This week the young Vikings explored ekphrastic poetry and read examples by Anne Sexton, Frank O’Hara, and Homer. They were then tasked with picking a favorite painting of theirs and writing a poem in response. I am so proud of these budding poets.
Their Voices
By Ace E.
After Charles White’s Harvest Talk
I am awake in the night
chest a’ poundin’
my heart has been called
Connect made.
Raspy, old with joyful swings
like jazz music in New Orleans.
“Baby,” they call me
“Be wild, be strong.”
Them white folks don’t sing our song.
Lord spoke to us the day Heavens darkened.
Said “We was strong.
That we’d fight long.
But worry no more.
Paradise is just on the other side.”
I saw they’s tools, them hands
and feet.
Worn and tired they looked yet
like angels. They stood steady
glowing and powerful.
Iah held them strong.
“Baby” they called me as they faded away.
“You’s is strong, don’ give in.
Lord has his eye on you.
Sin can be wash’d away.
Worry ‘bout what more can you do.
Not what you couldn’.”
And they faded away.
The Kiss
By Sofia Z.
After Klimt’s The Kiss
The warm embrace of a glow
the glow from within to embrace each other
a touch, a whisper, a craving
a painting once crafted for a woman
a union of unspoken words and vulnerability
igniting a spark that can only come from within.
An embrace that takes you places
takes you to a field of pink and white tulips
takes you to the yellow of summer.
It brings you back to the yellow of your childhood.
A calling, a touch, an embrace.
It brings you to the seagulls and the waves crashing.
It brings silence to the loud.
A warm embrace, a moment of sun,
spiritually we connect
and physically we’re intertwined.
Every Carefully Calculated Shape Shows Me Him, Dissonance
By Jaden F.
After Portrait of Pablo Picasso by Gris
They ask me do you know this man.
How do I respond?
That’s the funny thing. I don’t know.
It’s like five years never happened. I try to
remember but it’s just fragments, like a dream.
I try to recall a nightmare I try to forget.
That’s how I know him, a nonsensical puzzle
of odd shapes.
Was he my boss?
My abuser?
The man I thought I could call a father?
I long for the answer, but no, my
only visual, a neurological photo shattered.
Oddly this fragmentation is the only way I
can remember him, a collage of half-cut squares
clumped with some organic geometrics.
Triangles, makes sense, he was always punctual, precise
and perfectly cut. The evidence is me.
The way he shines as opposed to the consuming dark,
he was a guardian, I don’t ever recall being hurt.
I find peace in this distortion though without
a clear image, he an be whatever I want
How do you know this man, they say?
Not well, but from what I could tell, he was sharp
lucid and structural.
Girl With Pearl Earring
By Zamzam A
After Girl with a Pearl Earring by Vermeer
His brushes softly caress the canvas
the air hangs heavy with the sickly smell of oil
and weight of his gaze
in this moment I am acutely aware
I am both subject and object
solely for the pleasure and consumption
each glance stripping me bare
the facade I’ve carefully constructed
each stroke unravels me like frayed thread
a recognition of my complexity
beyond beauty
and so, as he captures my likeness
I cannot help but wonder will I ever be more
than an empty vase waiting to be decorated
or will I be a soul laid out to bare
in all my imperfections.
Life and Death at The Whitney
By Ruby R.
After Still Life With Stapler by Porter
I am waiting and the waiter has left his stapler.
The flowers on the table are beautiful.
Why did the waiter have a stapler?
I remembered all my books today, my bag
layed out.
I’m so literal I can’t get the stapler
out of my head why he had it.
Back now here I was over there
disoriented at best.
This is not Chagall, or Cezanne, this is not
Picasso or O’keefe, Basquiat, or that woman
I hated.
I’m in a daze my legs are numb my ears
burnt from the quiet crushing of the audio tour.
How can this room be quiet and loud at the same time?
You know, I’ve never felt closer to death than staring
at this painting. But last time, when we saw
Sky Above Clouds IV or the time before when we saw
The Village and I, I felt close to death then, too.
Art museums just make you feel like that.
