Tag: ekphrasis
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Kintsugi
The pottery bowl that sits on my desk contains markers of my identity: black leather wallet with driver’s license, house keys, Covid vaccination record. The father of a childhood friend made it, spinning clay on a wheel in his garage a short walk from the house where I grew up, my hometown’s name etched on…
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The Armchair in Yu Garden
One of the pavilions which seem to float on pillars above rock piles and fish ponds in Old Shanghai’s Yu Garden is home to a chair made of cypress root – a massive, gnarled jumble pulled up from the ground as a single piece hundreds of years after the tree sprouted then crafted into seat…
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Bonsai
Within a hexagonal pagoda there sits a compact hinoki cypress begun in 1737. A dragon is molded into its pot. How many vessels has it shed during the past 285 years? The form of a towering, ancient pine rendered entirely in miniature by the patience of ten generations. In a moment, eyes can ascend its…
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Shanghai Museum
I noticed a life-size pottery dog made during the first century A.D. because my wife and son were both born in the Chinese Zodiac year of the dog. I stopped to marvel at a Bronze Age wine vessel cast in the shape of an ox. A miniature ceramic lady of the court strumming a pipa…
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Goya’s Eagle Hunter
The ink has faded to burnt sienna, depicting a rust-colored precipice. A man in a harness lowers himself to where a nest is ensconced in a crag. His torso horizontal, he reaches inside the roost, abducting eggs and chicks. From the upper left, a full-fledged eagle flies toward the hunter, oblivious to the impending conundrum…
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Poetry Competition
Poetry Competition, Iran (circa 1600, on display at The Louvre) Painted on square pieces of lacquered brick, two poets kneel opposite each other shaded by the canopy of a tree with broad leaves and delicate, pink flowers. At the right, in a saffron-colored robe, head lowered over a sheet of paper, one of them lifts…
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Saint George
Saint George and the Dragon (Label for Sangiovese 2019, Di Majo Norante) The little parapet in the background provided a vantage for George to watch how the dragon approached the walled city, swooping low to the ground with legs tucked in, thus able to evade the king’s archers. A squire out of sight prepared his…
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Vermont Quarter
Vermont Quarter, 2001: Tapping for Syrup He stands between a pair of leafless maples, two buckets hang off each of their trunks. A scarf that shields his neck is wind-whipped, the chill of early March still winter-fierce. In the distance, beyond snow-covered fields, the icy ridge of Camel’s Hump is limned with silver by dawn’s…
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Seraph
At the Armenian History Museum I saw a brass platter that was embossed to depict the face of a seraph with three pairs of wings around its head. In the ranks of angels, I imagine this one’s voice as an archaic trumpet made from the very same material whose limpid tones mingle well with a…
From the Firefly Galaxy 