Ekphrasis Highlight | Annunciation: Inside a Temporary Passage Structure

From the Greek ek (out) and phrazein (to speak), ekphrasis is a written description of or response to a work of visual art. Samek Museum Guide Joshua Garcia, an incoming Stadler Fellow at Bucknell University’s Stadler Center for Poetry and Literary Arts, shares an ekphrastic poem responding to the Samek’s permanent collection. This week, Garcia’s poem explores the relationship between two artworks, Giovanni del Biondo’s Annunciation and Robert Stackhouse’s Inside a Temporary Passage.

Annunciation: Inside a Temporary Passage Structure

            after Giovanni del Biondo and Robert Stackhouse

Give me beams, not of gold but of timber,
shooting skyward, not coming down on this body
like a dove’s wings, guillotines descending. 

Give me ascension of raw goods, ink and paper,
unfinished and narrowing into an expanse, into a shelter
which reverberates not with consecration, but a howl.

Let void not be so delicately embossed
into a gilded bullseye but etched into me like scars,
mapping wavering dilations of flesh.

Let me creak like a man-made pavilion in a storm,
bucking the sublime with an arched back, uncertain
the structure will hold.