Ekphrasis: Writing About Paintings
The ancient tradition of writing poems about visual art — from Homer's shield to contemporary gallery poems — and how to try it yourself.
Ekphrasis: Writing About Paintings
The word ekphrasis comes from Greek: ek (out) and phrazein (to speak). To speak out. To give voice to something silent. For thousands of years, writers have stood before visual art and tried to translate what they see into words.
A Brief History
The tradition begins with Homer. In Book 18 of the Iliad, Hephaestus forges a shield for Achilles, and Homer describes it in extraordinary detail — cities at war and peace, harvests, dances, the ocean rimming the edge. The shield doesn't exist. Homer is describing a work of art that is itself a description of the world. It's mirrors all the way down.
Keats gave us "Ode on a Grecian Urn." Auden wrote "Musee des Beaux Arts" while looking at Brueghel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. Anne Carson, John Ashbery, Claudia Rankine — the tradition continues, restless and alive.
Why Poets Look at Paintings
A painting holds still. Unlike music, unlike film, unlike dance, it doesn't move through time. This makes it the perfect partner for poetry, which also seeks to arrest a moment.
But something interesting happens when a poet writes about a painting: the stillness breaks. The poem introduces time — a before and after, a narrative the painter deliberately excluded. The poet sees a figure in a landscape and asks: Where did she come from? Where is she going?
This is not a failure of attention. It is what poems do. They cannot help but move.
How to Try It
- Go to a museum or open an art book. Find a work that produces a physical reaction — a catch in the breath, a turning of the stomach, a sudden stillness.
- Sit with it. Don't write yet. Look for ten minutes. Then look for ten more.
- Start with what you see, not what you feel. Description is the door.
- Let the poem diverge. At some point, you'll leave the painting behind. That's not just acceptable — it's the goal. The painting is a launching pad.
- Go back to the painting. Read your poem in front of it. See what's missing. See what you invented.
The best ekphrastic poems are not about paintings. They are conversations with them — two art forms meeting in the middle, each revealing what the other cannot say alone.
