Ekphrasis in American Poetry: The Colonial Period to the 21st Century
Ekphrasis in American Poetry: The Colonial Period to the 21st Century provides a sample of the chronological range and stylistic variety of ekphrastic poetry, or poetry that engages in various ways with different types of visual art, including pictographs, paintings, moving panoramas, daguerreotypes, photographs, landscape, and more. The volume shows how ekphrasis has been a part of American poetry from its inception, and that as many American men as women have produced work in this genre.
The book opens with an overview chapter followed by an examination of American ekphrastic poems during the formative Colonial period where Europe, Africa, and Indigenous America met in encounters that are depicted in art and literature. It closes with two chapters on Native American poetry that consider how American landscapes serve as ekphrastic prompts for personal and collective experiences. In between are contributions on men and women poets and artists who have engaged with ekphrasis in a variety of ways from different periods. As such, American ekphrasis emerges as a genre that has implications far beyond the Eurocentric versions of the canon that have hitherto been discussed in the critical literature on the topic.
Sandra Lee Kleppe is Professor of English Language Literature at Hedmark University College, Norway. Her book The Poetry of Raymond Carver: Against the Current (Ashgate, 2014) is the first full-length study to assess Carver’s substantial poetry career. She has published numerous articles on literature and interdisciplnary topics in journals such as Mississippi Quarterly, Literature and Theology, Journal of Medical Humanities, and Classic and Modern Literature, among others.
“Ekphrasis in American Poetry is ambitious in scope, but also rigorously specific in its individual chapters. Juxtaposing diverse writers – from Phillis Wheatley to Joy Harjo – it generates an interdisciplinary tableau that offers new perspectives on the field of American poetry.”
Angela Sorby
Author of Schoolroom Poets
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