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Fantastic Ekphrastic Poetry

4/15/2020

Carole Boston Weatherford

The Poet Professor

The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Department has a wealth of primary source images. Many are from the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information (FSA/OWI) Collection, a vast pictorial record of American life between 1935 and 1944. The collection boasts 174,000 black-and-white and 1,600 color photographs taken by government-employed photojournalists such as Walker Evans, Russell Lee, Arthur Rothstein, Jack Delano, Marion Post Wolcott, Carl Mydans, Dorothea Lange and Gordon Parks.

I first mined this collection in the 1980s—long before it was digitized or available online. Back then, I was researching my book, Remember the Bridge: Poems of a People (2002). I sought pictures to pair with poems that I had already penned. I found the desired images as well as others that spoke to me and begged for poems.

I didn’t realize it then, but I was writing ekphrastic poetry. According to the Poetry Foundation, “An ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art.” Romantic poet John Keats’ “Ode to a Grecian Urn” is a famous example.
I have since written more ekphrastic poems—two inspired by iconic images from the FSA/OWI collection. Gordon Parks: How the Photographer Captured Black and White America and Dorothea Lange: How the Photographer Found the Faces of the Depression tell the stories behind Parks’ 1942 “American Gothic” and Lange’s 1936 “Migrant Mother.” The resulting verse biographies go beyond describing the images to paint pictures of the photographers themselves.

Parks, a pioneering African American Renaissance man, documented racism in the nation’s capital by photographing Ella Watson, a government custodian who supported her family on $1,000 a year. Lange’s photo of a migrant mother and her starving children shows the misery caused by the Dust Bowl. Newspapers published these powerful photographs, exposing poverty and injustice.

Are you ready to browse the FSA/OWI collection online? Perhaps, start here. Choose one photograph that moves you. A gaze that will not let you look away. A face full of stories. A scene that draws you in. A landscape that transports you. Then, draft your poem. Write from that time and place, in the voice of the subject, the photographer, or a bystander. Read your draft aloud to yourself. Then, revise. When finished, arrange your poem and the photograph on the same page.

This biography of Gordon Parks contains Carole's ekphrastic by the picture on the right called "American Gothic."

Dorathea Lang took the picture on the right, "Migrant Mother," which inspired Carole to write an ekphrastic poem for her book.

"American Gothic" portrait by Gordon Parks.

"Migrant Mother" portrait by Dorothea Lange.

Carole Boston Weatherford writes hybrid genre poetry, nonfiction and biographies. BOX: Henry Brown Mails Himself to Freedom chronicles one of slavery’s most daring escapes.

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In Praise of Vultures

4/14/2020

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Stephen R. Swinburne
Lifelong naturalist

I really like vultures. Sure, they’re ugly and they eat nasty dead things. But those are not necessarily bad characteristics.

First let’s deal with “ugly.” Vultures’ bald heads are what make them seem ugly to most people. But think about why they’re bald. Imagine thrusting your head inside the carcass of a white-tailed deer to reach the meat. A feathered head might capture bits of flesh, blood and gore and you end up with a face full bacteria and flies. Scientists believe that one reason vultures have evolved featherless heads is to aid in hygiene. A bald head stays clean and any remaining germs or bacteria are baked off by the sun. Vultures have also found that a bald head can help with temperature regulation. When it gets cold they can tuck their heads down to keep their neck covered with feathers. When it’s hot, vultures can extend their neck to expose bare skin. Their bald heads work so well that I wrote a poem about them.

Naked Head

It’s best to have no feathers,

When you stick your head in guts,

That way you don’t go walkin’ round,

Your noggin dripping schmutz.

Moving on to “eating nasty dead things,” the next time you see vultures eating a dead animal on the side of the road, be thankful! That carcass might be dead from rabies or contaminated with other harmful diseases. Vultures have the amazing ability to consume rotting and diseased flesh and stay healthy. It’s all in the stomach. Vultures possess very powerful stomach acids that destroy most bacteria and deadly viruses. In fact, vulture stomach acid is so strong it can dissolve metal! Except if that metal is lead shot -- many turkey vultures are killed every year by consuming shot that they encounter in dead deer. Vultures are the world’s natural “sanitation workers,” helping to stop the spread of disease.

I’m so appreciative of the work they do, I even wrote a poem about eating dead things:

Dead Meat

I like my meat dead,

It’s best if it’s not moving.

Don’t want to see one final twitch,

I prefer it oozing

So, the next time you see a vulture circling in the noonday sky, think about the valuable and important clean up service this bird provides to us and to the environment. Maybe I’ll write a poem about that….

Two magnificent specimens: at right, a turkey vulture showing off his bald head and ,above, an even balder American black vulture. Wikimedia Commons

My friends the black vultures didn't kill this deer. They are just going to be cleaning up the carcass. Wikipedia commons. Photo by Nathaniel Paluga.

Steve Swinburne is a science writer, but as you can see from this Minute, he likes to write poetry too. In his book Ocean Soup, he offers verses in the voices of tide-pool animals, including the barnacle, sea urchin, sculpin, mussel, starfish, hermit crab, anemone, and lobster. For more about Steve's poetry, click here.

Steve Swinburne is a member of iNK's Authors on Call and is available for classroom programs through FieldTripZoom, a terrific technology that requires only a computer, wifi, and a webcam. Click here to find out more.
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Fantastic Ekphrastic Poetry

In Praise of Vultures

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