Throwback Thursday
Updated: Apr 25
from the Archives of The Ekphrastic Review—April 13, 2023!
These Throwback Thursday poems and flash fiction from The Ekphrastic Review archives take us through a transformation in place and space. They remind us that we cannot turn back to be who we were. We are gone. It would be like grasping at a shapeshifter. But this is not a dark place. If you’re like me, reading these ekphrastic pieces might make you might feel as if anything is possible, as if a trap door has opened and now is the chance to stretch it wide open. After reading them, I went outside. The wind picked up, a misty layer over Lake Michigan disappeared, and the sun came out, making everything clearly visible.
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Tending (Blue), by Michelle Kraft
A flash fiction piece inspired by a photograph of a skyspace by James Turrell: “peering from the corner of her eye at the eternal blueness above”
https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/tending-blue-by-michelle-kraft
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Three Tanka After Monet, in Irish and English, by Gabriel Rosenstock
Three lovely tanka in translation on love and natural beauty.
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A poem inspired by a photograph of Water, by Naoko Fukumaru: “Tiptoes from shadow into light”
https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/solace-by-laura-ann-reed
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The writer speaks to the artist Helen Frankenthaler in this flash fiction piece.
https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/lots-wife-by-brendan-todt
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Mother With Two Children, by Erica Goss
A beautiful poem inspired by Mother With Two Children, by Egon Schiele: “I posed them flesh against flesh”
https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/mother-with-two-children-by-erica-goss
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Threshold to Coyoacan Plaza, Mexico City, by Maia Elsner
Pass over the threshold between two places in time in this calligram inspired by a photograph.
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On the Water, by Ashley Mabbitt
A mother-daughter relationship and an immediacy that drops us into a scene by a harbour.
https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/on-the-water-by-ashley-mabbitt
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One Viewer’s Response to J. Francis Criss’s Detroit, Waterfront, by Bill Waters
J. Francis Criss’s Detroit, Waterfront imagined in this poem where “streetlamp and freight crane
are children’s toys”