ROSEBUD BEN-ONI
Rosebud Ben-Oni is the author of several collections, including If This is the Age We End Discovery (2021), which won the Alice James Award. Paramount, the National September 11th Memorial, and The Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust have commissioned her work. Her work appears in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, AGNI, Poetry Society of America (PSA), The Poetry Review (UK), Poetry Wales, Poetry Daily, Tin House, among others.
Describe your ekphrastic process. Do you have a favorite prompt or way in?
I don't. Every poem is different. Often a piece of art has more than one thing to reveal, and I like to respond to that. With my poem for your fantastic project, I was intrigued by the bizarre nature of Giorgio de Chirico's "The Jewish Angel," that somewhere in the painting was his father as well as the influence of Jewish culture and Judaism. He's also the founder of the Scuola Metafisica art movement, which predates and influenced the surrealists, and I was thinking about influences artists had on one another. I wanted to respond in a Christopher-Guest-kinda way, as Guest influenced shows like Schitt's Creek and The White Lotus, although I can't say how or why I came up with that connection. I just wanted the three of us "in a room" so to say. I don't think this kind of "going wherever I'm led but also I'm leading myself" is unique to ekphrastic poems I write. I just hear the music, as I call it, begin to write, and I follow where my imagination and curiosity takes me. In this poem, I imagine Guest and I first sitting down to talk to de Chirico about his painting and his Jewish "predilections", if you will, and then the poem became so much more. In the end, the poem to me is about the uneasy way towards real camaraderie, three artists coming together to create and talk it out and pull things that get thrown away, like bathwater.
What attracts you to a work for ekphrasis? How do you know you’ve got a good subject?
When it pulls a lot of reactions out of me that becomes conversations. When it becomes larger than where the poem began. But don't hold me to that. I follow rules rarely, including the patterns I've made.
What’s your favorite piece at the Met?
I don't really have just one, but one of my early loves was Chagall's "The Lovers." And also the "Moonlightist" by R. B. Kitaj and "Corazón, Corazón" by Nahum Zenil.
Do you have a favorite ekphrastic poem?
Many. I just reread Elena Karina Byrne's "Vertigo." Love the line: "Can you claim anything is yours?"
What advice would you give a writer who would like to try ekphrastic poetry?
There's no one right away to enter or leave. Perhaps begin writing about a painting that challenges something inside you, rather than beginning with one you love. But of course, like I said, I don't follow many rules, and don't like giving them unless you completely understand that you can be as errant and flexible as you want. I mean, sure, growth is trying new things (that I agree with), so write a sestina on Chagall's work, and challenge yourself that way. But if it doesn't sing like it should when you've finished, tear it up to get it where you want. Trust yourself more. When it doubt, go back to a point in the art you simply feel you can't understand and explore that in all its uncertainty.
What excites you about the Metphrastics project?
The cacophony of our voices together. The new takes on supposed "canon" art and the resurfacing of those less known. I can't tell you the number of people who told me they'd never heard of de Chirico. He began an entire movement. His obsession with Jewish people made me curious, not uncomfortable, because of his artwork. In the poem, though, I got to address this. We then moved past it. Somewhere he and I and Guest are hatching a scheme together. A most absurd, surreal adventure. You brought us together with this project. So I can't wait to see what other poets do next.
JOHN GREINER
John Greiner is a writer and visual artist living in New York City. He was educated at the New School for Social Research. Greiner's work has appeared in Antiphon, Sand Journal, Otoliths, Survision, Sein und Werden, Empty Mirror, Sensitive Skin, Unarmed, Street Value and numerous other magazines. His books of poetry include In An Attic Palace Beneath a Slaughtered Sky (Arteidolia Press), Circuit (Whiskey City Press), Turnstile Burlesque (Crisis Chronicles Press) and Bodega Roses (Good Cop/Bad Cop Press). He is a recent 2nd place recipient of the James Tate Award and his upcoming chapbook, Clouded Saints and Kinky Shadows will be published by SurVision Press in the coming months. He has worked at the Met in the security department for the last 11 years.
Describe your ekphrastic process. Do you have a favorite prompt or way in?
I’ve always loved to be around paintings since I was a small child and on occasion my parents would take me to the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. I loved to get lost in the paintings, not looking for any story, but rather to get lost in the mood that they created in me. My ekphrastic process of getting in is to stop in front of a particular work of art and get lost in it and, once consumed in it, begin to write.
What attracts you to a work for ekphrasis? How do you know you’ve got a good subject?
I feel that I have a good subject when the work of art absorbs my imagination into its core, when everything else around me drops away and I am able to come closer to the essence of the piece, of what the art is saying irrespective of its concrete history. It is a matter of the mood that it creates and where it takes my mind.
What’s your favorite part of the Met?
My favorite part of the Met is the first floor of the Lehman Wing. It is one of the more relaxed parts of the museum with beautiful artwork that many people don’t come to because they don’t realize that there are galleries behind the walls. I particularly liked it in the past when El Greco’s Christ Carrying the Cross was there (now it is on the 2nd Floor). Botticelli’s The Annunciation is in the Lehman Collection. It’s such a stunning piece. The Lehman Wing offers a place for deeper contemplation of the art than many other parts of the museum.
You work in security at the Met. What do you wish more people knew about the guards?
The Met security staff is an extremely diverse group of people. A large portion of the people in the security department are working artists and have a very in depth and practical knowledge of various artistic disciplines, as well as a strong historical knowledge of them. They have decided to work at the Met because they have a love for the objects that surround them, but the job is also something that they can do and turn off when they leave so that they are able to return to their own work with the influence of the art that surrounds them in their psyche. There is a vast wellspring of artistic knowledge and passion in the security staff that can be of a great benefit to the visitors and which is far more interesting to tap into than just functional knowledge.
Do you have a favorite ekphrastic poem?
W.H. Auden's “Musee des Beaux Arts” would be my favorite ekphrastic poem. It is so subtle and beautiful in the contrast of the mundane with the extraordinary. Auden captures the existential dilemmas of the motion of life in its ordinariness and lack of regard for the epic action while heralding Icarus’s death in everyday proportions. The grace of Auden’s rhythms and the nuance of his thoughts in this poem are breathtaking.
What excites you about the Metphrastics project?
I work at the Met. I am surrounded by some of the greatest works of art that the human race has created and I have used them for inspiration. It is by a wonderful and serendipitous chance that I am able to be involved in the Metphrastics project which is dedicated to an artistic part of my own life, which is critical. How could I not be excited by this opportunity?