chrisvigilante's review
4.0
This is a really great set of poems to read when you are looking at some of the art pieces they were inspired by. I really liked some of the different shapes the poems took. There's also a Ghazal, which is one of my favorite poem forms so that was a plus. I give 4 stars to this Ekphrastic poetry book.
seebrandyread's review
2.0
I'm always interested in the intersection of different artistic media: literature and music, music and dance, art and music. So when I found Serious Pink by Sharon Dolin and saw that it was a book of ekphrastic poems, I was totally on board. Before you go thinking that I actually knew what "ekphrastic" means, I didn't; I had to look it up. Ekphrastic poetry describes a scene, usually a piece of visual art. Think Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn."
Dolin writes about the works of 3 abstract artists who are all very different. For most of the poems you can look up the specific paintings that inspired them. I wish the paintings had been included in the book to make it easier and to compare them more closely to the poems.
The point of ekphrastic poetry is to expand on the other work, to make comparisons or observations that are outside the bounds of the original. Dolin's best poems do this well. Because she's using abstract paintings, there is ample opportunity to bring the reader into an artform that many find inaccessible (much like poetry). In "Sea-Wall," for instance, she discusses a couple that I probably never would have noticed in the painting. However, other poems get hung up on naming colors or describing brush strokes rather than pointing to something deeper in the painting. Overall, the collection feels like a writing exercise turned into a final, finished product.
Dolin writes about the works of 3 abstract artists who are all very different. For most of the poems you can look up the specific paintings that inspired them. I wish the paintings had been included in the book to make it easier and to compare them more closely to the poems.
The point of ekphrastic poetry is to expand on the other work, to make comparisons or observations that are outside the bounds of the original. Dolin's best poems do this well. Because she's using abstract paintings, there is ample opportunity to bring the reader into an artform that many find inaccessible (much like poetry). In "Sea-Wall," for instance, she discusses a couple that I probably never would have noticed in the painting. However, other poems get hung up on naming colors or describing brush strokes rather than pointing to something deeper in the painting. Overall, the collection feels like a writing exercise turned into a final, finished product.
More...