Stephen Burt's article on C.D. Wright adds a new meaning or gives examples of this idea of ekphrastic fear or hope. As Burt mentions, Wright uses her poem to try to "resemble the experience of taking, and of viewing, photographs especially portraits." I concur with Burt in his explanation of Wright's poetry. Wright use of grammar or placement of words or listings tries to capture the experience of photographing. In addition, Burt mentions that Wright's poems can be seen as captions for Luster's photograph. While thinking about this, I imagine that the reverse could happen. Wright's poems could be captions for which Luster's photographs could respond to (or can describe or represent the poem). This for me brings up the idea of ekphrastic fear and Agee's statement that photographs are more superior than poetry.
One thing that I truly appreciated from Wright's poetry is her quest to try to describe the photographic experience. I believe this was beautifully exemplified in "One Big Self" in which Wright not only (as well as Luster) showed how more less human the prisoners are, that they are like us (non-incarcerated people) but she also filled the gaps the Luster's photographs could not capture. She described the waiting period when Luster was setting up her equipments and the human interaction, the human nature of the prisoners as the waited to be photographed. Thinking about ekphrastic hope, I believe that ekphrastic hope was achieved in this collaboration - that it is possible for text to truly represent the visual not necessarily what is being seen in terms of the photograph but the experience of taking the photograph. That the poet can complete or add to the image of a photograph by providing details that was not captured while the picture was taken. I think this can be achieved if the poet went along with the photographer.
I really liked the idea of the "blindness" in documentary photography. That the photographer's job is not necessarily to illuminate social problems but to capture these incidence in such a way as to make them present to us, to people who are "blind" to these problems.
This reading relates to Ekphrasis in that C.D. Wright’s poems invoke and liken themselves to photographs, and to what photographers do. This kinship with photography is forged through working alongside a particular photographer. Wright has a strategy when creating her poetry. Though her work “fits” poetic genres like love, lyric, and ode, most of her work instead “matches” kinds of photography. Some of her work has been organized around nudes, the portrait, landscape, and documentary work.
Going along with the photography motif, Wright’s work describes apertures, lenses, frames, light levels, and sight lines. She lists facts and “presents poetic lines as if they are photographic captions”. The reading described Wright’s work as solely hers, that nobody else has done what she does with poems before.
Wright’s poems are descriptive in a way that helps capture the seen verbally while describing what may occur in the process of capturing an image of the same scene. Wright’s poems “often deploy photographic language in order to show by analogy what she wants her poems to do”.
The line “Seeing Wright’s way, seeing what Wright’s lens can show, seeing photographs as Wright sees them…” describes her parts as camera parts. Instead of speaking of her as a writer, she is instead described as an actual camera. Not only can her work be related to photography, but her actual being (including mind) can be described as the tool photographers use to create their images. I suppose the collaboration between Wright and photographers is even more intimate than originally stated.
It is interesting that a woman who writes in a way that has never been explored before also relates the “phallic” camera and the act of “penetrating” reality by taking photographs to more feminine things, likening the writer’s eye, the vagina, the mouth (hence speaking voice), a baby’s first cry, the origin of the universe, and the “aperture” of the camera.
Varying collaborative works are described by their content and the content captured. These include the previously mentioned nudes, portrait, landscape, and documentary work. These all are depicted in different books that rely on varying photographic “genres”. These books also contain motifs throughout the pieces. The motifs accent the works of both the photographer and Wright providing another similarity between the parts of the collaboration.
The writings and photographs play off one another, and some hopes of the writings go back to the origins of photography. In other words, the reading describes the goals of some poets and critics attribute to poetry, to the dramatic monologue and its descendants, or to postromantic lyric, coincide with the goals of some photographers, and some writers on photography, claim for photography. From here, the reading outright states the coincidences between the two forms or art and incorporates it into her poetic techniques. “Her invocations of aperture, exposure, and light levels; her compositions with mirrors and windows nd doors; her descriptions of herself as a photographer’s ‘factotum’; her Agee-esque lists; her vernacular quotations; her lines that double as captions, ‘details’, and reflections; her focus on faces-all try to make the experience of reading her poems resemble the experience of taking, and of viewing, photographs.” By describing Wright’s work in both literary and photography terms, it almost describes what the poetry is physically as well as what it attempts to “capture” (pun intended).
While reading the article on CD Wright and photography by author Stephen Burt, I realized that the visual and aesthetical idea behind a work of poetry relates more to photography that honestly with any other medium. The way that Wrights work matches photography is described in many ways, including one very interesting fact about how she uses apertures, lenses, frames, light levels and sight lines that are currently present in a photograph to help her create poetic lines, “as if they were photographic captions.” To understand it in terms of the photobook I feel as though each line of a poem could ultimately become the title or caption to a certain photograph, regardless of the poems meaning as a whole. Though, this is where it starts to become more focused on the poet’s side of the work, and not necessarily the photographers or editor of the book, where the poet might not want one or several lines of work to be anywhere near a photograph, much less a caption or title.
One last interesting detail about the reading that I found interesting was the idea that literary works that function like a camera are not to depict social problems in general but to illuminate particular persons, to make them present to us. At first I was a bit confused at this statement, but then when looking at it in terms of photography, it reminded me of documentary photography and photo-journalism in the sense that the person being documented is brought to our attention. Otherwise the person’s situation or environment, whatever is being photographed and documented, isn’t necessarily our main concern, until the photograph is taken. For example, most people didn’t know about how bad the Rwanda violence was until photographs were printed in LIFE magazine of brutally abused men, women and children. Only then was the person “illuminated” and “presented to us.” Overall, I really enjoyed Stephen Burt’s perspective about C.D. Wright’s poetry and it’s relation to photography, where the writer can almost become the photographer, and help create new photographs in the process.
Stephen Burt's article on C.D. Wright adds a new meaning or gives examples of this idea of ekphrastic fear or hope. As Burt mentions, Wright uses her poem to try to "resemble the experience of taking, and of viewing, photographs especially portraits." I concur with Burt in his explanation of Wright's poetry. Wright use of grammar or placement of words or listings tries to capture the experience of photographing. In addition, Burt mentions that Wright's poems can be seen as captions for Luster's photograph. While thinking about this, I imagine that the reverse could happen. Wright's poems could be captions for which Luster's photographs could respond to (or can describe or represent the poem). This for me brings up the idea of ekphrastic fear and Agee's statement that photographs are more superior than poetry.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that I truly appreciated from Wright's poetry is her quest to try to describe the photographic experience. I believe this was beautifully exemplified in "One Big Self" in which Wright not only (as well as Luster) showed how more less human the prisoners are, that they are like us (non-incarcerated people) but she also filled the gaps the Luster's photographs could not capture. She described the waiting period when Luster was setting up her equipments and the human interaction, the human nature of the prisoners as the waited to be photographed. Thinking about ekphrastic hope, I believe that ekphrastic hope was achieved in this collaboration - that it is possible for text to truly represent the visual not necessarily what is being seen in terms of the photograph but the experience of taking the photograph. That the poet can complete or add to the image of a photograph by providing details that was not captured while the picture was taken. I think this can be achieved if the poet went along with the photographer.
I really liked the idea of the "blindness" in documentary photography. That the photographer's job is not necessarily to illuminate social problems but to capture these incidence in such a way as to make them present to us, to people who are "blind" to these problems.
Better Late than NEVER (Burt Reading)
ReplyDeleteThis reading relates to Ekphrasis in that C.D. Wright’s poems invoke and liken themselves to photographs, and to what photographers do. This kinship with photography is forged through working alongside a particular photographer. Wright has a strategy when creating her poetry. Though her work “fits” poetic genres like love, lyric, and ode, most of her work instead “matches” kinds of photography. Some of her work has been organized around nudes, the portrait, landscape, and documentary work.
Going along with the photography motif, Wright’s work describes apertures, lenses, frames, light levels, and sight lines. She lists facts and “presents poetic lines as if they are photographic captions”. The reading described Wright’s work as solely hers, that nobody else has done what she does with poems before.
Wright’s poems are descriptive in a way that helps capture the seen verbally while describing what may occur in the process of capturing an image of the same scene. Wright’s poems “often deploy photographic language in order to show by analogy what she wants her poems to do”.
The line “Seeing Wright’s way, seeing what Wright’s lens can show, seeing photographs as Wright sees them…” describes her parts as camera parts. Instead of speaking of her as a writer, she is instead described as an actual camera. Not only can her work be related to photography, but her actual being (including mind) can be described as the tool photographers use to create their images. I suppose the collaboration between Wright and photographers is even more intimate than originally stated.
It is interesting that a woman who writes in a way that has never been explored before also relates the “phallic” camera and the act of “penetrating” reality by taking photographs to more feminine things, likening the writer’s eye, the vagina, the mouth (hence speaking voice), a baby’s first cry, the origin of the universe, and the “aperture” of the camera.
Varying collaborative works are described by their content and the content captured. These include the previously mentioned nudes, portrait, landscape, and documentary work. These all are depicted in different books that rely on varying photographic “genres”. These books also contain motifs throughout the pieces. The motifs accent the works of both the photographer and Wright providing another similarity between the parts of the collaboration.
The writings and photographs play off one another, and some hopes of the writings go back to the origins of photography. In other words, the reading describes the goals of some poets and critics attribute to poetry, to the dramatic monologue and its descendants, or to postromantic lyric, coincide with the goals of some photographers, and some writers on photography, claim for photography. From here, the reading outright states the coincidences between the two forms or art and incorporates it into her poetic techniques. “Her invocations of aperture, exposure, and light levels; her compositions with mirrors and windows nd doors; her descriptions of herself as a photographer’s ‘factotum’; her Agee-esque lists; her vernacular quotations; her lines that double as captions, ‘details’, and reflections; her focus on faces-all try to make the experience of reading her poems resemble the experience of taking, and of viewing, photographs.” By describing Wright’s work in both literary and photography terms, it almost describes what the poetry is physically as well as what it attempts to “capture” (pun intended).
While reading the article on CD Wright and photography by author Stephen Burt, I realized that the visual and aesthetical idea behind a work of poetry relates more to photography that honestly with any other medium. The way that Wrights work matches photography is described in many ways, including one very interesting fact about how she uses apertures, lenses, frames, light levels and sight lines that are currently present in a photograph to help her create poetic lines, “as if they were photographic captions.” To understand it in terms of the photobook I feel as though each line of a poem could ultimately become the title or caption to a certain photograph, regardless of the poems meaning as a whole. Though, this is where it starts to become more focused on the poet’s side of the work, and not necessarily the photographers or editor of the book, where the poet might not want one or several lines of work to be anywhere near a photograph, much less a caption or title.
ReplyDeleteAnother interesting point in the reading was how both the work of the poetry and camera imitate and enhance the work of the human eye. This gives the work a much more personal feel than any other medium, in both writing and artwork, relating it back to the physical body and presence. This goes into how Burt mentions the post surgical eye and how it is sort of like a camera, “one whose registries of light and dark the patient must learn to connect to the world she has known.” Wright is playing off of the cliché idea of how photographers generally act as though the camera is their “eye” or way of seeing the world. This is relevant to my experience with photography, where I’ve taken photos at waist or hip level, never once looking through the viewfinder, letting the camera be my eyes. This also goes into the act of privacy and being able to take a photograph of literally anything you want, when most of the time the photographer can’t take a shot of anything they want. In terms of poetry and writing, I feel as though Wright is trying to use certain diction and figurative language to almost make fun of the way photographers view their camera. For the post surgical eye Wright writes the lines “after the iridectomy…the slow recognition of forms” to give the reader a visual reminder of how it takes the eye a few minutes to recognize and capture visual information, much like the way a camera works.
One last interesting detail about the reading that I found interesting was the idea that literary works that function like a camera are not to depict social problems in general but to illuminate particular persons, to make them present to us. At first I was a bit confused at this statement, but then when looking at it in terms of photography, it reminded me of documentary photography and photo-journalism in the sense that the person being documented is brought to our attention. Otherwise the person’s situation or environment, whatever is being photographed and documented, isn’t necessarily our main concern, until the photograph is taken. For example, most people didn’t know about how bad the Rwanda violence was until photographs were printed in LIFE magazine of brutally abused men, women and children. Only then was the person “illuminated” and “presented to us.” Overall, I really enjoyed Stephen Burt’s perspective about C.D. Wright’s poetry and it’s relation to photography, where the writer can almost become the photographer, and help create new photographs in the process.