Ekphrasis and The New York School of Poets

Ekphrasis: Poetic Definition

“Description” in Greek. An ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art. Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a painting or sculpture, the poet may amplify and expand its meaning. A notable example is “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” in which the poet John Keats speculates on the identity of the lovers who appear to dance and play music, simultaneously frozen in time and in perpetual motion...

-http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/glossary-term/Ekphrasis

from The Iliad, Book XVIII, [The Shield of Achilles]

...Then first he form'd the immense and solid shield; Rich various artifice emblazed the field; Its utmost verge a threefold circle bound; A silver chain suspends the massy round; Five ample plates the broad expanse compose, And godlike labours on the surface rose. There shone the image of the master-mind: There earth, there heaven, there ocean he design'd; The unwearied sun, the moon completely round; The starry lights that heaven's high convex crown'd; The Pleiads, Hyads, with the northern team; And great Orion's more refulgent beam; To which, around the axle of the sky, The Bear, revolving, points his golden eye, Still shines exalted on the ethereal plain, Nor bathes his blazing forehead in the main….

-http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19926

Re-creation of Achilles’ Shield

Drawing re-creation of Achilles’ Shield

Graphic explanation of Achilles’ Shield

from “The Shield of Achilles,” W.H. Auden

...She looked over his shoulder For vines and olive trees, Marble well-governed cities And ships upon untamed seas, But there on the shining metal His hands had put instead An artificial wilderness And a sky like lead.

A plain without a feature, bare and brown, No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down, Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood An unintelligible multitude,A million eyes, a million boots in line, Without expression, waiting for a sign….

-http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15547

“Members”:● Frank O’Hara● John Ashbery● Kenneth Koch● James Schuyler● Barbara Guest

The New York School of Poetry

Influential Painters for Asbery and O’HaraAbstract Expressionists (mainly O’Hara)

● Jackson Pollack● Willem de Kooning● Robert Motherwell● Helen Frankenthaler

“2nd Generation” Ab. Ex’s (both)

● Larry Rivers● Grace Hartley● Jane Freilicher● Robert Rauschenberg● Jasper Johns

American Realism/Representationism (both)

● Fairfield Porter

Surrealism (mainly Ashbery)

● Joseph Cornell● Max Ernst● Yves Tanguy

Dada (both)

● Duchamp, of course!

Romanticism and Realism (Ashbery)

● Parmigianino● Bonnard

Poets and PaintersTibor de Nagy Gallery

Collaboration Between Larry Rivers and Kenneth Koch

Larry Rivers and Frank O’Hara, Portrait and Poem Painting, 1961, Tibor de Nagy Gallery

Larry Rivers, O'Hara Nude With Boots, 1954

Larry Rivers, Pyrography: Poem and Portrait of John Ashbery II, 1977

Fairfield Porter, Frank O’Hara, 1957

Fairfield Porter,Jimmy and John, 1957-58

Emmanuel Gottlieb, Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851

Larry Rivers, Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1953

Parmigianino, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, c. 1524