~ . Ekphrasis . ~

For a recent writing assignment I had to create an ekphrastic poem. I had no idea what ekphrasis was, but have since learned and am very excited about it. Ekphrasis is making art about other art...a sculpture about a drawing, a film about a poem, or in my case a poem about a painting. I chose to write about a painting by André Derain of a coastal landscape in l'Estaque. The small fishing town on the Côte d'Azur of Southern France inspired him and many other painters including Georges Braque, Raoul Dufy, and Paul Cézanne.

The image that inspired me is here below followed by the poem.

Do you remember that day, André,
That en plein air your rendered
In chromatic splendor the unsung light of l’Estaque?

It was before autumn
and after noon
in the hills
outside of town.

The walk there was long,
and the canvass you carried was heavy for its size.
Your burden pushed your body towards the earth
and each step pressed so hardly against the ground
they formed ephemeral unions,
each ending in divorce of foot from ground
like the unrooting of a producing olive tree.

You enjoyed the walk as I recall,
how your heavy steps crunched crisp, dry grass and how
your skin absorbed the sun’s electric rays
and made you feel alive.

He came to his stopping point
where he discovered his composition.
There, he propped his canvass
and set his pallet in the usual manner.
The air was fragrant with willow and linseed oil.

Taking a moment
to inhale the colors and shapes before you,
you came to realize what your eyes could see
and denounced the lies your mind told you
that you should be seeing.

A soft Azurian breeze came
to hear the sermon you were preaching,
the soft gusts of which made your canvass wobble
from the left
to the right
for a moment.

You pushed the yellow on the canvass first
and found its glowing echoes all around.
Skylight fell like warm water
flooding the kaleidoscopic countryside.

The artist then lost any marriage to the ground.

All weight,
even that of his moving arm,
was pulled away as by a rising tide
into the distance where it drowned.

Everything behind him drowned, too.
And the space above him.
And the space on his right.
And the space on his left.

Only two worlds existed now,
and he was the space between them.
He continued painting
until he was no longer the space between
and all the world was returned anew.