Ekphrasis in poetry
Ekphrasis in poetry refers to the practice of creating detailed and evocative descriptions of visual artworks within poetic form. The term originates from Greek, meaning "description," and has evolved over time to focus specifically on the relationship between poetry and visual art. Historically, ekphrastic poetry emerged as a way for poets to convey the essence of artworks to audiences who could not access them directly, especially during the eighteenth century when literacy was rising and interest in the arts was growing. Notable examples of this tradition include Homer's description of Achilles's shield in "The Iliad" and John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn," which explore both the physical attributes of art and its broader cultural significance.
As the genre has developed, ekphrasis has transcended mere description to include interpretations and emotional responses to the artworks, often addressing themes of identity and social commentary. Poets like Anne Sexton and Wislawa Szymborska have utilized ekphrastic poetry to delve into personal experiences or to analyze symbolic meanings within art. In the twenty-first century, the scope of ekphrastic poetry has expanded to incorporate postcolonial perspectives, particularly in Indigenous poetry that addresses landscapes and collective identity. Overall, ekphrasis serves as a rich intersection of visual art and literary expression, fostering a deeper appreciation of both forms.
On this Page
Ekphrasis in poetry
In poetry, ekphrasis describes poems primarily focused on evocative, detailed descriptions of visual artworks. Variant terms include ecphrasis and ekphrastic poetry. It derives from the Greek term for “description,” with the word’s etymology combining the prefixex- (“out”) with the verb phrazein (“to explain” or “to tell”). The word entered the English language in the eighteenth century, during a time when an increasingly educated, literate, and culturally engaged public relied heavily on verbal descriptions of artworks to which they had no access.
Since its introduction into the English poetic lexicon, the concept of ekphrasis has continued to grow and evolve. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ekphrasis moved beyond a core focus on literal description and expanded into evaluating artworks and commenting on or interpreting their cultural relevance. In the twenty-first century, ekphrastic poetry has increasingly focused on postcolonial concepts, revisiting its previously Eurocentric fixations from Indigenous perspectives.
Background
The ekphrastic tradition in Western poetry has many centuries of precedent, with experts frequently citing the Homeric epic The Iliadas a quintessential early example. The eighteenth chapter of the ancient Greek poetic saga contains a notoriously detailed description of the creation of the shield of Achilles, the poem’s heroic protagonist. The ekphrastic passage covers nearly one hundred and fifty lines of text, delving into the deep minutiae of the shield’s physical and aesthetic characteristics. Commentators note that the ekphrasis in The Iliad facilitates a comprehensive exploration of classical Greek symbolism and its cultural and historical relevance while simultaneously advancing the epic’s central theme of the delicate balance between war and peace.
Homer (ca. 750 BCE–ca. 700 BCE), the legendary composer of The Iliad,was said to have been blind. Thus, his highly detailed poetic rendering of Achilles’s shield served as a vehicle for generating a complete mental image of the object for readers or listeners unable to personally view depictions of it. This, in turn, helped to establish one of the defining purposes of the tradition of ekphrasic poetry as it later emerged: to describe important works of visual art to readers unable to see them in person at a time when there was no reliable method of generating facsimiles or representations that could be circulated on a mass scale.
During the eighteenth century, Western civilization was undergoing a period of rapid cultural, economic, and scientific advancement. Literacy rates were quickly climbing, with an emerging middle class becoming increasingly engaged with art, literature, and other forms of intellectual and creative expression. Demand for accessible coverage of emerging trends in the visual arts was strong and rapidly growing, but publishers lacked methods of accurately representing the complexities and nuances of visual art forms such as paintings and sculpture. Ekphrastic poetry initially functioned to fill this gap, providing extensive coverage not only of a visual artwork’s structural and formal qualities, but also commentary on its meaning and relevance.
Overview
Originally referring to the generalized literary practice of describing the physical characteristics of objects in comprehensive detail, the term ekphrasis evolved in the eighteenth century to specifically refer to poetry written about visual artworks. Ekphrastic poetry does not have formal or stylistic requirements with respect to verse structures, rhyme schemes, or meter. Instead, it is defined solely by its subject matter and traditionally focuses on extended, richly textured descriptions of the subjects, creative treatments, and thematic elements of painting, sculpture, and other visual art forms.
One of the most familiar examples of the classical phase of Western ekphrastic poetry is “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1819) by the Romantic poet John Keats (1795–1821). Presented in five stanzas with regular rhyme schemes, the fifty-line poem not only describes the physical characteristics of an ancient artifact, but also contains direct addresses to the figures depicted on its surface. Commentators have frequently interpreted the poem as intentionally imbuing ekphrastic poetry with the power to forever memorialize the achievements of historical individuals, groups, and societies by engraving their values and accomplishments in the chronicles of time.
In some cases, ekphrastic poetry has wielded the ability to shape social and political discourse on key issues. In 1899, the San Francisco Examiner published an ekphrastic poem by Edwin Markham (1852–1940) inspired by Markham’s viewing of the seminal painting Man with a Hoe, alternately known asThe Laborer, created in the early 1860s by the French artist Jean-François Millet (1814–1875). The painting, which was groundbreaking for its atypical depiction of a humble peasant as the subject of an elevated artwork, was widely introduced to the American public through Markham’s poem and sparked widespread debate about the rights of workers during a time when organized labor was emerging as a major political topic.
As ekphrastic poetry matured, it moved beyond the descriptive, direct-address forms embodied in works like “Ode on a Grecian Urn” to include more complex, nuanced, and subjective treatments of the referenced artworks. Some examples of ekphrasis filter the impact of the subject artwork through the lens of personal emotional experience, with “Starry Night” by Anne Sexton (1928–1974) representing an example. Sexton’s poem ruminates on the iconic painting of the same name by the Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890), using it as a vehicle for exploring her personal obsession with death. In other instances, ekphrastic verse can represent interpretations of the symbolic elements of the artworks they cover, as in the poem “Two Monkeys by Brueghel” by the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska (1923–2012), which offers an analysis of a cryptic artwork by Peter Brueghel the Elder (ca. 1525–1569). Poets have also used ekphrasis as a medium for offering their own commentary on specific artwork. An example is a sequence in the 2000 poetry collection Men in the Off Hours by the Canadian poet Anne Carson (1950—).
In the twenty-first century, English-language ekphrastic poetry has evolved to encompass postcolonial perspectives. Scholarly commentators have noted an emergent pattern in the contemporary Indigenous poetry produced in North America, which gives ekphrastic treatments to natural landscapes as a means of exploring both individual and collective identity.
Bibliography
Brett, Terry, and Chip Webster. Paint & Poetry: An Ekphrastic Journey.St. Petersburg P, 2021.
Craven, Jackie. “What Is Ekphrastic Poetry?” ThoughtCo,5 Nov. 2018, www.thoughtco.com/ekphrastic-poetry-definition-examples-4174699. Accessed 20 Nov. 2023.
“Ekphrasis.” Academy of American Poets,poets.org/glossary/ekphrasis. Accessed 20 Nov. 2023.
“Ekphrasis.” Poetry Foundation,www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/ekphrasis. Accessed 20 Nov. 2023.
“Ekphrastic Poetry.” J. Paul Getty Foundation,2014, www.getty.edu/education/teachers/classroom‗resources/curricula/poetry‗and‗art/downloads/ekphrasis.pdf. Accessed 20 Nov. 2023.
Kleppe, Sandra Lee (ed.). Ekphrasis in American Poetry: The Colonial Period to the 21st Century.Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015.
Panagiotidu, Maria-Eirini. The Poetics of Ekphrasis: A Stylistic Approach. Springer International Publishing, 2022.
“What Is Ekphrasis?” Oregon State University,17 Sept. 2020, liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/wlf/what-ekphrasis. Accessed 20 Nov. 2023.