{"id":1192,"date":"2010-03-08T13:31:54","date_gmt":"2010-03-08T18:31:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lanternreview.com\/blog\/?p=1192"},"modified":"2010-03-10T22:20:44","modified_gmt":"2010-03-11T03:20:44","slug":"the-page-transformed-fiona-sze-lorrain-on-ekphrasis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/2010\/03\/08\/the-page-transformed-fiona-sze-lorrain-on-ekphrasis\/","title":{"rendered":"The Page Transformed: Fiona Sze-Lorrain on Ekphrasis"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"Man<\/a>
Man Ray's "Larmes"<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As we continue our exploration of ekphrastic poetry, poet Fiona Sze-Lorrain, whose first book (Water the Moon<\/span><\/a>) we reviewed<\/a> last month, graciously answers some questions<\/em> that we’ve posed to her about the ekphrastic elements of her collection<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
WATER THE MOON<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LR: <\/strong>How do you envision your work with ekphrasis with respect to the larger arc or project of Water the Moon<\/em>?<\/p>\n

FSL: <\/strong>Ekphrasis is indeed one of the many channels I turn to for building the muscle of my imagination. The Greeks say, \u201cIn the beginning was the verb.\u201d How about \u201cIn the beginning was the image\u201d? I remember having read \u2014 a long time ago \u2014 an interview with the French theatre artist, Ariane Mnouchkine, who (probably influenced by the Japanese theatre philosopher and pioneer, Zeami) perceived emotion as coming from recognition, which is an useful perspective for actors. In a way or another, I too define my experience of ekphrasis as emotion coming from recognition\u2026 for instance, by recognizing something in paintings that can transform descriptive clues to deceptively personal\/emotional landscapes or narrative possibilities. Part of the larger arc of Water the Moon<\/em> is about dialogues with artistic voices or consciousness that follow me like shadows over time. Steichen, Van Gogh, Dora Maar, Man Ray\u2026 these happen to be just some of them whose iconic images play a role in molding my sensibilities since a child.<\/p>\n

LR: <\/strong>In “Steichen’s Photographs,” you write “Photos have no verbs . . . \/ . . .Verbs are those trying not to pose” (58). Indeed, it seems that your ekphrastic engagement with photography in the collection\u00a0is more immediate in nature\u00a0than your engagement with\u00a0other\u00a0artistic media, like painting \u2014 for example, in “Van Gogh is Smiling,” you continually\u00a0invite a reconstruction of his iconic images, “Let’s imagine fifteen sunflowers” or “Let’s retrace your starry blue night” (51), rather than\u00a0delivering a direct experiential\u00a0response to a particular work.\u00a0In what ways does the\u00a0camera’s eye\u00a0provide a different type of visual or interpretive experience than other forms of visual art (e.g. painting, sculpture)?\u00a0 How\u00a0did these differences\u00a0influence your decisions about craft and perspective?<\/p>\n

FSL: <\/strong>Perhaps this is just a personal preference. I am married to a man who knows much about the world and craft of photography. By chance and good fortune, I have also crossed paths with the work of a few important photographers of our times. So I tend to feel more intimate with photographs, though paintings, to be honest, always offer me the contemplative space whenever I need it. Photographs \u2014 less so. They tend to be more visceral for me, and contain specific social realities that I can more easily identify with or pinpoint. As you can see, the cover image of my new book of poetry, Water the Moon (italics) is also a photograph. (It is entitled “Cortona,” taken by American photographer, Blake Dieter, in Italy). The clock in it is a metaphor of the Moon – in terms of time. I like films tremendously too and sometimes imagine photographs as immortalised snapshots from an unknown film. In general, it is harder for me to be oblique when writing about photographs than about paintings. You do not see something just because it is visible. There must be something else. What is it? I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

LR: <\/strong>Both “Steichen’s Photographs” and “Larmes” balance deftly on the seam between the perceived and the perceiver \u2014 in other words, we are made aware of the strange subjectivities at work when\u00a0our gaze\u00a0as readers is directed towards the speaker, whose observations\u00a0become the subject of the poem as a piece of art, even while she herself\u00a0is engaged in a process of\u00a0fixing another\u00a0artist’s subject in her own gaze.\u00a0How can ekphrasis be of use to both\u00a0the poet and the reader of poetry as an exercise in gaze, perspective, and subjectivity?<\/p>\n

FSL: <\/strong>Ekphrasis (like any form of writing) is all about distance, because ultimately even if emotion must come from recognition, there comes a distilled point when the lie of the expression becomes evident: the artist, the painting, the poem, the writer, the reader, the reading \u2026 all these can never exist in one same space of subjectivity. \u201cLet it not be the medium we question but the man — painter and photographer,” summed up Sadakichi Hartmann in “A Monologue” that was published in Camera Work<\/em> in 1904, around the time of Steichen’s early photography. If anything, what ekphrasis offers is a bridge between various agendas, intentions and temporalities, based on an unchanging image. This bridge is dynamic \u2014 it constructs and deconstructs itself all the time. Besides, no one gaze is identical. I suppose it really is just simply the evocative power of an image that defines what we would call ekphrasis. At least this is what I feel – for now…<\/p>\n

To read more about Fiona Sze-Lorrain, please visit her web site<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 Water the Moon<\/span> was released by Marick Press in February 2010 and is available for purchase<\/a> on their site.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we continue our exploration of ekphrastic poetry, poet Fiona Sze-Lorrain, whose first book (Water the Moon) we reviewed last month, graciously answers some questions that we’ve posed to her about the ekphrastic elements of her collection. LR: How do you envision your work with ekphrasis with respect to the larger arc or project of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[7,238],"tags":[240,186,80,187],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1192"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1204,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192\/revisions\/1204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}