Ekphrasis

Sure.

And of course, there are, um, composers who have done their version of Ekphrasis, where they've written pieces inspired by art as well.

So it's a lot to think about.

Um, hopefully I haven't talked everybody's ears off.

[laughs] I am back, and I...

Boy, boy, I've, I've been holding my tongue for a while now.

[laughs] Um, but also because I think we're also gonna be potentially talking about a different not quite Ekphrasis thing when we talk about your book, so I'm excited to, to move on and, and talk about that.

As I walk up Broadway and climb into a taxi, I'm thinking grilled tuna Livornese with roasted potatoes and grilled asparagus for fish special.

[laughs]

... um, to do a, a, a book of, in, of their Ekphrasis series, which are self-consciously about art but without illustration.

Mm-hmm.

And, and that's how the book started out, but then it turned out that instead of having one author, which is what they wanted-

Well-

... ekphrastic project?

An ekphrastic project.

Yes, it is.

We've used that word on the podcast.

Neil, what is the genesis of Y Photographs? What moved you to do it? Oh, I was asked to do it.

My neighbor here on West 19th Street in New York is the David Zwirner Gallery, and they have a... a publishing arm, David Zwerner Books, and part of their publishing arm is an imprint called Ekphrasis.

And I discovered ekphrasis means the writing of about art or writing about art without illustration.

And I got a phone call one day.

I hope that you enjoy today's offering brought to you by the Academy of American Poets.

This is Alicia Stallings reading my translation of Ekphrasis, Her Expression by Yannis Doukas, translated from the Greek.

Ekphrasis, Her Expression.

The poor maimed thing.

And yet look closer, see how she's flying, motion focused on and concentrated all around her knee and balanced, marvelously on the dawn, its coolness in midair above the clouds at Heathrow when the skies begin to clear.

About this poem.

This poem is from Yanis Doukas' Stendhal Syndrome, a book of ekphrastic sonnets that grapples with Greece's economic crisis.

Ekphrasis, her expression, is about the fragmented sculpture of Iris, the rainbow and messenger of the gods, from the Parthenon's west pediment.