Ecphrasis

"Ecphrasis has been considered generally to be a rhetorical device in which one art tries to relate to another art by defining and describing the essence and form of that original art, and in doing so, "speak to you" through its illuminative liveliness. A descriptive work of prose or one of poetry, a film, or even a photograph may thus highlight through its rhetorical vividness what is happening, or what is shown in, say, any of the visual arts, and in doing so, may enhance the original art and so take on a life of its own through its brilliant description. The kinds of art described in this way may include painting, photography, sculpture, architecture, etc." from Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia

In the seemingly excess amount of free time here at school, I have decided to write poetry, both of the sacred and profane. Here is an indulgence of mine, however ill-crafted, of the aformentioned poetic practice of ecphrasis. Recently I read an article about Izima Kaoru's photography exhibition "Landscapes With a Corpse," in which I came across a picture in a section entitled "Koike Eiko wears Gianni Versace."

A Picture of Koike Eiko

The pupil-like silver balls, overflowing the plastic pink baskets and glowing machines,
teem like fish from a net onto the glimmering floor, over her body,
her full breasts spilling out too from a feathery turquoise dress, legs limply crossed,
eyes almost fully closed, lips barely drooping open like a dreaming child's,
a bellied-up belle whose drowning form convokes the plug-in noise to join the silent current;
you watch the balls scatter further across the floor, they enter your thoughts--
covering the scene and converting it, the voiceless multitude subsumes her body,
the empty hall, this picture, some rolling into Koike's mouth, some dribbling off her exposed thighs,
her body carried by this tide through the tunnell of empty seats;
still there are more in the machines, an endless flux of praise--all of them hers--
the flood of these balls, indistinct, unending, like beads on a string,
like the river of time--from an unseen when to an unseeable when--
coursing over her still warm body, her dream comes true.