works in the artist’s online portfolio before choosing one as the focus. In their poems, they not only describe the work of art but also interpret it, tell stories about it, imagine how it was made, or respond to its essence. The artists’ creations inspired my students to create poems that are similarly passionate, precise, dreamlike, vivid, and intense.
When you look yourself at each work of visual art, can you see what the poet saw?
Susan Elizabeth Sweeney, Murray Professor of Arts and Humanities
Nobody Home
Nobody Home
After Isabel Dawson
It’s the room without the people,
warmly colored, yet empty.
The light shines through the
dark curtains, draped and messy.
The pillows, the more your eye lingers,
dissolve into the darkly lined chair
The room with nobody there, what
happened to the people?
Absorbed into the red gingham pattern
that frames the purple window.
Maybe the curtains, they took
them with the crisp wind.
Towering trees, with their spider-like
branches, somehow they threatened them.
The rug, a black hole, swallowed
them, or perhaps they were never there.
Emily Foscaldo
Duralar Experimentation
Duralar Experimentation
Inspired by Elizabeth Larkin
Stained and glassy,
illuminant, misshapen
spheres
shimmer with light
as wispy brushstrokes
dance around the canvas
like different shades of lip gloss
on a Friday night.
Milly O’Brien
Little House on a Cliff
Little House on a Cliff
After Kiera MacAneney
A small house,
sitting on the edge of a cliff.
Waves are crashing into the beach,
creating a white noise for those in the house.
At the edge of the rough, red cliff,
the lonely house lies
between two blues,
the choppy blue waters
and crisp blue sky.
In its own world,
isolating anyone who steps inside
from the chaos of the real world outside.
Haley Tietjen
Water Lilies
After Yekatarina Martin
Uniquely hundreds lie over the water. Each telling their own story. Different shapes
and different sizes, but somehow, they all
come together. One and the same,
but nothing alike. Needs that
are identical, that do nothing but
bring them together. Yet although they exist together they are independent. One by one
they lie over the water. Serving each
their own purpose, but continuing to always
find them together. Half the water lies
empty, not a lily in sight. Bare trees
surrounded by brush. Undoubtedly a system
that needs to work together, simply trying to find peace
by working together. Being forced to
function off one another. There is no
other choice, for even the things lurking
under the water must come together. A system
becoming one. Individually having a role
to help themselves. Brings serenity
to a home for many others. Teaching us
that in life we must play our part, being kind
to all the others. Realizing that
we must all do our part, to help one another.
Jolie Creo
Orbits
Orbits
After the work of Grace Peluso
A life is nothing but different compositions of orbits.
Humans revolving around one another for a time
before spiraling into a new path or going supernova
and blasting each other out of the way.
You won’t catch me writing about love,
just what comes after. Just how I learn to
trace helical patterns through the chapters of my life.
How after getting my heart broken, everything
feels like a black hole stretching on for a while.
How I drift off course, waiting
for my gravity to grow strong enough
to bring somebody close to me again.
My grandfather tells me people attract whatever
they release into the world. Energy is cyclical like that,
like the neon purple and yellow sign
outside the fortune teller’s shop: Ms. Robichaux’s House of Healing.
She tells me the planets will align and my next love will be my last.
And then one night, the sky is clear and vast, and I meet him.
Those moments where I first revolve around him
pass in slow motion, like I am waking from a long nap,
or watching a time-lapse video of the stars
in the summer sky. His pull on me is so strong, it reminds
me my heart is still capable of beating fast, that my skin
can still breakout in goosebumps. There is this curious feeling,
something I’m afraid to hold too close for fear
I might crush it. Life is made of orbits.
That night, it takes some time before I can find
my balance again and pull myself away and
make my legs walk me home.
Grace Berlew
Greed
Greed
Inspired by Fernando Torralba
Maybe this was bound to happen . . .
I thought I was bound for greatness,
Turns out I am bound to a knife.
The power I felt, the greatness I had,
It all faded into darkness.
I was the ruler, though was I that bad?
Approached by my vassal with his blade drawn,
I resided in darkness not thinking it was much.
Turns out they had been planning this since my dawn.
What did I do wrong?
Was it that a part of me was gone?
No, I wronged them,
My greed
Wronged them.
Adam Fung
FINAL
FINAL
Inspired by Fernando Torralba
Bars inside of bars,
reminding me of
a ferris wheel of cages.
Ferric fun holds us still
like children sitting on
hay bales in the back of
a moving truck. In
one cage I imagine
animals stolen and
enslaved: birds, giraffes,
tigers, bats. In another,
I imagine hellish convicts
imprisoned in a cell so
complex that even the
architect lives there—how
cruel. The caged cage
traps the already trapped.
The trapper trapped in her
cage of cages. The farthest
cage holds the observer
entrapped in a nest of
lines and shadows
like a needle in the hay
bales children sit on in
the back of a moving truck.
But I am encaged in
ferrous feelings, voiceless
bars making no sound
when struck, my voice
also impounded.
Donnel Delva
Roof and Its Simple Connections
Roof and Its Simple Connections
After José Tenorio-Villagomez
What is a roof?
Envelope of a building that
protects and provides shelter,
projects itself out into . . .
our primal, original shelter:
Nature.
Which has preserved and nourished mankind for millennia,
giving us resources and life.
The grey, mundane roof on the left
turns shades of basil, olive, and pine on the right,
blending into the environment.
Grey paths, benches . . .
all now resemble moss and shades of emerald,
seamless with . . .
Nature.
Oh what a simple but beautiful connection.
Mason Marag
The Sound of Nature
The Sound of Nature
After José Tenorio-Villagomez
I’ve walked through a sea of green
much like this before. I kept my ears
open, so I wouldn’t miss any sounds.
The ear represents human interaction
with nature—only one of five
ways we connect with
the environment. Keep your ear close
to the ground, maybe you’ll hear
what lies beneath Earth, secrets that
can’t be seen. The residue of
two footprints persists in the grass,
heading out of this green abyss,
or are they just entering, ready to delve in?
The only thing that separates the
fossilized feet is a box,
but this person stepped over it,
not allowing any obstacles to prevent them from
further natural immersion.
The curvy border limits
whoever may be exploring this scene,
though it couldn’t stop
the most determined traveler, who has already
stepped over the border.
I don’t know how to traverse
this sea of green, but the footprints
are an excellent guide.
Billy Cornell
dissolving cities
dissolving cities
after Jasmine Williams
1—
walking through a city—
no, the city has eyes—
no, the eyes have faces
looking at the sky—
no, there are fish—
and buildings—
and madness.
2—
a forgotten city lies
buried in darkness.
existing below the known—
look on and despair,
for whether it be life frozen or
nothing beside remains,
those monochrome passions survive.
Ellie Halloran
Dear Segregationists
Dear Segregationists
After Simeon Lloyd-Wingard
You exclude us.
You erase us.
You disempower us.
To you, we do not exist,
we should not exist,
we could not exist,
not in your world.
Your “Whites Only” sign ensures it.
The “Whites Only” sign that’s
boldly and ironically
written in black,
creating a contrast that
represents our separation.
The “Whites Only”sign that
establishes our difference,
expresses our exclusion, and
diminishes our existence.
The “Whites Only” sign that
symbolizes everything wrong
with this picture.
It's all designed to take our power,
but that power isn’t yours to take.
That’s why you fail.
Your efforts don’t take our power from us,
but remind us of it.
And eventually . . .
the black hand that embodies our fight
uses that power to destroy your
wicked, widespread, “Whites Only” world.
And the grey debris that’s left illustrates
the integration we seek.
Dorien Steadman
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