Jane Armstrong
Introduction to the Ekphrasis Issue
When we put out the call for ekphrastic work, I expected to
receive maybe one or two hundred responses from habitual gallery
dwellers--people like me who’d rather stare at paintings and think
about paintings and maybe write about paintings than do just about
anything else. I was overwhelmed by what I received: 607 submissions
(more than 1500 poems) not only responding to my rather narrowly
conceived call, but also describing and interacting with sculpture,
film, dance, theater, opera, photography, advertising logos, road
signs, architecture, all manner of visual production. I was
surprised to find that what I had considered a private, somewhat
secret pleasure was being done regularly and publicly by…everyone.
Often by writers who didn’t even know there was a word for what
they’d been doing.
As I read through the submissions, I wondered about the power of
this enduring literary tradition. What compels authors to employ one
medium to describe that which so clearly found its best expression
in another medium? How can words possibly capture the physical
immediacy of a brush stroke, the curve of a marbled face, the direct
pleasure of seeing a work of art? How can words convey the
ineffable?
The selections presented here implicitly or explicitly express
the difficulty of the task. Through words perhaps less elegantly
expressive than the artist’s original medium, these poems, stories
and essays express elegance. Through lexical characters less
attractive than paint-on-canvas, they show us line, color, and
movement. Their words hold us thrillingly in a place where the
original visual work of art is simultaneously diminished and
enhanced—art through art, re-created and seen anew.