Poetry&Stuffby
MARNE KILATES
MARNE
S
KRIPTS
from
Antinostalgia & the Tokhang
Rhapsodies
from
Antinostalgia & the Tokhang
Rhapsodies
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
from
Antinostalgia & the Tokhang
Rhapsodies
Poems 2022
Poems 2022
Poems 2022
Poems 2022
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
As the poet compresses life into the frame of his poem based on the frame (or other form) used by the artist, mirrors upon mirrors of reflection and the creation of meaning take place.
deeper meanings already
As I first encountered it, the ekphrastic poem does not always come with the work of art itself (as it does in this sampling). It usually stands alone or separately, without the reader having to look at, or having direct experience of, the work of art. The poem was meant to be the experience of the art. That was the point. Many of the ekphrastic poems I encountered in college or later did not have the subject artwork shown with them in the anthologies I read. But gradually, as images of classical and modern paintings and other art became more accessible on the Internet, ekphrastic poetry became some sort of a fashion in online literary publications. In fact, I used to write an ekphrastic blog myself, which I later reformatted into a website, an online magazine sustained by contributions of ekphrastic poetry accompanied by their subject pieces of art, as I believed the Net itself was firstly a visual medium. After more than two years and several issues, I had to discontinue it because it was taking too much of my time and it needed some financial investment (for rental of virtual-space) in order to continue to exist. It also needed the investment of the contributors themselves, though at some point it actually generated interest—I still get the occasional email of a poem and an artwork and some reader’s good words. But I promise to go back to it and resume publication one of these days.
extracted or framed
Ekphrasis, as I said at the start, means simply “explanation” in Greek and may be generically applied to the art of elucidating a work of art. As it means as well, “calling an inanimate object by name”—we observed that it is like Adam naming things in Paradise. Or, in the Christian mode of acquiring knowledge and salvation, it is similar to the more formal Biblical exegesis or hermeneutics, for use in sermons by priests. The general ways a poet may write ekphrastically are by 1) just describing, with some explanation or comment, as Auden does, the subject art; 2) “giving voice” to a piece of sculpture or character in a painting, as Browning does in “My Last Duchess,” which incidentally, is also a dramatic monologue; and 3) by “arguing” or “struggling” with the work of art (an agon or contest), which can come in the form of reinventing it altogether as one describes or explicates it, as John Ashbery does in the book-length ekphrasis, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. There are other ways in-between. The poetic experience created in the first artistic experience of beholding the painting or work of art gives the reader (and the vicarious viewer) two “windows”—to the imagination of either the poet or the artist, or to imagination itself.
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But why poems about pictures? Why not? The biggest reason for me is that I can mine an artwork for deeper meanings which have already been extracted, or framed, by the artist from life itself, though not verbally. It is a way not only of art appreciation but a manner of making art “speak.” The way we make life or nature speak to us when we contemplate it. It is life itself. And I find that in the process, in the of becoming a poem, the other art takes on a new life—the pigments pulse, the images converse, the stone or bronze figures jump, cringe, or bristle—it is a completely new story (or artwork) in itself, a second-tranche (or trance) esthetic. In the Greek tradition that says art is an imitation of life or holds up a mirror to nature, ekphrasis holds up that mirror not just twice. Which means: as the poet compresses life into the frame of his poem based on the frame used by the artist, mirrors upon mirrors of reflection and the creation of meaning take place. Mirrors that, in my own manner of contemplation or conceit, I have the opportunity to multiply or to break.
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So… so what? Is it necessary? Is art or poetry necessary? Is life, we might as well ask. What does it all mean? Why are we here? The uninterested or uninvolved will say that’s just a lot of air. Absolutely. If we give up on understanding life, all we get is thin air. Nothing. On the other hand, if we cannot resist trying to understand it—which is the stimulus or animation of the living soul—we go back to the immeasurable nothing we started with, the abyss we seek to avoid, the void we seek to understand. The air inside the frame.
Marne Kilates
Makati South Hills
(November 2014; June 2017)
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Art or Just a Lot of Air?
(con't)
MY PORTRAIT by Marcel Antonio inside the frame