Modern Ekphrasis explores the analogical relations between modern poetry and painting in ekphrasis from Horace s mimetic -ut pictura poesis- tradition to Lessing s temporal/spatial antithesis, and the analogy s post-modern deconstruction with Derrida. The genesis of ekphrasis is demonstrated by close analytical readings of modern poems by Howard Nemerov, W.C. Williams, Sylvia Plath, and John Ashbery, mostly written on modern paintings by Paul Klee, Charles Demuth, Giorgio de Chirico, and Frank Stella. In an innovative approach, the author applies Anton Ehrenzweig s concept of...

In these poems, the writer explores the deepest and most mysterious aspects of herself and we, the readers, are assisted in our own self-explorations. The sense of exile from the world and from oneself, which Emily Bilman explores, goes all the way back to that most potent and enduring of myths: the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Like Edwin Muir, the poet convinces the reader that this expulsion from paradise was not all loss and that exile can deepen human perceptions and can lead to a breathless sense of freedom. In a number of the poems in this collection, one senses a...