“The Balcony Collapses and I Become a Bird” by Rebecca ValleyPosted by Rattle
Ekphrastic Challenge, March 2016: Editor’s Choice
Collage: “Metamorphosis 2” by Thomas Terceira. “To Lose and Catch the Trail” was written by Rebecca Valley for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, March 2016, and selected by Timothy Green as the Editor’s Choice winner.
Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “Terceira’s busily vibrant collage generated a record 347 poems, so choosing the winner was particularly difficult this month. What made Rebecca Valley’s poem stand out, though, beyond the many beautiful lines, was that it managed to become as cinematic as the collage itself, each image a part of the scene, and also a part of a mysterious plot that we can only barely know as brief witnesses to the lives of the characters. She took a compelling work of art and created an equally compelling poem, which pairs with it perfectly.”
Comment from the poet, Rebecca Valley: “I loved the arid landscape in this piece, and the use of collage to disorient and transform the characters.” (website)
“To Lose and Catch the Trail” by Claire KrueselPosted by Rattle
Ekphrastic Challenge, March 2016: Artist’s Choice
Collage: “Metamorphosis 2” by Thomas Terceira. “To Lose and Catch the Trail” was written by Claire Kruesel for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, March 2016, and selected by Terceira as the Artist’s Choice winner.
Comment from the artist, Thomas Terceira: “I enjoyed reading the wonderful poems inspired my collage, ‘Metamorphosis 2.’ There are a lot of great poets out there and it was an honor to have been a source of inspiration for so many of them. I found myself most attracted to those poems that weren’t literally describing what was in the collage but went to unexpected places. Those poems, which emotionally and imaginatively resonated with the mood of the image to create something new, lived for me. The sound of the words in a poem, always interests me a great deal. I want to hear the beautiful music of the language resonating, like I want to take the eye on a journey when I make a collage. It was a difficult choice but I finally picked ‘To Loose and Catch the Trail’ as my favorite. I found myself returning to this poem again and again. This poem feels tight and crisp, every word important, not a word too many. It’s like an incantation, a surrealist dream and reveals more with each reading. So many wonderful vivid images are packed into ‘To Loose and Catch the Trail.'” (website)
Comment from the poet, Claire Kruesel: “What I love most about ‘Metamorphosis 2’ is the woman in the upper left-hand corner. She took the longest for me to notice, and I get the sense that she watched the piece come together around her. For all I know she was added last, but she (in my poem) is the observer to the imperfect world self-assembled to the whims of natural selection.”