Now Once: An Ekphrastic Poem

This past summer, I was selected to participate in a writing workshop that used dance and movement as the prompt for writing poems.

Writing poetry about the arts - paintings, sculpture, photography, music, dance, etc. - is called ekphrasic poetry. It is a vivid, often dramatic, verbal description of a visual work of art, either real or imagined. Famous examples include "The Shield of Achilles" by Homer, "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats, "The Starry Night" by Anne Sexton and one I have written about, "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" by William Carlos Williams.

This workshop was sponsored by Arts By The People, a New Jersey nonprofit organization with a mission to establish, operate, promote, and conduct educational programs, opportunities, classes, and sessions in the creative arts for the public. With the support of The Santiago Abut Foundation, this project and all parts of The Writing LAB are free and open to the public.

The participants' writing collected in like waves through flesh represents the work of the 3rd annual Writing LAB Summer Residency. This year's ekphrasis workshop included a unique collaboration between Arts by the People and students from the dance graduate program at The Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. Photographic stills from, and QR code links to, the dancers’ films are printed in the anthology alongside each writer's final creation.

During the full-day workshop, the participants went through a series of writing exercises as well as movement exercises. The writing portion was led by poet Michelle Ortega. The movement portion of the program was led by dancer Oksana Horban. Paul Rabinowitz is the Founder and Executive Director of ARTS By The People.

Watching the dancer's video that I selected to write about, I initially had a difficult time finding a center. After several attempts, I realized what I was focusing on was the setting - a stone ground and wall that looked like a desert. Because the dancers were from Jerusalem, I decided to research what kind of stone it would be. It turns out that "Jerusalem stone" is what it is called and it was used for many buildings in the city being that it could be quarried from the surrounding land.

Realizing that the stone was once a sea floor, I became fascinated by the idea that this modern man was moving upon this ancient sea floor that had become a desert, but that life was still embedded in that stone.

The best thing about writing workshops and writing prompts is often that they get you to go in directions that you would not have tried on your own. My poem is quite different from most of my poetry which tends to be narrative and more personal. "Now Once" is more focused on language and place.

NOW ONCE
Once a sea, then a lake, now
evaporated to limestone, dolomite, broken into blocks
to make a road, or a wall
one allowing movement, one to prevent it
once coral, mollusks, a swan, a ship,

a lone shadowless figure moving on what
was once deep water, animated and overflowing,
now sedimentary, fossilized, unable to move
waiting to be resurrected by winglike movements
that lift million-year-old memories from the stone.

Can you see it? Look closely with
ancient eyes, this wall of Jerusalem stone,
life preserved below, life renewed upon it,
the figure unfolds, like an oyster or
a swan – but no, a man, hearing

a carnival of animals from deep within.
Can you hear it? The voices begin,
andantino grazioso, slow and graceful, the vibrations
sound like waves through flesh and time
what is now and what was once.