Photograph: “Trespass” by Suzanne Simmons. “Memoria” was written by Merlin Ural Rivera for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, July 2016, and selected as the Editor’s Choice winner.
Comment from the editor, Timothy Green, on his selection: “Simmons’ photograph fills me with a sense of dreamy nostalgia, but it was a disembodied nostalgia, until I read this poem, which finally gave that feeling a home. I loved the ease of the voice and the vivid details, especially Grandpa smoking himself ‘ten minutes younger.’ It’s a delightful poem, worthy of the photograph.”
“Eco Echo: An Oldster’s Tale” by Devon BalwitPosted by Rattle
Ekphrastic Challenge, July 2016: Artist’s Choice
Photograph: “Trespass” by Suzanne Simmons. “Eco Echo: An Oldster’s Tale” was written by Devon Balwit for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, July 2016, and selected by Simmons as the Artist’s Choice winner.
Comment from the artist, Suzanne Simmons, on her selection: “’Eco Echo: An Oldster’s Tale’ both surprised and haunted me. The notion of a world in which green is obsolete and yet people remain to describe it required a leap that I was willing to take—the old man convinced me. His descriptions of green are vivid and personal; he remembers green the way we remember lost loves. The words ‘eco echo’ fit well with my image because the photo is not a double exposure but a reflection in a windowpane. Like reflections, echoes are similar to their sources but not identical; they’re more mysterious. In the last two lines of the poem the old man asks his listener to feel his knobbed knuckles and toes, as if his efforts to describe green cannot compare to the felt sense of it, as if he could pass that knowledge from his own body to another’s. The poem left me feeling parched and thirsty for the color of new grass.” (website)