MORE EKPHRASTICS
I've begun this page to show a few pieces of art for which I've written at the galleries and venues shown. Several of the other pages at this site contain earlier ekphrastic tributes; thus the title of this page: More Ekphrastics. Please click on the art photo to enlarge it.
So far on this page are these ten poems and the art that inspired them (artist's name in parentheses):
Prickly (Bush)
Arboreal Thoughts (Dadasovich)
A Bonnard Bath (Reusch)
Evans Onions (Evans)
A Child's Game (Fasciato)
Wire We Here? (Dernham)
Dance (Bailey)
Query (Sabre)
Chapla a Decade Ago (Chapla)
Cows on Contra Costa Hills (Chapla)
From the Arts Benicia February 2019 “Art of a Community” ekphrastic poetry reading (click to enlarge):
At the Benicia Library for August 2015 the ekphrastic exhibit "Streets and Straits in Poetry and Paint" contains 13 combos, of which my poem for Michael Dadasovich's painting is one.
ARBOREAL THOUGHTS
for Michael Dadasovich's The Telephone Poles
A dead one stands next to me.
Wires are strung from it
to another farther away.
I suppose it's a warning to behave,
notice that if we don't stay
within the range
of parameters they've set for us,
we'll be dealt with the same –
chopped down and shaved,
punched with metal,
held up to ridicule,
stems lopped off,
frond fingers gone.
When I was younger,
I didn't notice the ones they'd killed.
Their skin wasn't like mine.
Nearly invisible to me,
they were nothing I'd ever become.
I've gotten taller.
Creatures play in me.
We enjoy my multi-limbed maturity.
Occasionally one of my branches breaks and makes a mess,
but my bad behavior hasn't caused them to punish me yet.
I try not to notice the dead ones,
limbless and strangled by metal and wires.
When my mind wanders to endings,
I prefer Nature and her quick way with fires.
In May 2015 "Abode" was one of Mary Reusch's many pieces of art on exhibit at
Cascade Gallery, 2840 Thornapple River Dr. SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546
A BONNARD BATH
after Mary Reusch’s painting "Abode"
Do we regard
Pierre Bonnard
as an artist
whose kindness
shone brighter
than his best hues?
For whom did he draw
this aqua bath?
I might ask
but do not need to know
whose skin will glow
as I imagine her
looking through
reflecting droplets
when they collect
like sparkling dew
on the high window.
I might have seen her
in his works,
unidentified,
his mistress perhaps,
or maybe his wife,
happily immersed
and now suddenly
visible to me
while her mate
in the next room
arranges his paints
as she gleams,
stretched out,
stress free,
in her Bonnard bath,
not briefly
but eternally.
Epperson Gallery, 1400 Pomona, Crockett, CA, November 2013.
One of many Dean Evans paintings that Epperson Gallery has shown.
Two words in this ekphrastic botanical poem might need explaining:
1) “grokking” is taking in the scene, or as Robert Heinlein defined it in his 1961 “Stranger in a Strange Land,” Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed.
2) “blow” refers to cocaine.
EVANS ONIONS
after Yellow Onions by Dean Evans
He's painted us with lips.
He minimized my nose.
We don't have any hips,
unlike the fragrant rose.
My neck has stretched. I'm grokking,
and I glow.
I'm bored. My eyelid's dropping.
I want blow.
Can onions have ideas of bliss,
asks no one that I know.
Dean Evans painted them like this.
Don’t show them to van Gogh.
Benicia Plein Air Gallery, 307 First Street, Benicia, CA
Catherine Fasciato exhibit, November 2014
A CHILD’S GAME
after Catherine Fasciato’s Breaking
This isn't a question for wizards
designed to make anyone tremble.
It's a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors,
asking, "Which does the sea most resemble?"
Not the rocks you see looking solid
despite their constant assault
like a dad in his armchair, stolid
while the kids are swirling about.
We know blades on scissors cut clean
and the sea has a scissor-like sheen,
but rock grooves take decades to make,
only etching dad's old, jagged face
when the kids have kids of their own.
Perhaps the answer is paper alone
that wraps around rocks. Wait! When wet,
it won't win this child’s game in a bet.
If paper's no answer, what should be done
without any winner to make the game fun?
Do dad and the kids get a say?
And mom with her hair blown to spray?
For now let’s agree to let everyone be
before we concede to the winner, the sea.
Epperson Gallery Eclectic Exhibit, 1400 Pomona, Crockett, CA, June 7-July 20, 2014.
Whether Patterns by Pamela Merory Dernham
WIRE WE HERE?
If weather,
inflicted from without,
or arriving from within,
hollows us like the wind,
rearranging our parts
in interacting arcs
that some might term tragedy
and others call art,
we’ll probably see correctly
only when we break free
and look back,
perhaps
deciding right then that
we’re not meant to move unceasingly
through cacophonies of tasks
but are built to rest and roam,
engage in flights of fancy
in every whether zone,
ask, “Wire we here?”
catch ourselves in comedy,
groan a bit, and laugh.
Betty G. Bailey's Dance the Hokey Pokey
DANCE
These eight have reached maturity.
They seem to like to throng.
Their smiles portray such purity.
Let nothing here go wrong.
All dressed in white they glide
and shake their body parts.
An eight placed on its side
below their feet's a start
at sketching their infinity
while they pursue their art.
I like them as one entity.
Let none of them depart.
Benicia Plein Air Gallery, 307 First Street, Benicia, CA, March 2014.
Iris Sabre exhibit
QUERY
after Arch Rock, Point Lobos
by Iris Sabre
Spent and inert to our gaze,
they watch water’s unceasing commotion,
recalling how much they've been changed
in ways they cannot understand.
Once fluid, now hardened and scarred by erosion,
persuaded that choice is no more than a notion,
they still ask themselves which they’d choose―
to be arch but steadfast, a point on the land,
or more like the ocean,
surprising and grand.
Going back more than a decade, I found a couple of pieces in a 2003 exhibit by Robert Chapla at a gallery that no longer exists: Off the Preserve in downtown Napa. The show was curated by Ann Trinca, and the following are two of our combos from it.
CHAPLA A DECADE AGO
How did he cube
this California scene
to its essence?
I suppose it fulfills the rules
of abstraction: the reflection
condensed
of rain clouds, trees, a stream
of captured flow.
In the distance
a slim, blue strait line,
barely discernible,
threads its hello
before a background
of animal hills, sleeping
or dying. We residents
don't know.
Martinez. Carquinez.
extracted a decade ago
from the view within
the frame, as new
as nature,
as old
as the future.
COWS ON CONTRA COSTA HILLS
Their field is composed of sweet orange puffs,
the chewy sponge shapes sold at KMart
in cellophane bags for children.
How comfy they look, far away from us,
encased in nature and the painter's art,
where life feels absurdly golden.
Close hills ascend to ambergris
several hundred yards behind them,
as trees bubble like foam
into green sea that we might guess
hides a natural salt gem,
a lick near where they roam.
The month must be July or August.
It looks that hot or even hotter.
The two could be molded chocolate
except for melting and their colors' oddness.
Lavender Yin lolls like an otter,
while bronzed Yang plans to get
a quick whiff of her purple. He's turned.
We'll never foretell but can think
what we want. I imagine their taking a vow.
Or, like figures on Keats' Grecian urn
in an infinite pastoral link,
their balance will play in the curious now.