{"id":706,"date":"2017-09-17T02:21:50","date_gmt":"2017-09-17T07:21:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/?p=706"},"modified":"2017-12-28T22:19:11","modified_gmt":"2017-12-29T04:19:11","slug":"come-we-can-go-in-contingency-and-deep-seeing-in-jorie-grahams-san-sepolcro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/come-we-can-go-in-contingency-and-deep-seeing-in-jorie-grahams-san-sepolcro\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cCome, we can go in\u201d: Contingency and Deep Seeing in Jorie Graham\u2019s \u201cSan Sepolcro\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beth McDermott, Series Contributor<\/h2>\n

Beth\u2019s series \u201cEkphrastic Possibility<\/a>\u201d explores what ekphrasis is, its evolution with the lyric tradition, and the craft of writing ekphrastic poems.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One might consider Homer\u2019s description of Achilles\u2019 shield or Ashbery\u2019s \u201cSelf-Portrait in a Convex Mirror\u201d to be touchstone ekphrastic poems because of where they exist in the ekphrastic tradition, creating bookends for a kind of continuum James A. W. Heffernan charts in Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery. <\/em>For Heffernan, both of these writers\u2019 texts illustrate the impetus to narrate the ostensibly fixed image, with Ashbery\u2019s meditative poem not only narrating, but also commenting on the nature of representation, by turns addressing the painter and the art critic, ushering ekphrasis into the postmodern age. But just less than a decade after Ashbery published \u201cSelf-Portrait\u201d in the August, 1974 issue of Poetry<\/em>, Jorie Graham wrote \u201cSan Sepolcro\u201d: a poem Heffernan might have looked at in his 1993 study that is heavy on male poets and also maintains, as part of its theoretical argument, a male\/female antagonism between poetry and visual art.\u00a0While Heffernan is not the first to put \u201cthe sister arts\u201d in a contested relationship, his argument that the relationship is binary and gendered perpetuates a limited understanding of sex and gender and ignores the way poets like Graham and Elizabeth Bishop have used ekphrasis to overlap perspectives, rather than create division. Despite these limitations, Heffernan\u2019s definition of ekphrasis as \u201ca verbal representation of a visual representation\u201d (3) is useful for keeping in mind that ekphrasis is characterized by layers of representation, and is often quoted in literature that acknowledges the difficulty of clearly defining an ancient and ever-changing mode.<\/p>\n

But maybe there\u2019s more relevance to ekphrasis\u2019 ancient roots than a gendered contest for mastery would allow. The \u201cTheories of Media\u201d<\/a> glossary at The University of Chicago describes how ekphrasis was taught as an exercise to Greek students of rhetoric: \u201cThe student of ekphrasis was encouraged to lend their attention not only to the qualities immediately available in an object, but to make efforts to embody qualities beyond the physical aspects of the work they were observing.\u201d Here I\u2019m especially interested in what it means to \u201cembody qualities beyond the physical aspects of the work,\u201d and whether thinking about a space beyond the work might allow us to see the ekphrastic poem and the visual representation it re-presents as contingent: a partnership that evidences either text\u2019s insufficiency, rather than the potential for one to silence the other. What if the best ekphrasis, informed by its ancient history, gestures beyond the physical work in an effort to broaden or deepen the frame lines that bestow upon the work its perceived autonomy?<\/p>\n

Graham\u2019s \u201cSan Sepolcro\u201d is a clear example of ekphrasis moving beyond the physical work and allowing the reader to participate in what I will call \u201cdeep seeing.\u201d Rather than the poem being another static object alongside or in contest with the two-dimensional painting, Graham\u2019s ekphrasis argues for contingency between poem, painting, and history. The narrative impulse Heffernan claims of ekphrasis is observable in the way Graham expands the spatial and temporal dimensions of the Madonna del Parto<\/em>, a fresco by Piero della Francesca.\u00a0But Graham\u2019s narrative impulse is more concise than digressive, and might be better described as a lyric <\/em>impulse, especially if we keep in mind Helen Vendler\u2019s response to sociopsychological critics in The Art of Shakespeare\u2019s Sonnets. <\/em>Arguing against \u201cthe persistent wish to turn the sequence [of the Sonnets<\/em>] into a novel (or a drama),\u201d Vendler cautions against forgetting that \u201cthe true \u2018actors\u2019 in lyric are words, not \u2018dramatic persons\u2019\u201d (2-3). The lyric impulse in Graham\u2019s ekphrasis doesn\u2019t narrate the fresco so much as pierces it, drawing the arrow back to a point in history that doesn\u2019t quite exist. If one were to sketch the shape of the deep seeing \u201cSan Sepolcro\u201d enacts, it would look like an acute-angle opening onto contingency. The depth that Graham\u2019s lyric impulse achieves through linguistic play that embodies both the structure of the poem and the structure of thinking (Vendler 3) undercuts the iconic, two-dimensional representation of Christ\u2019s impending birth; instead of keeping us at a respectful distance, Graham\u2019s speaker welcomes us to \u201cgo in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Madonna del Parto by Piero della Francesca
\u00a9 Comune di Monterchi 2015 – Monterchi Museum<\/p><\/div>\n

The first poem of Jorie Graham\u2019s second collection, Erosion <\/em>(1983), \u201cSan Sepolcro\u201d begins with an invitation:<\/p>\n

In this blue light\r\n          I can take you there,\r\nsnow having made me\r\n          a world of bone\r\nseen through to. This\r\n          is my house,\r\n\r\nmy section of Etruscan\r\n          wall, my neighbor\u2019s\r\nlemontrees, and, just below\r\n          the lower church,\r\nthe airplane factory.<\/pre>\n
The invitation to go with the speaker is possible due to coldness on loan from snow\u2014a great leveler. The lines \u201csnow having made me \/ a world of bone\u201d work in two ways: syntactically, the speaker and her world are \u201cbone \/ seen through to,\u201d which also makes sense on a biological level: the speaker doesn\u2019t exist apart from her surroundings; she exists in a world of bone.\u00a0Even her \u201cEtruscan\u201d wall (by far one of the most curious words in the poem), suggests that she is not outside of time but of <\/em>time, part of a pre-Christian culture suppressed by a growing Roman empire.\u00a0She is a relic, like her section of wall is, and the word \u201cbone\u201d implies.<\/p>\n
This contingency between the speaker and her surroundings is further emphasized in the description that ensues:<\/p>\n
          A rooster\r\n\r\ncrows all day from mist\r\n          outside the walls.\r\nThere\u2019s milk on the air,\r\n          ice on the oily\r\nlemonskins.\u00a0How clean\r\n          the mind is,\r\n\r\nholy grave. It is this girl\r\n          by Piero\r\ndella Francesca, unbuttoning\r\n          her blue dress,\r\nher mantle of weather,\r\n          to go into\r\n\r\nlabor.<\/pre>\n
In a place like San Sepolcro, with its porousness belying the conqueror\u2019s attempt to erase history, Graham\u2019s omniscient speaker perceives the barely perceptible elements that coat and penetrate the living. She herself partakes in this overlapping: the mind metaphorically transitions to the girl in the painting in a clean lateral sweep reminiscent of a brush sweeping the canvas. The mind is <\/em>\u201cthis girl \/ by Piero \/ della Francesca,\u201d as if the speaker doesn\u2019t exist separate from what she perceives. In numerous ekphrastic poems the description is so heavy that we may hunger for a narrator\u2019s presence. But whether there are \u201cdramatic persons\u201d or not, perspectives exist; we come to know them through what Vendler calls \u201cthe structure of thinking\u201d mimicked by the poem\u2019s structure and the words themselves (3). In the case of \u201cSan Sepolcro,\u201d description of the painting doesn\u2019t occupy that much of the poem.\u00a0But much like her predecessor William Carlos Williams, Graham\u2019s speaker doesn\u2019t stand back and reflect on her emotional connection to the painting; chilled to the bone, the speaker\u2019s mind presses against the painting, which, like snow, gives way. \u00a0We are thus permitted to enter into history:<\/p>\n
Come, we can go in.\r\n          It is before\r\nthe birth of god. No one\r\n          has risen yet\r\nto the museums, to the assembly\r\n          line--bodies\r\n\r\nand wings--to the open air\r\n          market. This is\r\nwhat the living do: go in.\r\n          It\u2019s a long way.\r\nAnd the dress keeps opening\r\n          from eternity\r\n\r\nto privacy, quickening.<\/pre>\n
Questions of ownership exist in the white space between \u201ceternity\u201d and \u201cprivacy\u201d: before god, one is permitted entry; art exists outside of the museum, and money hasn\u2019t yet exchanged hands. But \u201cprivacy\u201d is where things resist, however quickly that resistance is overcome:<\/p>\n
          Inside, at the heart,\r\nis tragedy, the present moment\r\n          forever stillborn,\r\nbut going in, each breath\r\n          is a button\r\n\r\ncoming undone, something terribly\r\n          nimble-fingered\r\nfinding all of the stops.\r\n<\/pre>\n
Of course this is an erotic poem, and the painting is, too; the Madonna has her hand at the seam where her dress has begun to open\u2014exactly where Graham\u2019s speaker finds entryway into the painting.\u00a0But the poem is about the act of \u201cgoing in,\u201d not the big reveal. Although the last few lines are \u201cmeta\u201d in the sense that \u201cstops\u201d is self-referential, \u201cgoing in\u201d is an endless process that\u2019s bigger than our private lives. It\u2019s the search for truth, not truth itself. The poem teaches, through ekphrasis, deep seeing in the drama of its unfolding, in the speaker, alive as any of us, doing what the living do.<\/p>\n
Works Cited:<\/p>\n
Graham, Jorie. Erosion. <\/em>Princeton UP, 1983.<\/p>\n
Heffernan, James A. W. Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery. <\/em>U of Chicago, 1993.<\/p>\n
Vendler, Helen. The Art of Shakespeare\u2019s Sonnets. <\/em>The Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 1997.<\/p>\n
\u2245<\/p>\n
\"Beth<\/a><\/p>\n
Beth McDermott is the author of a chapbook titled\u00a0How to Leave a Farmhouse<\/i>\u00a0(Porkbelly 2015), an associate editor with RHINO, and poetry editor for\u00a0Kudzu House Quarterly<\/i>. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as\u00a0DIAGRAM<\/i>,\u00a0Storm Cellar<\/i>, and\u00a0Southern Humanities Review<\/i>, and she regularly reviews for\u00a0American Book Review<\/i>. She\u2019s an assistant professor of English at the University of St. Francis and lives in New Lenox, IL.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Beth McDermott, Series Contributor Beth\u2019s series \u201cEkphrastic Possibility\u201d explores what ekphrasis is, its evolution with the lyric tradition, and the craft of writing ekphrastic poems. One might consider Homer\u2019s description of Achilles\u2019 shield or Ashbery\u2019s \u201cSelf-Portrait in a Convex Mirror\u201d … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[262],"tags":[256,261,260,255,258,259,257],"class_list":["post-706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ekphrastic-possibility","tag-ekphrasis","tag-helen-vendler","tag-james-heffernan","tag-jorie-graham","tag-madonna-del-parto","tag-piero-della-francesca","tag-san-sepolcro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=706"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":766,"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706\/revisions\/766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}