Poetic Musings: Spring Day Mural Haiku by Chen-ou Liu

For Earth Day Reflections

spring day mural:

green paint sprayed across the wall

behind leafless trees

NeverEnding Story, March 21, 2024

Chen-ou Liu

Commentary: The two parts of this "spring day mural/L1" haiku offers at least two contrasts, visual and symbolic (artistic/man-made: "replication of the absent leaves" of trees in L 2 vs natural/diseased or dying/dead in L3; And "spring day" in L1 vs "leafless trees" in L3) and one environmentally significant and emotionally poignant question: why these trees, a synecdoche used to refer to Nature, leafless during springtime, i.e. lifeless.

This ekphrastic haiku is stimulated by street artist Banksy's latest work of art, a mural featuring green paint behind a tree and a person holding a hose, and through describing and reflecting on this piece of art, the haiku amplifies and expands the meaning/significance of Banksy's work.

FYI: USA Today, March 18, 2024: New artwork from street artist Banksy spotted in London features environmental message 

And for more examples about ekphrastic poems, see To the Lighthouse: Ekphrastic Senryu and To the Lighthouse: Ekphrastic Tanka

To the Lighthouse: Ekphrastic Senryu

                                                                                                     Dali's Melting Clocks 

                                                                                                     on the waiting room wall ...

                                                                                                     heat haze

An ekphrastic senryu is a senryu inspired or stimulated by a work of art, and through describing and reflecting on this piece of art, the poet may amplify and expand its meaning.

Selected Senryu:

the half smile

begins to hurt

mona lisa

Daya Bhat

I'm lovestruck

by her Mona Lisa smile ...

the divorce lawyer 

Untitled

(a black-edged box

they’ll put me into)

John Hawkhead

empty space

on a gallery wall

framing my loss

Patricia Hawkhead

Van Gogh's daffodils

I tilt my head to be seen

in a group photo

Jackie Chou

to Andy Warhol

Campbell's Soup Cans

falling out of their frames ...

hunger trance

Happy Reading

Chen-ou

To the Lighthouse: Ekphrastic Tanka

                                                                                                     the muse rising
                                                                                                     from a sea of words
                                                                                                     covers her breasts ...
                                                                                                     I am pregnant
                                                                                                     with verses of longing

                                                                                                     Chen-ou Liu

In Greek, ekphrasis means the description of a work of art, and it "has been considered generally to be a rhetorical device in which one medium of art tries to relate to another medium by defining and describing its essence and form, and in doing so, relate more directly to the audience, through its illuminative liveliness" (Wikipedia Ekphrasis entry). An ekphrastic tanka is a tanka inspired or stimulated by a work of art, and through describing and reflecting on this piece of art, the poet may amplify and expand its meaning.

Selected Tanka:

waiting room
the thousand sporting naiads
of my schizophrenia
as if by magic
from Monet’s Water Lilies

Grant Savage

i want to become
a Klimt woman
dangling
off the canvas
dripping golden light

Pamela A. Babusci

how like love
barefoot through the open door
too much perfume
for one heart to hold
lilacs in full bloom

Claire Everett

heading home
this autumn evening
lamplight
through a bedroom window --
you, in the corner of my mind

Susan Constable

alone at twilight
doing tonglen practice
I see the face
in The Scream
... and mine overlapping

Chen-ou Liu