Fulfilling my obligations to my long-neglected TBR one book a time. Want to know why? I explain it in the first post here. Posting striking lines daily on BlueSky

I think this is the first time I’ve written about an ekphrastic this year. Poems about works of visual art are not rare beasts. For as long as there has been both art forms there has been interplay between them. While this is not the first issue of “Poetry” that I can remember that featured both sides of an ekphrastic, it is the first time one has bubbled up on the old TBR.

In the first part of 2024, the Poetry Foundation presented a gallery of work called “Kara Walker: Back of Hand” in Chicago. Alongside the six images presented in this issue are accompanying poems by Krista Franklin, Ruth Ellen Kocher, and Samiya Bashir. These images are haunting and the poetry really packs a punch. Poetry and painting really are two sides of the same coin. Every single poet I know is as equally moved by visual art as they are by words. There are endless books and articles on how artists and poets draw on the same well of creativity. One could spend the rest of one’s life exploring this space, and now that I mention it, that sounds like a pretty good idea. There are worse ways fight against the entropy of an uncaring universe.

If you follow me over on BlueSky you already know that I post lines I find striking every day as I slowly read through one book or issue each week. These lines from Ruth Ellen Kocher which accompany the painting “Tar Pit” (2021) by Kara Walker are what is driving my creativity this week:

your hand, my back, treacherous love,
how easy, our end, Ø end, how free.