Dance-Art-Poem

"Ballerina" by Paul Vincenti. Image used with permission.

Thanks to artist Paul Vincenti, who posted my poem "A Meeting of the Arts" to go with his painting "Ballerina."

Paul painted this portrait live, on the spot, in 90 minutes (with subsequent fine-tuning), before a crowd at a gallery opening -- his website has more details. After seeing the portrait, I challenged myself to write a sonnet about it, on the spot (though not before a crowd). I drafted the poem in about a half hour and e-mailed it to him. He included it on his webpage, below the painting.

Click here for Paul's online gallery and here for his fantasy art gallery. I had thrilled to his fantasy art first, meeting him and his work at science fiction conventions around Florida.

Here's the poem:

A Meeting of the Arts
(after Paul Vincenti's painting "Ballerina")

Her golden bodice whirls amidst the crowd,
A slice of dance within the gallery.
The music in our heads unfolds, out loud.
And, filling canvas for the room to see,

The artist dips his brush and sculpts a line,
Her supple arms, her leotard still wet,
Her arms demurely crossed, her gaze sublime,
Affixed in form for no one to forget.

Behind her, made ethereal and vast,
Orlando forms a soft kaleidoscope,
Her ballet company a sparkling cast,
Their colors turning pirouettes of hope.

She dances through the paint in fluid grace.
The artist's brushes hold and stroke her face.

This isn't the first time poetry's been written to one of Paul's paintings. In 2008 Marge Simon and I each wrote poems based on paintings we'd seen at the Necronomicon art show. While I'd written "First Contact in Appalachia" to Sandra SanTara's "Love Song," Marge had written "Land/Escape" to Paul's "Remnants of the Ancient Age". Both poems appeared in Space and Time #104.

Writing poetry to go with a painting (or, more broadly, a work of art) is not new; it is in fact quite old and is called ekphrasis. The term has its roots in the Greek ek (out) and phrazein (tell, declare, pronounce), and originally meant "speaking out." (Source: Chantal Fischbach and Christiane Hendel)

In "Conventions of Ekphrasis," Calamity Jane explains, "Frequently the poet will use the poem as a means of creating a voice for it, quite literally giving a voice to the mute art object. The artwork (usually painting or sculpture) speaks to the artist or the poem will speak to the mute visual artifact."

The earliest Western example usually given is Homer's description of Achilles' shield in the Iliad, which adds yet another layer to the form because the shield -- the artwork -- is itself imaginary. Technically, ekphrasis can apply to dance and music, but most of the time it references visual art.

Harry Rusche (English Department, Emory University) presents this linked list of ekphrastic poems. There's also a magazine called Ekphrasis dedicated to the form.

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Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.)
Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite
Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny
Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines
Free downloads at the Deviations website and on Smashwords.

Go to Manybooks.net to access Covenant, Appetite, Destiny, and Bloodlines in even more formats!

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Adventures in A

Image from Florida's Educational Technology Clearinghouse.

Written for Sunday Scribblings prompt #225: "letter."

This two-part entry is brought to you by the letter A.

1. A is for the Key Of


Brooklyn, NY, 1959. I am about a year old.

Whenever I can, I get to the monthly open mics at Woodview Coffee House a few miles down the road. Woodview is closed for the summer, but the coffee house is sponsoring a contest "to document in song the threat this oil disaster poses to our Gulf Coast way of life; to celebrate the beauty that is threatened by this manmade disaster; and to encourage alternate means of producing energy which are safer, cleaner and renewable." (Click here for details and entry form.)

I've composed pieces in the past, but this is the first time I've entered a song-writing contest. Entrants may submit up to three songs; the deadline is October 1 and results won't be in until mid-February 2011.

A concept came to me shortly after I saw the announcement, and I spent the next week working out the lyrics and tune in my head, writing the melody and piano accompaniment, practicing the piece, and finally recording it to submit.

I get a disconnect when I try to translate the sounds in my head into symbols on the page -- for as long as I can remember I could play music by ear pretty easily, but my sight-reading has always been lousy. I had to re-educate myself about things I'd long forgotten, like dotted rests. And after jotting down a "quick" first draft in the key of C, I realized that to be kind to my voice I had to transpose what I had written, down to the key of A.

The process also showed me how differently I treat song writing from fiction writing, or even from poetry, even though the lyrics are essentially a poem. I can point almost immediately to musical influences for the song. As I wrote the lyrics, I could hear in my head echoes of several tunes with mood and tempo similar to what I wanted to do. In contrast, I would be hard-pressed to say that a story of mine combines the qualities of stories X, Y, and Z from other people -- although I can often point to a piece of music (rather than prose) that drives my fiction. Music doesn't play much of a role when I write poetry, although I'm driven by the rhythm of the words.

2. A is for August



Starting next Sunday (August 1), I'll participate in Folded Word's writing month event, 24/7. Participants spend the first 24 days of the month writing short works, then spend the final week in revisions. Folded Word's July 20 blog entry gives details on how to join the event.

The Basecamp site defines short works as follows: flash fiction (101-500 words), micro fiction (40-100 words), Twitter-sized prose or poetry (140 characters or fewer), prose poems (under 100 words), and short poetry of any form (8 lines or fewer). (Those definitions differ slightly from those on the blog entry.)

I plan to give my entries the central theme of "Divinations" (not to be confused with my series, Deviations). At my desk I've got a pair of dice -- one blue die, one purple -- that were freebies from Comic Emporium at The Wrath of Con back in 2008. I've assigned them the following values:

Blue Die
1 (CE logo). Twitter poetry (140 characters or fewer)
2. Twitter fiction (140 characters or fewer)
3. short poetry (8 lines or fewer)
4. prose poems (under 100 words)
5. micro fiction (40-100 words)
6. flash fiction (101-500 words)

Purple Die
1 (CE logo). Birth
2. Water
3. Air
4. Earth
5. Fire
6. Death

For example, a toss gives me a 3 on the blue die and a 4 on the purple die. Using the correspondences above, that gives me a prompt to write a short poem of 8 lines or fewer about a process of divination that uses earth or something earth-related:

Cocooned Garden

Inchworms sift through dropped dirt.
I brush my pants, leave pale fruits behind.
At night I dream
of a harvest of Geometrid moths
making the moonlight flutter
through skeletonized leaves.


Iridopsis humaria, Family Geometridae (Geometrid Moths). Common name: Small Purplish Gray. Photographed in October 2007.

My Random House College Dictionary, Revised Edition, defines "divination" as 1. the attempt to foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge by occult or supernatural means; 2. augury; prophecy; 3. perception by intuition; instinctive foresight. One meaning of "occult" is "hidden." That leaves me with a broad range of interpretation.

A central theme is not a requirement in 24/7. But I like having an over-arching concept that would tie all those short works together.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other Journeys

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Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.)
Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite
Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny
Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines
Free downloads at the Deviations website and on Smashwords.

Go to Manybooks.net to access Covenant, Appetite, Destiny, and Bloodlines in even more formats!

Participant, Operation E-Book Drop. (Logo credit: K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Ancient City Con IV (Photo Heavy)

First and foremost, kudos and thanks to K.L. Nappier, who did all the driving in a car stuffed to the gills with our Author Stuff! And thanks to convention director Christopher Gabaldon, art director/webmaster Henry Livingston, and all the other volunteers who made Ancient City Con IV possible!

Continued...

Kathy picked me up around 2:30 on Friday afternoon -- which means she picked me up, plus two wheeled plastic totes, suitcase, book bag, canvas tote-with-netbook, and canvas tote bag with whatever didn't fit into the rest. And camera and fanny pack, which joined me in the front seat.

We got to the Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront in time for dinner at Jacksonville Landing, once all our gear was settled in Room 813 -- blessedly quiet for a convention hotel.



I hadn't stayed at a convention hotel in years -- usually I'm at a smaller lodging several miles or at the very least a good-sized walk away. Being an elevator ride from the action was sheer luxury, made cute by the mechanical frogs. Or migrating ducks. Sometimes they sounded like a noisy flock, sometimes like spring peepers, sometimes like green treefrogs: a bank of six (or was it eight?) elevators calling up and down the shafts every time one passed a floor level.

And that was before I had downed two glasses of Guinness with my chicken Caesar salad and my first taste of delicious conch fritters (recommended by Kathy).



Jacksonville Landing.



Above: "Last Band Standing" competition.







One of many bridges spanning the St. Johns River. At night this one shines in gorgeous blue lights.



Seen across the parking lot beside the Hyatt.

Ancient City Con didn't begin until Saturday, bright and early at 8 a.m. We set up in Creator's Alley, a straight shot of craft and fine artists and writers.



The latest addition to my display is She Nailed A Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror (Dybbuk Press, 2010), set for official release in October. It includes my story "Judgment at Naioth," which takes its cue from events in Samuel I and Samuel II. Pre-order here.



My display also included:
1. Deviations: Covenant (paperback, Aisling Press).
2. Covenant and Appetite on CD (click here for more info and free downloads).
3. Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory (Scriblerus Press, IPPY Silver Medalist; contains my story "Arachne").
4. Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet (Dark Scribe Press, Bram Stoker Award winner; contains my story "Memento Mori").
5. Issue 14, Electric Velocipede (Hugo Award winner; contains my story "Hermit Crabs," which is on the recommended reading list in The Year's Best Science Fiction, 26th Annual Edition). I am now down to my display copy. "Copies will be available soon at Night Shade Books," according to the EV website.
6. Oct./Nov. 2009 Asimov's (Contains my novelette "Flotsam" and poem "Derivative Work").
7. Vampyr Verse (Popcorn Press; contains my poem "Neighbors").
8. My chapbook 30 Science Sonnets for April 2010.

My table bordered Kathy's.



We each took a turn in the Dr. Who booth.





Costumes around the con:









Storm Troopers come courtesy of the the 501st Squad Seven.











Droids from the R2D2 Builders Club swiveled their heads and beeped greetings at passers-by.

On Saturday I participated in the "Writing Industry Q&A" panel, where I recommended the blog written by Nathan Bransford, Jane Friedman's "There Are No Rules," and Eric's "Pimp My Novel," along with Victoria Strauss's "Writer Beware" and Preditors and Editors. (Kathy added the Absolute Write Water Cooler.) Moderator Gary Roen asked our audience where they thought the industry was heading, particularly concerning e-books. His informal poll indicated that the hardcopy book is still far from dead, and that predictions of its demise flare up every few decades. (I'd cited this article about how the phonograph was allegedly poised to kill the book back in 1894.)

From there I high-tailed it to a corner of a large, open-area pavilion set aside for workshops, to give a session in character and plot development. I'd been warned in advance that tables would be set in a circle (actually three sides of a square), with room for just a few people, so I retooled my large crowd version into something more intimate. The workshop area shared space with tables for gaming, registration, photos, and other activities, with all the ambient noises those entail. Given all that, we did well, combining a brainstorming session and writing craft Q&A. Joining my regular handout and a new worksheet was the URL to Patricia Wrede's awesome world-building questionnaire on the SFWA site.

From there it was back to my table, bordered on the other side by Movie Crypt. Those folks kept us well entertained with videos, from trailers to spoofs, until dinner time. Their music had people literally dancing in the aisle.





Eleven of us descended on Jacksonville Landing and Cinco de Mayo for dinner. Our table included people representing Auntie Maim (Linda S. Cowden), Movie Crypt (including Kevin Ranson), Necronomicon (con chair Ann Morris), Oasis (con chair Juan Sanmiguel), Trinity Gateways (including Doris Ross and Lisa Mercado), and T-Shirt Bordello, along with K.L. Nappier, me, and literary guest of honor Richard Lee Byers.



The "State of the Genre" panel on Sunday, moderated by Movie Crypt, focused more on movies and television. Here, too, we discussed ways in which the industry had changed. Several of us were old enough to remember the days before cable (never mind the days before the Internet), when each region boasted its own home-grown horror movie show. (I'd grown up watching Chiller Theater, Creature Features, and the myth-centered Sons of Hercules.) As with publishing, new technologies are making video creation and dissemination accessible to more and more people, lending even more importance to word of mouth.

I had a small but active group for my speculative poetry workshop, where I showed and distributed materials from the Science Fiction Poetry Association (including .pdf files Dragon Lust and The Universe in Three Lines) and elsewhere. My handout provided an overview, with prompts and space for drafting poems. Prompts took their cue from various subsets within speculative poetry -- science fiction, fantasy, horror, science, myth, etc. -- and could be used alone or in combination. Our discussion first focused on the different magazines publishing speculative poetry, both inside and outside genre markets -- including a Rhysling Award nominee from the Lyric, the oldest poetry magazine in North America. Discussion then broadened to talking about different poetic forms (one participant tried her hand at a cinquain) and to ways of getting students more interested in writing in general.

The Jacksonville Times-Union provided excellent coverage of the convention. Check out the paper's article, photos, and video.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other Journeys Promote Your Page Too










Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.)
Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite
Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny
Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines
Free downloads at the Deviations website and on Smashwords.

Go to Manybooks.net to access Covenant, Appetite, Destiny, and Bloodlines in even more formats!

Participant, Operation E-Book Drop. (Logo credit: K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.