One of the trends that I've noticed and that I have discussed with poets who write ekphrastic verse is the use of the physical presence of a text as a means of approaching a visual artifact and simultaneoulsy usurping the determinist ending of the paragoni battle between viewer and viewed. Mei Mei Berssenbrugge and other women involved with the book arts create an "embodied" position as viewer. By calling attention to the physical presence of the text, she uses the text's own self presentation to "act out" a model for verbal and visual relationships which do not devolve into power struggles between the viewer and the viewed...
Posted by c_jane at September 7, 2004 12:37 PM | TrackBack