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One of my goals this year is to write a poem a month, and since I am sometimes needing motivation, I figured I’d write something to submit to an online speculative poetry magazine. However, I looked at the theme for the first quarter (the submission deadline is 3/15), and it is notional ekphrasis. And yes, I had to look up what that was too.
For those curious, ekphrastic poetry is poetry based on a work of art. It often describes and comments on or provides narrative context for the artwork in question. Notional ekphrastic poetry is the same except the poem is about a fictional/non-real piece of art. One of my favorite poems (which is often taught under narrative poetry) is a notional ekphrastic poem: Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess.” The narrator is a duke, pausing in front of a portrait of his last duchess with a guest to talk about the painting and its subject. He is a cultured, evil bastard, who reveals more than he may have realized to his guest and to the reader.
While I might love “My Last Duchess,” writing in that genre is hard. Since the poem needs to be speculative poetry, it also has to have fantasy/horror/sci-fi elements. Also, I'm writing it so each stanza is a cinquain (a 5-line poem with 2-4-6-8-2 syllable lines). So…yeah. I’ve got most of a poem hammered out about an evil painting in a fantasy world, but I’m having trouble sticking the landing on it. Grrrrrr.
And speaking of sticking the landing, why is it that endings either write themselves or force you keep hurling yourself at the last bits until you manage to fashion something that works? Shouldn’t there be some middle ground between those two extremes?
For those curious, ekphrastic poetry is poetry based on a work of art. It often describes and comments on or provides narrative context for the artwork in question. Notional ekphrastic poetry is the same except the poem is about a fictional/non-real piece of art. One of my favorite poems (which is often taught under narrative poetry) is a notional ekphrastic poem: Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess.” The narrator is a duke, pausing in front of a portrait of his last duchess with a guest to talk about the painting and its subject. He is a cultured, evil bastard, who reveals more than he may have realized to his guest and to the reader.
While I might love “My Last Duchess,” writing in that genre is hard. Since the poem needs to be speculative poetry, it also has to have fantasy/horror/sci-fi elements. Also, I'm writing it so each stanza is a cinquain (a 5-line poem with 2-4-6-8-2 syllable lines). So…yeah. I’ve got most of a poem hammered out about an evil painting in a fantasy world, but I’m having trouble sticking the landing on it. Grrrrrr.
And speaking of sticking the landing, why is it that endings either write themselves or force you keep hurling yourself at the last bits until you manage to fashion something that works? Shouldn’t there be some middle ground between those two extremes?
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I don't have an answer, but I can't tell you how relieved I am to hear that isn't just me.
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