Posted: September 13th, 2017

EKPHRASIS:

EKPHRASIS:

The definition of ekphrasis doesn’t ipso facto turn the Italian commentators who remade many Greek translations in the vernacular language as the final authority. Ekphrasis is a burgeoning word. In my opinion anything in this universe could be an example of the artistic potential of Ekphrasis. It stays in a dormant mode until we act upon it, thus bringing it to life. It is also interchangeable like “energy can be converted into matter and matter can be converted into energy.” Understanding the original pure thought is always going to be second hand regardless of how good I or we understood it. It can be translated or transliterated. With time, even our understanding of ekphrasis will undergo change.

REFERENCES:

Toward An Open Universe by Robert Duncan.
Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirroe by John Ashbery
Burn the Diaries by Moyra Davey
The Feel Trio by Fred Moten
Citizen, An American Lyric, by Claudia RankineCocktails
With Breughel at the Museum Caf? by Sandra Stone
GlennLigon
First, please read this Robert Duncan poem. Consider the way words are grouped and composed on the page. The poem is titled A Poem Beginning With A Line From Pindar. It can be found on the Poetry Foundation website at this link:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175587
I may be interested to experiment with the form of the prose poem. Here is a good definition with examples of prose poems:

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/poetic-form-prose-poem

I would like to reveal my thoughts about Ashbery?s self portrait. The moment I looked at the picture, I knew I peregrinated back in time. It reminded me of the time of Newton, Milton and Shakespeare. But when I delved deep down a little further, I realized that the writer incorporates certain references to post modern times and describes more about the time the portrait was made.

The poem was very difficult at first. The poem was too long. At times with its intricacies of vocabulary I found it hard to masticate on its meaning. There were other times when the poem seemed dull to my reading of it. Yet still I was captivated by its penchant for mesmerizing the reader. The combination of its words was a perfect synthesis of thought and conjecture. It?s an avalanche of words lumming down upon my consciousness. I was then inundated by a surfeit of meaning. I chose this paragraph below as particularly interesting.

As Parmigianino did it, the right hand Bigger than the head, thrust at the viewer And swerving easily away, as though to protect What it advertises. A few leaded panes, old beams, Fur, pleated muslin, a coral ring run together In a movement supporting the face, which swims Toward and away like the hand Except that it is in repose. It is what is Sequestered.

When we read the poetry of Ashberry we see the writer encounters an object such as a ?Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror? to stir the beginnings of a story. The poet?s selection of a convex image includes the perception that he is regarding what a reader of the future may conjecture about his own life. The painter presents an image of himself in the painting while the phantasmagoria swirls of sensation, thoughts, desire, etc. captivate the reader. This poem reminds me of ekphrasis because Parmigianino?s painting is transformed into a text after four hundred and fifty plus years from a convex mirror onto a flat tactile page, through which he gives words to an inanimate object, thus bringing it to life. Below we discover a description of action derived from an object which the writer uncovers.

The time of day or the density of the light
Adhering to the face keeps it
Lively and intact in a recurring wave
of arrival.
Both the painter?s face and hand, which ?retreat
Roving back to the body,?
and his soul, drift toward and away,
?in a recurring wave of arrival.?
This oscillating movement,
to defrost Parmigianino?s frozen globe.

The axiomatic truth about humans is that every individual has such limited knowledge of life and about the universe. Our lives are all predisposed by our own genetic and basic environmental couth which is all concatenated together. Ashbery in this poem confirms these basic facts.
Each person Has one big theory to explain the universe But it doesn?t tell the whole story And in the end it is what is outside him That matters, to him and especially to us Who have been given no help whatever In decoding our won man-size quotient and must rely On second-hand knowledge

It was the subject of serious interpretation, particularly through the 16th Century when the classical literature was in the hands of the Italian commentators who remade many Greek translations in the vernacular language. The history of these different translations of the word, ?Ekphrasis? gives us a broad spectrum of ideas.
From the historical point of view, the word ekphrasis was taught to Greek students. Yet with time, the word ekphrasis has undergone many definitions. Its definition even among different dictionaries?whether Oxford, Chambers; Merriam Webster, Cambridge; Encyclopedia Britannica?has evolved.
The use of ekphrasis is to take the reader to an imaginary place, and thus, a picture is painted with words. Ekphrasis is to give words to an inanimate object, bringing it to life. I think it can be applied to anything we imagine and then transform that imagination into a written or any other form, Anthropomorphic. Pinocchio, the famous wooden doll was anthropomorphized when he was given the ability to talk, walk, think, and feel like real boy.
In Ashbery?s case, Parmigianino?s painting is transformed into a text after four hundred and fifty years from a convex mirror onto a flat page, through which he gives words to an inanimate object, thus bringing it to life. Below we discover a description of action derived from an object which the writer uncovers.
The time of day or the density of the light
Adhering to the face keeps it
Lively and intact in a recurring wave
of arrival.
Both the painter?s face and hand, which ?retreat
Roving back to the body,?
and his soul, drift toward and away,
?in a recurring wave of arrival.?
This oscillating movement,
to defrost Parmigianino?s frozen globe.

a coral ring run together In a movement supporting the face, which swims Toward and away like the hand Except that it is in repose.
He describes in the passage above how the face of the subject ?swims toward and away? from the observer, the reader of the poem.
When we read Odes by John Keats, including ?Ode on a Grecian Urn,? Keats describes movement in his words, ?What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?? And we also sense movement or motion in Stone?s description of ?blunderers . . . perched uneasy.? Through her poem, ?Cocktails with Brueghel at the Museum Caf?,? Stone before this reference above describes herself ?with my gnarled root, knobbed to my palm.?