Comment on this article

What Ed Bennett wrote:
In the ekphrastic poem "Looking at a Young Woman with a Water Jug" she takes
her robust vision and contemplates a Vermeer painting…
Where other poets restate the image in the picture or retell the tale in the
painting, Ms. Studdard's eye takes her beyond the canvass. She deals with the
artist's skill with light and shows how that talent gives an anthropomorphic
sensibility to drapes and basin.


Looking at a Young Woman with a Water Jug
by Melissa Studdard

Can you see the way Vermeer
twirls light
around his thumb,
pulls it straight again
and lays it across a vase
or table‐

how the instant
between a smile
and a smile expired
can be brought to focus
with color?

No more
are shadows hid in dark
but something felt
in sanguine or cobalt‐
a cold shimmer
at the rim of a golden jug,

as if friction
between objects
required only nearness,
as if a pale, blue drape
had kindness to give
to a brass wash basin.

Our human minds
are like these objects‐
delivering and seeking
the same light
from different points,
casting radiant shadows
on other minds,

like some swart alchemy
brewing in a basement lab,
the commingling of hues
in a cast-iron pot,
and the rising of mind
laid bare on mind,
the rising of pure idea.



Ed's full review can be viewed here:

http://www.quillandparchment.com/archives/April2015/bookreview.html

Return to: