Lay Bare the Canvas: New England Poets on Art (includes 2 CDs)

Lay Bare the Canvas presents a sumptuous array of ekphrastic poems by contemporary New England poets responding to masterworks in New England museums. Answering the call, poets such as Rafael Campo, Alfred Corn, Alan Feldman, Alice B. Fogel, and Fred Marchant respond with ardor to paintings by Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Titian, Van Gogh, and others. Lay Bare the Canvas also includes the winning and finalist poems of the Loft Prize for Poetry (2013), judged by nationally acclaimed poet Denise Duhamel. To enhance the reading experience, images of the artworks along with informative notes about the museum pieces are presented on a CD accompanying the book. A wonderful companion for anyone with a passion for verse and art, Lay Bare the Canvas is a testament to the vitality of the ekphrastic art form.

“Lay Bare the Canvas is the most fascinating book I have seen in years. Coupling fifty-five exciting works of art with poems they inspired by notable New England poets, this anthology belongs in every collection and in every library.”—X.J. Kennedy

“To have the poems alone would be a huge gift, but to be able to read them side by side with the paintings (on the enclosed CD) that inspired them is breathtaking. This conversation between poets and artists, deep and nourishing, was salve to my spirit. I’ll read this book again and again.”—Patricia Fargnoli

“Luminous, scintillating, vibrating. An amazing feast. This book would so enrich any art history course or a poetry course. Verbs and nouns ripple in a multitude of dimensions as the visual and verbal braid and echo each other. It makes me want a second volume.”—Lyn Lifshin

“This generous gathering of visual art and responsive poetry provides bountiful pleasures. Ekphrastic poetry by some of our finest contemporary poets strikes a particularly New England tone: art-smart, seriously meditative, and strongly grounded in this difficult soil. A lovely, substantial collection.”—Cathleen Calbert

“. . . a rich and varied array of poets and pictures for your looking and reading and thinking pleasure.”—Dara Wier

“Reading this anthology, one enters a textured and varied conversation between poetry and art that, like all good conversations, provokes, stimulates and enriches. In multiple and surprising ways, the interaction between poem and painting deepens the reader’s experience of each.  I know Lay Bare the Canvas will provide new revelations each time I re-read it.”—Kathleen Aguero

“This carefully curated book invites the reader to observe the poet observe the painter observe the scene.  Sometimes this linear perspective swerves, capturing the New England room where the painting is hung, the docent, the museum director, the city outside. Sometimes the poet leaps over everything, putting words in characters’ mouths. And sometimes the poet reaches right in, sorting through differences of century, class, gender, materials, poetics, and art form, to pull reader, writer, painter, subject and environment into the same scape—the bright space of the new poem.”—Mairéad Byrne
From the Preface

Over the centuries, various art forms have inspired poets to create their own works of art, termed ekphrasis. Lay Bare the Canvas seeks to honor and expand this ekphrastic tradition by presenting original poems by contemporary New England poets responding to master artworks in New England museums. The fifty-five poems in this collection add memorable voices to the impressive body of ekphrasis, highlighting the unique aesthetics and visions of these distinguished poets. Casting light on the state of twenty-first-century ekphrasis, Lay Bare the Canvas captures a snapshot of the ekphrastic fever that has fanned throughout New England in recent years—a region that has long enjoyed a history of ekphrastic writing from Longfellow’s “The Cross of Snow” to the present day ekphrases of Donald Hall’s “Reclining Figure” and Jorie Graham’s “San Sepolcro.”

—Beatrice Lazarus