ArtiFact #36: EKPHRASM – Jessica Schneider’s Ekphrastic Poetry | Alex Sheremet, Jessica Schneider

ArtiFact: Books, Art, Culture

Although ekphrastic poetry (‘poetry about art’) has been around for a long time, the majority of ekphrastic writing does little more than recapitulate and describe a painting. In ArtiFact #36, Alex Sheremet is joined by Jessica Schneider to discuss her recent book of ekphrastic poetry, “Ekphrasm”, and how her approach is different. From the use of recurring characters, to combining observations on photography with those on painting, to characterizing her various poetic narrators, to the use of psychological tricks, there is more to ekphrasis than meets the eye.

Painters covered include Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne, Hilma af Klint, and others.

Buy Jessica Schneider’s “Ekphrasm”: https://www.amazon.com/Ekphrasm-French-Painters-Paintings-Natures-ebook/dp/B0B53ZB2TV

Jessica Schneider’s first poetry collection, “Wordshapes”: https://www.amazon.com/WordShapes-Selected-1999-2009-Jessica-Schneider-ebook/dp/B07HRDL58B/

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B Side topics: Enneagram Type 5 & over-preparation; the role of enjambment, punctuation in poetry; does YouTube have an unfilled niche for great short poetry; Alex makes plans for capturing footage of the old brothel he grew up next door to; how footage of the 1945 Victory Day parade in Russia suddenly veers into greatness for 30 seconds; Bruce Ario as the most commercial and viral of poets; Jessica’s earrings interfere with the show; “you’re only as good as your last poem” as a psychological motivator; Alex’s first draft of his Lunar New Year (2023) poem; exclusivity in the arts; Alex and Joel Parrish traveling to Minneapolis for footage related to Bruce Ario; on Malik Bendjelloul’s “Searching for Sugar Man”, a biopic on Sixto Rodriguez; Sixto Rodriguez’s excellence as a singer-songwriter; the emotional dilemmas of great artists; why animals can serve as a great example for human beings; Americans take the wrong lesson from Office Space; why every Twitter personality, no matter their politics or beliefs, sounds exactly the same; Russia Russia Russia; what gets lost in translation; Jim Morrison, The Doors, The Beatles and commercialism; Nuri Bilge Ceylan; Nassim Taleb snipes at Lex Fridman; do we need 6 months to read & digest The Brothers Karamazov; pitfalls of highly commercial marijuana legalization

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Jessica Schneider’s interview on ekphrasis with Ethan Pinch of @AnthropomorphicHorse – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbjuQX_r_ho

Vivian Maier footage used in video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDewAU-rgIM

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Timestamps:

0:18 – an icebreaker: Jessica Schneider’s disrespectful emails in preparation for our show

3:18 – how Jessica’s approach to ekphrasis is different; Jessica’s initial frustration with her poem on Mariupol & how it was improved

9:22 – Jessica Schneider’s poem “Manet’s Mirror”, after Edouard Manet’s famous “A Bar at the Folies-Bergère”; how the introduction of Landon at the end of the poem takes it out of the painting’s own diegetic universe; the Wallace Stevens / Sunday Morning connection; why memorizing poetry is excellent for poets

21:40 – Jessica Schneider’s poem “What Monet Said”, after Claude Monet’s “Woman with a Parasol – Madame Monet and Her Son”; Leonard Shlain’s “Art And Physics”

29:35 – the drawing of Paul Cezanne’s son; Jessica Schneider’s “A Young Paul Asleep”; how details totally outside of Cezanne’s drawing make their way into the poem

36:37 – Jessica Schneider’s poem on Mariupol; how Cezanne’s paintings of a forest serve as a ‘spiritual’ backdrop to a seemingly unrelated poem

42:28 – poem on Paul Cezanne’s father reading a newspaper; there has always been a lack of family support for artists; “reading” Cezanne’s painting vs. writing the poem

50:54 – Camille Pissaro’s Voisins; extracting (unexpected) value from a title

56:27 – Jessica’s poem after Vivian Maier’s photography; on the nature of “selfie” / self-portrait poetry; Alex gets in touch with his feminine side

01:05:34 – a poem after Hilma af Klint’s “swan” series; how a series can change individual artistic objects; speculation on Hilma af Klint’s desire to publicly release her work only after a substantial amount of time passed after her death

01:14:08 – discussing the patron-only show & a final, autobiographical poem from Jessica Schneider; a non-ekphrastic poem that nonetheless taps into some concepts of ekphrasis
Tags: #poetry, #painting, #photography, #artpodcast, #cezanne, #monet