Poetics 2

Within the process of writing my ekphrastic poem, I found that it was much different than writing my object poem. I found the object poem much more difficult to write than the ekphrastic, because I thought it easier to speak as a piece of art, than to poetically explore and write about an object.
With the ekphrastic poem, your imagination has the ability to run ramped. This adds both positive and negative elements to your writing. I found that if you go with your wondering imagination, you can go too far and misinterpret the art work, or even take it for granted. If you ignore your imagination you can potentially take away from the work, not giving it the justice it deserves. This challenge in disciplining your imagination can be very difficult, but forces you to really pay attention to your language.
Being a film major, I have found that the visual arts, and language go hand in hand. While studying the elements and aspects of film, I have been able to incorporate those same elements in my writing, especially in poetry. Line, symmetry, pattern, shape, form, color, repetition, are all elements of both artworks. There is definitely more to do for a poet than just describe the visual arts. For one, participate in the visual arts. Second, collaborate with another artist to bring your poem to life and share it with a more broad audience. The ability to share your works, literary or visual, is such a vital part of being an artist, and why not use each other to collaborate?

Freedom

Freedom by Zenos Frudakis
Sculpture located at 16th and Race on the side of the Glaxo Smith Kline building...

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3164/3056948219_06a61316b2.jpg?v=0

On Seeing Larry Rivers' "Washington Crossing the Delaware" at the Museum of Modern Art

Now that our hero has come back to us
in his white pants and we know his nose
trembling like a flag under fire,
we see the calm cold river is supporting
our forces, the beautiful history.

To be more revolutionary than a nun
is our desire, to be secular and intimate
as, when sighting a redcoat, you smile
and pull the trigger. Anxieties
and animosities, flaming and feeding

on theoretical considerations and
the jealous spiritualities of the abstract,
the robot? they're smoke, billows above
the physical event. They have burned up.
See how free we are! as a nation of persons.

Dear father of our country, so alive
you must have lied incessantly to be
immediate, here are your bones crossed
on my breast like a rusty flintlock,
a pirate's flag, bravely specific

and ever so light in the misty glare
of a crossing by water in winter to a shore
other than that the bridge reaches for.
Don't shoot until, the white of freedom glinting
on your gun barrel, you see the general fear.


--Frank O'Hara

Sitting There

The painter paints a vivid portrait
Capturing the essence of you
To her you are full of life
She uses color to express
But the man she creates cannot be you.

Who are you?
His body blends into the surroundings
His eyes don’t reflect what he sees
The sound of his heart no longer exists
As he sits there with a blank stare

Where is the man I once loved?
There is no depth to his voice
There is no warmth to his skin
No response to my touch
As he sits there with a blank stare

How could you be so distant?
No blood runs through his veins
The color of his soul seeps through his pores.
He never leaves that god-forsaken chair
As his sits there with a blank stare.

What could make you this way?
There is a detached chill in his presence
His body takes no form of a being
When the heat rises he’s below zero
As he sits there with a blank stare

When did you become so vague?
He doesn’t care who or where
When the sun glows his body casts no shadow
He is just a figure of who he used to be
As he sits there in his chair with a blank stare

Naked Goddesses

Under the vast open blue sky filled with cotton clouds, tree branches sways softly left and right.
Near a lake, nature so beautifully created for mankind, slightly cool breeze gave cold chills.
Peacefully, calmly, thirteen creamy uncovered skins, long silky brown hairs, and alluring voluptuous bodies, bathed on earth's ground.
Suddenly,a loud crackling sound from a small tree branch made aware the existent of the approaching forms.
Startled, a soft settle voice give warning, "Look! Humans!"
Attempting to hide from mortal eyes, with one quick blink, all thirteen goddesses swiftly vanish into nature's mysterious ground, leaving no evidence of their existence.