Ekphrasis: Poems and Art
Image Credit: Cathleen Cohen
Welcome to a new Mad Poets blog, to be offered quarterly.
It’s a pleasure to write about the relationship between poetry and other art forms, to examine ways that a various creative arts relate to each other.
The term ekphrasis can be defined narrowly as writing that describes a work of art in another medium-- paintings, music, photography sculpture and the like. It can also refer more broadly to the alchemy that happens when one medium tries to define and relate to another. This could refer to poems inspired by the visual arts or music -- and also the reverse! To my mind, ekphrasis can also encompass hybrid works, like artists’ books, author/illustrator collaborations and graphic poems.
Many scholars have written about ekphrasis and there are great resources online. Though not scholar of the topic, I have had a practice of writing poetry and painting for many years. Both are essential to my creative life. These art forms interact, challenge each other and open up many questions and tensions.
My aim in this blog is to feature the work of various poets and artists, to let you know of interesting viewing opportunities and to provide some angles that might prompt your own writing.
Our Senses Grow Sharper: Jeff Thomsen and Maria DeMauro
Thank you, Mad Poets, for the opportunity to explore ekphrasis through the work of many talented writers and painters. I’ve learned much about their various ways of connecting different art forms. This month’s blog is my last (for a time) and highlights two wonderful, local painters, Jeff Thomsen and Maria DiMauro, both of whom are connected to Philadelphia’s Cerulean Arts Gallery.
In Jeff Thomsen’s sumptuous oil paintings, stories simmer below the surface. A lover of music and poetry, Jeff draws on both to inform his works, many of which have inspired others to write poems, (including myself !) He articulates his approach in an artist’s statement for his upcoming January 2025 exhibition (https://ceruleanarts.com/pages/jeff-thomsen) and in a lovely, short video by John Thornton (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YncA9CJRUBI ).
Jeff quotes W.B.Yeats, “The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” Jeff continues, “My own work is a humble attempt to hone these senses and discover and show as best I can the magic I see in the world. I paint representationally because, for me, such magic resides in the particular expression of particular things, a unique face or gesture, the unfolding of a specific landscape, the ongoing play of light and shade and its revelation of some eternal truth.
I enjoy the adherence to form amidst the pulsating sensation of light and color in nature that I am often overwhelmed by.”
Keeper, Jeff Thomsen
In Jeff’s poem about his painting, Keeper, he invites us into his process while showing humility about the nature of his (masterful) artwork.
Keeper
What is this about?
I don’t know, and I painted it.
A young woman walks
with a jug and gray bucket
through an outdoor space hemmed in by dark woods
She’s not repelled by the darkness,
but walks toward it
regarding, briefly, the small lemur that has just
bolted past her.
And just above and to the right awaits
another lemur by the edge of the wood,
its body and ring-tailed banner
bathed in dark shadow
These must be her charges. She shows no alarm —
she regards the bolting lemur as if it were a passing bird.
And they know her, obviously anticipating
the gastronomical delights hidden in the bucket and
the thirst-quenching liquid in the jug.
Together they enter a future
of which we might join, but for the static of weeds
that must first be surmounted
and the distance
they have already travelled together.
- Jeff Thomsen
This year Jeff created a large scale series of five paintings based on Ravel’s evocative five movement piano suite, Miroirs, (https://music.apple.com/gb/album/ravel-miroirs-gaspard-de-la-nuit-pavane/519118441). After observing him work on these paintings, it seems that Jeff’s senses have grown sharper and more attuned to the imagery evoked by performances of Ravel’s magical score to create his own ‘reflections’ of the imagery suggested by titles of each movement. I think that when poets engage with other art forms, this sharpens our senses and our writing.
Here is one poem I wrote about one of Jeff’s early renditions of Miroir’s first movement:
Noctuelles
They wink/ just to illuminate -Léon-Paul Fargue
My friend renders a garden
from sketch to small canvas
to one more spacious,
expanding the image.
He’s inspired by Ravel,
whose music entices
the rising of moths over grasses
tangled like unruly lyrics.
Insects dart and wink
in the walled city garden
where night enters, kindled
by dreams—but whose?
Ravel composed for a friend, Léon-Paul,
whose poems flared like fireflies,
plentiful then, not endangered.
I picture them strolling, souls expanding.
My friend deepens the color
in each version, revealing its creatures --
leashed dog, passersby, squirrels, bounding fox
and I, longing to enter.
- Cathleen Cohen
Summer Night, Jeff Thomsen
Cat on a Fence, Jeff Thomsen
One of Jeff’s watercolors of a cat sparked another poem for me, alongside a silverpoint drawing by Maria DiMauro. Maria, a talented mixed-media artist who has been a professor of art and design at Arcadia University, documented (with sensitive, gorgeously rendered drawings) some of the 1,500 birds who perished in a short time span (many flying into buildings) in a small area of Center City. Learn of this recent exhibit in her words:
From her artist’s statement:
“A light rain was falling on Friday morning, October 2, 2020, while fog shrouded the city. During a short time, an estimated 1,500 native migratory birds were killed within a three-and-a-half block radius of Center City Philadelphia. Earlier that night, the cloud cover was low, and the moon was full, at peak migration. Birds use the moon and stars to migrate and are attracted to lights within buildings but have little experience with glass. Seeking a safe place, they fly into windows, confused by the artificial light and reflective glass. Many of these deaths are preventable, but require using bird-friendly materials and enacting building standards designed to reduce the use of reflective glass.
The source imagery for these bird drawings is courtesy of Stephen Maciejewski, a former social worker and tireless Audubon volunteer, who rescues injured birds and collects and catalogues bird fatalities in Philadelphia. Stephen’s work and photographs galvanized members of the birding community to create “Bird Safe Philly” which soon established “Lights Out Philly,” a voluntary program that encourages turning off or blocking as much light as possible during peak migration times in spring and fall.” https://ceruleanarts.com/pages/maria-dimauro?_pos=1&_sid=4271f79c2&_ss=r
To learn more about Maria’s work: https://www.mariadimauro.com/
1500 Birds: Yellow Belly, Maria DiMauro
Here is my poem about both works, which I couldn’t resist purchasing.
Cat and Warbler
On impulse I buy two works
with earnings from my own
sparce sales. I should save
for future costs, for brushes,
paints and frames
but strap into the car
a tawny watercolor cat
and silverpoint warbler.
We coast home
to avoid jarring bumps.
Once unwrapped, they sit
propped on a sideboard
apart then together.
They look queasy against a green wall
but calm near a gray one.
Balanced on a fence, the cat
seems perpetually tensed
for sirens and fire trucks.
More likely he’s tracking
the bird’s bright body.
her pulse, her shivering
feathers. I picture the artist
gripping a fragment of silver
to sketch fine lines,
which will tarnish.
- Cathleen Cohen (from Murmurations, Moonstone Press, 2024)
Night Moths, Jeff Thomsen
Cathleen Cohen was the 2019 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, PA. A painter and teacher, she founded the We the Poets program at ArtWell, an arts education non-profit in Philadelphia (www.theartwell.org). Her poems appear in journals such as Apiary, Baltimore Review, Cagibi, East Coast Ink, 6ix, North of Oxford, One Art, Passager, Philadelphia Stories, Rockvale Review and Rogue Agent. Camera Obscura (chapbook, Moonstone Press), appeared in 2017 and Etching the Ghost (Atmosphere Press), was published in 2021. She received the Interfaith Relations Award from the Montgomery County PA Human Rights Commission and the Public Service Award from National Association of Poetry Therapy. Her paintings are on view at Cerulean Arts Gallery. To learn more about her work, visit www.cathleencohenart.com.
Valley of the Bells, Jeff Thomsen
These two images are from Jeff’s Miroir series (which you can view at Cerulean Arts in January), followed by links about his work.
I’ll conclude with thanks and an invitation to an ekphrasis workshop I’ll offer to accompany my exhibit of watercolors this November- December.