KARAN

Though Ekphrasis refers to a vivid verbal representation of visual art, it reflects the speaker of the poem/the watcher of the artwork way more than it reflects the painting (you are welcome to contest that!). There was a time Shannan and I used to both write for the Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge and our poems about the same artwork would be wildly different. So much of art has to do with interpretation. Your poem, “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures),” first offers a personal reflection on the experience of swimming — the sensory images here are just lovely! The speaker’s childhood memories of swimming lessons and their present-day experience of floating on their back contribute to a nuanced portrayal of the relationship between the speaker and water. (I am learning to swim right now and find this particularly relatable!) Then the poem transitions to the contemplation of Hockney’s painting. It captures the essence of the artwork, emphasizing the Southern California landscape, the play of light on water, and the figure within the pool. The reference to the “unfocused gaze” of the painter suggests a parallel with the speaker’s own contemplative state. The water here becomes a metaphor for both the physical act of swimming and the fluidity of thought. The artist’s “unfocused gaze” extends beyond the pool, mirroring the speaker’s own contemplative state as thoughts “spin to the edge of the pool.” The poem beautifully weaves together personal memories, art appreciation, and a connection to the natural landscape, creating a tapestry of introspection and sensory experience. I do not have a question per se but I request you to respond to any of the points I touched on. 

REUBEN

Thanks for this thoughtful reflection, Karan! Ekphrasis is something I think about a lot, and I agree that in many ways it reflects the speaker more than the original artwork. A poet’s interpretation of a piece is only one of many possible interpretations, and I’m not an art historian, so mine is in no way authoritative, even if I have done research on the piece. This poem is titled directly after Hockney’s painting, hence the italics in the title. In part, I want it to blur the line between painting and poem. Ekphrasis, as you suggest, is about vividness, and I decided to look up its historical definition for more context now. For the Greeks, it was a rhetorical device defined as “descriptive speech which brings the subject shown before the eyes with visual vividness,” as the lexicographer Theon put it in the 1st century BCE. Much earlier, the 6th c. BCE poet Simonides wrote that “painting is silent poetry, poetry is talking painting,” and to me, these ideas feel much more tangible and delightfully tangled than our modern definition of ekphrasis as representation of visual art through words. Ekphrasis is slippery, thorny, and fraught: I want chlorine, concrete, a green and bitter scent. Hermogenes: “an interpretation that almost brings about seeing through hearing.” In Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red, there’s an imaginary photograph called “Red Patience.” “But all photographs are silent,” the grandmother of Herakles says at one point, to Geryon, the red fairy-boy obsessed with Herakles. Now I’m just rambling. I want to get closer to the art.

          It’s not about interpretation—it’s about the relationship I have with looking at art, at queerness. In reality, the standing figure in the painting is not the artist, as my syntax at least suggests, but Hockney’s lover, Peter Schlesinger. I also have a nostalgia for that part of California, where my grandparents live, where I lived when I was a kid. In the poem’s unfocused gaze, I want to focus myself again. 

KARAN

I sense in your poems a strong spirit of individuality and a willingness to explore without being constrained by external judgments. The poem, “Half”, explores the concept of duality and division in various aspects of life, such as colors, emotions, and time. The repetition of “half” works so well here. It emphasizes the idea of incompleteness and the complexity of human experience in an almost obsessive way. And the staccato sentences add such rhythm! I love it. The poem seems to suggest an acceptance of the contradictory nature of existence, urging for self-expression and transformation. The use of visual and sensory imagery, like colors and feelings, adds depth to the exploration of the self within the broader context of life’s dichotomies. The lines: “I don’t care what I/we turn out to be”, emphasizing the importance (or shall I say un-importance?) of self-discovery, is so nuanced, carrying a tone of liberation, acceptance, defiance, indifference, and somehow a sense of defeat and victory at once. Do you think there is a way in which your poems are exploring duality within the individual? Philosophically, emotionally, even physically? I’d love to know more of your thoughts on this (or refutations!).

REUBEN

I haven’t thought about it quite that way before, but I think all of these poems, not just “Half,” explore duality. I’ve been thinking about queer loneliness, and I think, as a poet, as someone looking for love, I often desire the imaginary. I find that in poems. That’s not something new for artists: we often desire the imaginary and the real simultaneously, I think, and the poem can navigate that space in between. I don’t know how we discover ourselves; maybe we’re constantly doing so. I want to fall in love and to fall out of love, to be in love only with myself. I want to become closer to the lover and to break up with them. I want to gain control and lose it. I’m an anxious person, and maybe part of the poem explores what could happen if I wasn’t, if I gave into every emotion, if the line between poet and speaker blurs further in the future. By performing sound, I perform myself. But sound is only half of the poem, right? (Wrong.) Do I gain control in the poem? Do I lose it? I’m saying a lot of bullshit right now, but self-deprecation might just be a way to minimize the seriousness of what I’m saying. Do I believe myself? Am I lying? Do poems lie? Do they tell the truth? A. All of the above.

          “Half” is also an ekphrastic poem, after Jasper Johns’s 1964 Handprint, and you can find the print in this review of a 2007 exhibition at the National Gallery of Art. I don’t know why I started using the sonnet in my poems after Johns, but I’m not the only one who does so: Brian Teare, in a more experimental, political, and theoretical way, does so in his book Poem Bitten by a Man. Go read some of his flag sonnets in The Brooklyn Rail. Teare’s sonnets have other dimensions, but like mine, I think they can hold dualities in formally compelling ways. What would happen if I lost a line, a beat, or a rhyme? Would the poem fall apart? Would I?

KARAN

Thinking of, “I will not have sex” and the poem has such a lively dynamic between desire and intellect. The connection between the personal and the political is subtly woven through the lines. Can you elaborate on how these intersections add depth to the poem’s narrative and emotional landscape? 

          The speaker declares their intention not to engage in a physical relationship with a date who appears to be well-versed in theoretical concepts related to pleasure. The mention of “theory fuckboys” suggests a certain intellectualized approach to intimacy. Also, there is humor here. Humor that one might not necessarily expect to find. I think that’s a lot like life (and even sex), isn’t it?

        Then there’s the setting, Central Park, depicted with sensual imagery — humid air, a reservoir “alight with longing.” So the physical space takes on the characteristics of the speaker. Alongside that, with the “maybe maybe not”, the reference to a “cloudy haze,” I sense an almost Romantic sheen to the lines.

            Could you walk me through how you go about constructing such a poem? And I’d also love to hear from you about the idea of “sex poems”. Do they exist? (I mean, they do of course, but are they “just” sex poems…). Recently, Becky Tuch published in Lit Mag News about how editors don’t really seem to want sexy/sex-adjacent stuff in their mags. Has this been your experience? How must writers — and poets in particular — respond to this? 

ReUBEN

It’s common for gay men especially to hook up on first dates. There’s Grindr, of course, but a lot of people use Tinder for hookups as well, and the stereotype of gay men being promiscuous, while not by any means universal, has truth in it. That is, maybe, partly a political thing, a way of reaffirming our gayness through sexuality. Despite a greater acceptance of gays, especially where I grew up and live now in a liberal, well-off part of New York City, society still sometimes views casual gay sex as being cheap, meaningless, or fickle. On some level, I do, too—or at least I worry that it is, as an anxious gay who wants sex but is a romantic at heart.  I could get more theoretical about it. Fuck theory. I just want to love someone.

               That tension between camp, horniness, and a longing for real connection—whatever that means—pervades this poem. In my view, the speaker thinks that, by not having sex, the date will be more meaningful, more charged with emotion, more playful and with more longing. Desire intensified by its lack of fulfillment, somehow more pure when it’s not physical, when it’s theoretical and intellectual. But what is the lingo of theory fuckboys, anyways? Does the speaker know? Do I, a poet who’s read queer theory?

        Humor is definitely part of sex, and I don’t want to take myself too seriously in my relationship drama, even if it is very real, informed by the insecurities of being gay in today’s world. As a poet, I overthink everything; as a gay, I do too. The poem’s short lines try to capture being stuck in cycles of thought and desire while also gesturing making fun of the speaker. Who uses inverted syntax like “Central Park will humid as hell be” anyways? What about rhyming “here” and “queers”—isn’t that a little on the nose? Then again, the Ramble in Central Park is a queer hookup spot. Then again, desire is spontaneous, it doesn’t end abruptly, but messily: so the poem doesn’t have punctuation. Then again, sometimes I’m sick of desire, how it tugs at your heart. I want it to take on “a quieter hue,” to not be as essential to my self, to my identity as a poet and gay man. Maybe. Maybe not. I’m being elliptical on purpose.

             But I’m also a romantic, and yes, the poem is maybe Romantic with a capital “R” in its trying to get across a “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” to quote Wordsworth. But the speaker hasn’t gone on the date yet, has he?

             And to your mention of the Becky Tuch article, I think there’s some great sex—and great queer sex—happening in literary journals. Take The Rainbow Issue of Fairy Tale Review, Josh Tvrdy’s kinky poems in Poetry, Jessica Nirvana Ram’s “Flight Risk” in Ghost City Review, Kay Gabriel’s work in The Poetry Project and baest journal, or Harry Hoy’s “Milk Boy” in Chen Chen and Samuel Herschel Wein’s lovely, sexy journal underblong. Short story editors might be more wary of sex scenes, because they’re hard to write (in both verse and prose), but if you’re not finding them, I don’t think you’re reading queerly enough. Enough editors are open to it, and as poets, queer or not, just go for it.

KARAN

In “Treehouse of Amplified Stars”, you’re paying homage to Arthur Russell, the influential musician. The vivid imagery of artichokes ziplining and radishes soaring to celestial bodies like Venus and Jupiter adds a playful and fantastical dimension. Sailboats depicted as ice cream cones evoke a sensory experience, merging the terrestrial with the ethereal in a seascape.

             Then, the mention of the “cello cauldron” associates Arthur Russell with a transformative, almost magical, musical process. The reference to an “unplaced decade” and “unlearned bow” hints at a timelessness and continuous exploration, emphasizing Russell’s impact on music and the perpetual nature of creative discovery.

             The brevity of the poem contributes to its airy, poetic quality, allowing readers to glimpse into a world where earthly and cosmic elements converge, driven by the spirit of artistic expression and the influence of Arthur Russell.

           It feels to me that Arthur Russell means to you what Leonard Cohen means to me. And since I am always looking for space where (and people with whom) I could share my obsession…I welcome you to share whatever it is you want to share about Arthur Russell — how and where did you find him, what about his work appeals to you most, why, and where should I begin if I find myself interested (which I do)?

ReUBEN

I first found out about Arthur Russell in 2017 on a college tour, where, as I put it in my poem “The Clapping Lights,” “a boy I didn’t kiss” told me: “If you’re gay and you play cello, you should listen to Arthur Russell.” From there, it became an obsession, the kind that I’ve devoted myself to—his music, in all its quirkiness and expansiveness, slides across genres and envelops me. As the poem indicates, he played cello—often amplified with electronics and reverb—as did I through the end of high school; as it turns out, my elementary school cello teacher once played with him in a concert. I feel a longing for him, to be like him, to be him, in some ways. It’s a nostalgia accentuated by the fact that he died in 1992 of AIDS, and most of his music has only been released after his death by Audika Records. Gay art and history has a complex relationship with nostalgia that I’m nowhere near grasping. We lost so many people during the early days of the AIDS epidemic, and we have to remember their art, but we only remember a few—and what about the many artists living with HIV today? (A shoutout here to organizations like Visual AIDS.)

          Lots of other people romanticize Arthur, too, and so much good work has come out of that, including covers of his music by Sufjan Stevens, José Gonzalez, Blood Orange, Scissor Sisters, and more. Mitski cites him as an influence on her latest album. People call his music “ahead of its time,” which, on the one hand, yes, totally, 100%; on the other hand, give the man a break. He might have been a “genius” who knew Philip Glass, David Byrne, and Allen Ginsberg; he was also just a dude from the Midwest who lived in New York, went to clubs, was trying to get by, wanted fame and didn’t get it, and was a kind, funny, stubborn, complex, obsessive individual. He was a playful guy who had flying radishes on a concert poster and formed bands called The Sailboats and The Flying Hearts. I found some ephemera that inspired this poem in the Russell archive at New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and my friend Hannah Cai Sobel set “Treehouse of Amplified Stars” for chorus, and has set many of my other Russell poems to music, too.

          All that is to say: remember Arthur, listen to all his music. Start with World of Echo if you’re in a melancholy mood, Calling Out of Context for upbeat sexy synth, “Go Bang” for disco, or Iowa Dream or Love Is Overtaking Me for more plaintive folk-rock. But also look up his friends, some of whom still make music today: Peter Zummo, Mustafa Ahmed, Elodie Lauten, Larry Levan, Julius Eastman, Peter Gordon, Ernie Brooks, David van Tieghem, Joyce Bowden, and others.