Ekphrasis in American Poetry

Download or read book Ekphrasis in American Poetry written by Sandra Lee Kleppe and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2015-10-19 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ekphrasis in American Poetry: The Colonial Period to the 21st Century provides a sample of the chronological range and stylistic variety of ekphrastic poetry, or poetry that engages in various ways with different types of visual art, including pictographs, paintings, moving panoramas, daguerreotypes, photographs, landscape, and more. The volume shows how ekphrasis has been a part of American poetry from its inception, and that as many American men as women have produced work in this genre. The book opens with an overview chapter followed by an examination of American ekphrastic poems during the formative Colonial period where Europe, Africa, and Indigenous America met in encounters that are depicted in art and literature. It closes with two chapters on Native American poetry that consider how American landscapes serve as ekphrastic prompts for personal and collective experiences. In between are contributions on men and women poets and artists who have engaged with ekphrasis in a variety of ways from different periods. As such, American ekphrasis emerges as a genre that has implications far beyond the Eurocentric versions of the canon that have hitherto been discussed in the critical literature on the topic.