Ecphrasis

1. David Plowden's pairing of his photograph with Emma Lazarus's famous sonnet (1967)

   Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

   Assignment:

   Here is a poem by May Swenson addressed to Lady Liberty:

   Find an image of the Lady online which pairs well with this poem. Or find an alternative image of Lady L. to pair with Lazarus's poem. Or, find another image which interests you and write a piece/poem about it.

   The square-heeled boat sets off for the Statue. People are stuck up tight as asparagus stalks Inside the red rails (ribbons tying the bunch). The tips, their rigid heads against the fog, all yearn toward the Statue; dents of waves all minimize and multiply to where she, fifteen minutes afar (a cooky-tin-shaped mother-doll) stands without a feature except yer little club of flame. Other boats pass the promenade. It's exciting to watch the water heave up, clop the pier, and even off; a large unsteady belly. oil-scaled, gasping, then breathing normally. On the curved horizon, faded shapes of ships with thready regalia, cobweb a thick sky. Nearer, a spluttering bubble over the water (a mosquito's skeletal hindpart, wings detached and fused to whip on top like a child's whirltoy) holds two policemen. They're seated in the air, serge, brass-buttoned paunches behind glass, serene, on rubber runners, sledding fog. Coming back, framed by swollen pilings, the boat is only inches wide, and flat . . . Stalk by stalk, they've climbed into head (its bronze is green out there, and hugely spiked) and down her winding spine into their package, that now bobs forward on the water's mat. Soon three-dimensional, colored like a drum, red-stared, flying a dotted flag, its rusty iron toe divides the harbor; sparkling shavings curl out from the bow. Their heads have faces now. They've been to the Statue. She has no face from here, but just a fist. (I think of the flame carved like an asparagus tip.)

   
   
2. Work through some of the pairings of the Gunn brothers, including Poems 36 and 37.
   
3. A poem by Rosann Warren on Renoir's "Luncheon of the Boating Party"

   Renoir Under striped flutter of awnings, they have come together this afternoon to glitter with carafes and wine glasses, and the fluffy dog perched on the table amid parings of apples and peaches. They rehearse A civilization here among bright collaborations of sun. The two gentlemen nearest us take their ease bare-armed, in undershirts. At the next table, brown jacket and bowler melt into ingenious dapple and nonchalance, and only the farthest gentlemen, vertical, sustain in suits and top hats, a dark decorum. And ladies, ladies-- bonnetted,buttoned at neck and wrists, yet ripe with sleep:their cheeks and half-closed eyes give them away. Flesh is fruit, whispers the brush, and sunlight wine; all cloth dissolves. And when these chroma and characters have faded into the single, sensual blur of an afternoon lost, there will remain ghostly vermilion, hieroglyphic lips, awning stripes and anemones that once so vulgarly glazed, now dimming to the mystic map of sprawl, spatter, and glare: not Jeanne, Marie-Thérèse, Alphonse, Auguste, but this— this truest pattern, radiance revealed, a constellation visible at dusk.

4. David Ferry, upon a photograph of a cowboy in the Dakota Territory, 1887

   His hat, his gun, his gloves, his chair, his place In the sun. He sits with his feet in a dried-up pool Of sunlight. His face is the face of a hero Who has read nothing at all, about heroes. He is without splendor, utterly without The amazement of self that glorifies Achilles The sunlike, the killer. His is without mercy As he is without the imagination that he is Without mercy. There is nothing to the East of him Except the camera, which is almsot entirely without Understanding of what it sees in him. His hat, his gun, his gloves, his homely and Heartbreaking canteen, empty on the ground.

5. Four Portraits of Felix Tournachon (Nadar). Which is the source/target of the poem by Richard Howard?

   Nadar You will be obscured by a cloud of postures      and a roster of great names, but here, in your high thirties, you can hardly      be more distinct, distinguished by hair, hope and the heroic resolution      to present life with an image unretouched—had it not been the fallacy      of centuries to correct? Edited, glossed, conflated, expurgated—      what was left to believe in? All men are mad when they are alone, almost      all women: that was your text and your testimony, the acknowledgment      of a balloonist whose pride it was to announce that countless things have been done      seen and remain to be seen, and for whom humility was equivalent      to seeing things as they are, opacity being a great discoverer.      Why else is it your portraits loom likelier for us now than all preening      identifications since? Because you made your Act betwen consenting      adults a Sacred Game wherein the dead god is recognized, the change      being from darkness to light and revelation—the god reborn. You were      our demiurge from a world where chaos and cosmos are superimposed,      from a world where anything can happen but nothing happens twice, you spoke      your fiat lux or fiat nox to bring forth the creation of nature      against nature within nature. Now you have sixty years in which to retrieve      the visionary from the visual, then fade into the once and future classics,      leaving us to enlarge on what cannot be divided, individuals.

6. Homi Bhahba: Upon Peter Blake's The Meeting, or Have a Nice Day Mr.Hockney

   [click on thumbnail] Press on toward the water's edge, approaching Venice Beach, where the roller bladers work out and hang out. In the later afternoon, a palpably Mediterreanean feel and an oddly French, provençal light prevails that is at odds with the glare of sand and sea, the flat metallic bands of beige and blue, bordered by green verges. And suddenly, in the midst of the display of musculature, a quiet meeting takes place. Almost archaic in its decorousness, there is something ironic about this event, something in the air familiar and suggestive in an iconic way. Two portly gentlemen greet each other, one resting on a cane, the other leaning on an outsized paint-brush, a third stands aside, his head bowed.

7. Hollander also instances Pairings 35 and 36 from this site
8. Four takes on Baudelaire's La Géante

   La Géante Du temps que la Nature en sa verve puissante Concevait chaque jour des enfants monstrueux, J'eusse aimé vivre auprès d'une jeune géante, Comme aux pieds d'une reine un chat voluptueux. J'eusse aimé voir son corps fleurir avec son âme Et grandir librement dans ses terribles jeux; Deviner si son coeur couve une sombre flamme Aux humides brouillards qui nagent dans ses yeux; Parcourir à loisir ses magnifiques formes; Ramper sur le versant de ses genoux énormes, Et parfois en été, quand les soleils malsains, Lasse, la font s'étendre à travers la campagne, Dormir nonchalamment à l'ombre de ses seins, Comme un hameau paisible au pied d'une montagne. — Charles Baudelaire The Giantess In those times when Nature in powerful zest Conceived each day monstrous children, I would have loved to live near a young giantess, A voluptuous cat at the feet of a queen. I would have loved to see her body flower with her soul, To grow up freely in her prodigious play; To find if her heart bred some dark flame Amongst the humid mists swimming in her eyes; To run leisurely over her marvelous lines; To creep along the slopes of her enormous knees, And sometimes in summer, when impure suns Made her wearily stretch out across the countryside, To sleep carelessly in the shadow of her breasts, Like a peaceful village at the foot of a mountain. — Geoffrey Wagner, Selected Poems of Charles Baudelaire (NY: Grove Press, 1974)

9. Upon the 25th Ode of Horace's Odes (I)

   Do you sleep better now, Lydia? Now those young men no longer throw stones At your shutters at night? Now you no longer open your door so easily To let them in? Now you've noted a falling off In the calling up from the street? Those urgent whispers, 'Lydia, I want you! Lydia! How can you sleep?' It will be you, out there, one day. Soon. You, in the barren alleyway they now shun. You, standing in wind-whipped, waning moonlight Feeling the fury inside you, a nag on heat, Your emptiness eating itself, your guts twisted By the fact you are not wanted. Those young men want summer, Green ivy to hold them hard, Not withered fallen dryness. Not autumn. They don't want to see it. They're glad when the winter wind takes it. They pray for that wind And it never fails them. (translation by me)