Which came first, the picture or the poem? In the case of a short verse I recently wrote, it was the poem. (A rather bleak one, which I paired with this picture by Scottish artist Thomas Faed, entitled ‘Faults on Both Sides’). No dissimulation was intended and yet, when readers mistakenly assumed I had written an ekphrasis, I did not immediately disabuse them – after all, my mother-in-law may have been reading (!) and the poem as ekphrasis afforded me a level of emotional anonymity I suddenly felt I needed.
In any case, I reasoned, ekphrasis, (Greek for ‘description’, usually of a work of art), has its roots so deeply embedded in reinterpretation, that perhaps it is by nature a sham. Less a response to an artwork than a projection of the writer’s preoccupations onto one; a veil in the flirtatious dance of disguise and reveal, which we perform to conceal ourselves in the reader’s sights.
And yet, despite these justifications, it was clear I had crossed at least one literary boundary, and my conscience was now hitting uncomfortably up against it: Which came first, the picture or the poem? Here, I confess, and in the process come close to writing a genuine ekphrasis.
(P.S. Apologies to the long suffering husband. We all have our moments, and this expresses but one of ours!)
My Ekphrasis Is A Fraud
Hands
hard
on the head of the stick
shoved into his mouth
to choke violent eruptions
Eyes
crazed horses
restrained beneath
brows of extreme malcontent
She
with her handkerchief
twisting and twisting
a noose around the wrist
of despair’s swollen neck
This is the way I disguised our spent love’s lament