Jacob K. Robinson: “At the end of the day, I think I’d like to be summed up like so: I am Texan by birth, a Georgian by blood, and a New Yorker by choice. I like a good pair of Levi’s, mowing the lawn, and playoff baseball. I am doing my best.” (web)
“In the Dream-Pool” by Elizabeth McMunn-TetangcoPosted by Rattle
Ekphrastic Challenge, September 2020: Editor’s Choice
Image: “Pool Head” by Pat Singer. “In the Dream-Pool” was written by Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, September 2020, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.
Comment from the Editor, Timothy Green: “Interestingly, both this poem and the artist’s choice throb with the losses of the pandemic while looking through a fence that isn’t in the painting. In this case, the closing of the summer pool becomes a kind of obsession, haunting in its absence, as so many things are. There are so many memorable lines here: ‘The thing with dream-pools is / you never get to swim.’ That will stick with me.”
Britt Luttrell: “I teach nature in a place where most of the nature is dead, or else buried deep underground. A lot of my job is leading hikes, pointing out pockets of life where they exist. I think I do the same with my poems. I look for beauty hanging on and show it to whomever comes with me.” (website)
“Visiting the Gardens at DePugh Nursing Center, Winter Park, Florida” by Vivian ShipleyPosted by Rattle
Ekphrastic Challenge, September 2020: Artist’s Choice
Image: “Pool Head” by Pat Singer. “Visiting the Gardens at DePugh Nursing Center, Winter Park, Florida” was written by Vivian Shipley for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, September 2020, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.
Comment from the artist, Pat Singer: “The way this poem unfolds feels very real and unexpected. I enjoy the surprising and unpredictable way that the sister’s tumor introduces the visual of the pool inside the mind. The writer captured the grim, desolate reality of visiting someone who is unable to care for themselves anymore. Visiting someone who’s a husk of what they once were is difficult, sobering, and emotional. The words the writer uses conveys these feelings with raw power and an authentic voice. The visual cues tie in well with the art literally, but also manages to expand the meaningfulness into something much more robust and with more depth than what is on the surf.”
There’s a long tradition of poetry responding to visual art (and vice versa), and we thought it would be fun to post a challenge. For the first, Judy Keown, cover artist from issue #45, donated a photograph of an argiope spider. We gave poets a month to respond to this photograph in verse, and received 266 entries. Judy Keown and Rattle’s Timothy Green each selected their favorite poem from the submissions and published them online at Rattle.com.
Given how many people seemed to enjoy the Ekphrastic Challenge, we’ve decided to make it a monthly series, using open submissions of artwork when necessary. Visual artists who would like to participate can submit work now through the end of December, by going here.
If you’re a poet, come back to this page every month to find a new piece of art to inspire your poetry. You’ll have one month to write and submit your poems. Each month, two winners—one chosen by the artist and the other by Rattle’s editor—will receive online publication and $100 each.
For the month of August, our image is the piece below by Tammy Nara. Find more of the artist’s work on her website, but only write your poems about the image below.
All Music by Kevin McLeod
Under Creative Commons License
Actors:
Jack Logan: Tony Barnstone
Spider Floyd: Tony Barnstone
Street Drunk: Tony Barnstone
Mortician Joe Martin: Tony Barnstone
Red Bordello Waiter: Tony Barnstone
Shedd Aquarium Janitor: Tony Barnstone
Rose: Jennifer Sage Holmes
Violet: Jennifer Sage Holmes
___________
Tony Barnstone: “This sequence comes from my manuscript, Pulp Sonnets, and is the product of extensive research into 20th century American pulp fiction, noir, and comics, with particular attention to the spy, detective, crime, horror, sword and sorcery, vigilante, and pulp action genres. My approach is modeled on Robert Browning and Robert Frost, using dramatic monologue to let the characters speak for themselves in the vernacular of their class, location, and social situation. I research primary materials (including pulp short stories and novels, and original crime reports) in order to develop these voices, and secondary materials (theoretical, sociological, anthropological, psychological, philosophical, and theological studies of the pulps and the comics) to develop the larger themes of the project. I see the ‘Jack Logan’ story as fun (particularly in its wild plot and use of gangster vernacular), but not uncritical fun. It is meant to deconstruct pulp depictions of gender roles—in particular the femme fatale and the men caught up in their ‘tough guise.’” (web)
Diana Goetsch: “I began writing poetry at four or five a.m. on the NYC subway after nights spent shooting pool. I was wasting my life. Then phrases, lines came to me. They weren’t lines of Whitman or Yeats or Eliot, so I figured they must be mine. They cycled through my head as I walked my Brooklyn neighborhood among a million sleeping people, feeling like I was treading the afterlife. Once home, I jotted the lines in a notebook, added some more, and started playing with them. That was 30 years ago.” (web)
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