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"Ekprastic Poetry Must Invent Its Own Narrative,"  p.2

Before I graduated, I joined (actually was recruited to) the information department of the local branch of the National Food Authority (NFA). We published an office and trade journal whose name escapes me now. Before a year I had transferred to the NFA central office to join its staff of writers, and to take advantage of the official field travels needed to produce articles for its many publications.

 

Subsequently, I joined another government agency, the National Home Mortgage Finance Corporation, which was part of the then Ministry of Human Settlements. I had expanded my writing trade by then: as corporate writer of press releases, feature articles, speeches, editor, and publications designer. When I left government service in 1989, I joined advertising, first as a copy writer and had an early retirement, 14 years later, as an executive creative director.

 

Throughout this employment history, the visual or graphic arts were never far from my trade. I follow art (the visual arts as well as theater) as an avid fan or enthusiast. When I left regular employment for freelancing as a writer, my projects were mostly combinations of text and visuals—communication campaigns and coffee table books. Many of my friends are either painters or photographers or writers and fellow poets and professional graphic artists.

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Q. Your body of work includes a substantial 

collection of ekphrastic poetry. What is it about ekphrastic poetry that appeals to your creative energy?

 

A. I became a poet but my early love for painting and the visual arts never faded. It fed my poetry, it continues to be a source of my creative energy.

 

I don’t know when anybody pointed out to me that some of my poems were “ekphrastic.” I didn’t know the term then. My first poem of the type was a long one titled “That Luna Woman,” a sort of explication and re-imagination of the Luna’s “Parisian Life.” I think I wrote it as an indirect reaction to the controversy then surrounding its purchase from a foreign collection by GSIS Museum. This poem and maybe a couple of “picture poems” as I called them (the term “ekphrastic” was a bit pretentious for me) were included in my 2007 collection Mostly in Monsoon Weather (UP Press).

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Q. Do you find yourself approaching works of art in the same way? Or do different works of art hold a different attraction?

 

A. Yes and no, because each piece of art will invariably call for an approach or treatment all its own, or the subject matter itself of the work will dictate the poetry. The more “narrative” the art work contains, apparently the more narrative or back story of sorts the poetry will imagine or re-imagine for itself based on the painting. Thus, a landscape will produce a different ekphrastic poem from a tableau or scene from an epic or play, for example, as may be seen in classic art. Abstract painting, to my mind, does not lend readily to ekphrasis since it is already a poetic treatment of its subject by itself. But there will always be exceptions.

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Q. Can you cite a favorite ekphrastic poem by another poet (living or dead)? Why do you like it very much?

 

A. History tells us that the very first ekphrastic poem in literature is in Homer’s Iliad, specifically Book 18, where he describes the finished shield Haphaestus made for Achilles, at the request of his mother Thetis, after he had lost it when he lent it to Patroclus and Patroclus is killed in battle (where Achilles previous shield and armor are taken as part of the spoils). Incidentally, I am reading a new, modern translation of the Iliad by Stephen Mitchel, one of the most respected translators now, and I am eager to come to Book 18 and perhaps compare it with existing translations.

 

But my favorite ekphrastic poem has always been “Musée des Beaux Arts.” It is for me the first modern ekphrastic poem, in the mode of “alienation” that our generation is familiar with. It demonstrates for me what a poet can do with his material, with its expanded and roundabout references before coming to the point of the painting itself. It also teaches me by example the actual creative process, not just ekphrasis. For comparison, William Carlos Williams takes the same subject and titles his poem eponymously, “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.” It shows another kind of treatment, in accordance with Williams’ poetic practice of Imagism and minimalist poetry.

 

(June 1, 2013)

The Kiss by Bencab

Interview

Q. If you can, please give us an idea of your process. Does your process change?

 

A. I’ve always said that writing ekphrastic poetry is like the creative process itself. Art (at least the conventional painting) “frames” its subject. Poetry or the creative process for any art, is a sort framing by itself. You select a part of reality and make your observations of it. Or, as an extension of the act of mimesis (as the Greeks called the basic process of any art, the imitation of nature or experience), this framing defines the reproduction or reinvention of the experience of reality. The postmodern artist will say, you can actually take objects from reality, or excise or “excerpt” textures from it via found objects, or even a photograph. As the last “remove” in Plato’s mimetic stages, ekphrasis takes the epitome of an object to the fourth dimension. It is both dynamic and static—it brings the art work back to life, making the images and experience move in our imagination, and yet it is same recreation or description over and over again. Thus it is very much like painting itself, which takes us back to Horace’s ars poetica, ut pictura poesis, as is painting so is poetry.

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Writing ekphrastic poetry

is like the creative process itself. Art 'frames' its subject. You select a part of reality and make your observations of it... This framing defines the reproduction or reinvention of the experiece

of reality.

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