Day 4 Ekphrastic Poetry

In modern usage, ekphrastic poetry is the vivid literary description of a specific work of art, such as a painting, sculpture, tapestry, church, and the like. For a full list of ekphrastic poems, check out Poetry & Paintings, an archived website presenting poems inspired and derived from paintings. Poets.org also discusses the history of ekphrastic poetry and provides links to several examples. The following poem by Auden is inspired by Pieter Brueghel’s The Fall of Icarus.

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Musée des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Listen to Auden read this poem.

Your turn: Be inspired. Let Herbert Draper’s Lament for Icarus inspire your own poem OR find another painting which you prefer and write your own ekphrastic poem. Make sure that you go beyond just describing the picture -- reflect upon the art and what ideas it provokes.