Tag: frederic edwin church

Hear Me Roar by Ann Marie Steele

Niagara, 1857 by Frederic Edwin Church
Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art

The roar of Niagara Falls, while eluding sound, doesn’t fail to irradiate
sight with its jazzy waves and frothy strokes of jade — these sweeping

illusions, swallowed whole by the Deep, howl against deafening winds, westward
and warbling — veiling the fading sunlight holding Hope hostage—

as renegade avalanches are welcomed by a deluge of stratus tears wailing louder
than the Sky itself — the gaze lustily cascades over escarpments of

 towering cliffs while the river’s limbs engulf the clamoring boulders — dark talons
of the night threaten to eviscerate the roaring cacophony of

discord with the manifestation of gloom alone— if the eyes can imagine the jaded
purging into the Deep, can that which does not roar still be Heard?

steele
Ann Marie Steele

Ann Marie Steele wrote this ekphrastic poem, inspired by Frederic Edwin Church’s 1857 painting Niagara, which was first published in The Ekphrastic Review, October 20, 2023 in their Ekphrastic Challenges series. Read about ekphrastic poetry in Niagara.

Ann Marie Steele, who resides in Charlotte, NC, America, is a writer who dabs mainly in free
verse and prose poetry. She holds a BS in Journalism (News-Editorial), and an MA in Secondary
English Education. Ann Marie pens pieces about love and loss, and what she observes and
experiences. The loss of her youngest son, Brandon, has influenced much of her writing. Her
works have been described as “resiliently defiant.”
Ann Marie has been published in The Ekphrastic Review with her pieces Every Lilly Donned with
Grief, I Dare You, Pretty Please, and Hear Me Roar, as well as in Exist Otherwise with her poem
Scintillating Symbiotic Sea. When not teaching high school English, Ann Marie
enjoys partner acrobatics, where she can often be seen flying upside down.

See Ann Marie Steele’ blog at annmsteele99.medium.com/

Looking at Church’s Niagara Falls on the Web
by Lucie Chou

Niagara, 1857 by Frederic Edwin Church
Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art

Niagara is a revelation of the cosmos to each and every man.
 — David C. Huntington
 
Sure, I’ll breathe poetry there. My mind will be an embouchure
through which your powerful waters pour thunder. I will hear
nothing else, not the sharp sound waves spearing my bellows, 
nor honeymooners whose croons you swallow into white foam
and spew out as a shimmering arch of rainbow. You’ll teach me
about the cosmos by proving the paradox of water in motion:
that its motion is a stillness, that its stillness is ever in motion.
My body will be a speck of silence swallowed by your howling
emerald olivine chrysoberyl pale blue ice snowy pinnacles,
your ten-thousand-year-old ceaselessly cataracting avalanche,
your constant breath ever billowing through one diapason,
yet not one prism in your mist ever splits light the same way.
 
Like that bared jagged root snagged on your brink, I’d abide
inside your relentless remaking. Eyes on a digital or hands 
on a canvas covered with smooth strokes would never equal 
the whole of me, mind, body, heart and soul, all immersed 
in the whole of your eloquence greater even than my whole 
world, you patient shale-shaper, finale of the Niagara River, 
you Ice Age’s fossil water, you rhapsody of ancient glaciers
ever burgeoning into new birth, you under whose arcades
lovers sport crowned with bright sprays, you whose sheer
impetus splashes the sun’s and moon’s incandescent faces,
I keep calling you Whirlpool, Horseshoe, Luna Falls, Iris Falls
and you chant to purple clouds a booming Gravity is Grace.

This poem, inspired by Frederic Edwin Church’s 1857 painting Niagara, was first published in The Ekphrastic Review, October 20, 2023 in their Ekphrastic Challenges series. Read about ekphrastic poetry in Niagara.

chou
Lucie Chou

Lucie Chou is an ecopoet working in mainland China. Currently an undergraduate majoring in English language and literature, she is also interested in the ecotone between ekphrasis and ecopoetics, and in exploring the magic presences of other-than-human living beings bleeding into the lonely arrogance of human experience. Her work has appeared in the Entropy magazine, the Black Earth Institute Blog, the Tiny Seed Journal website, The Ekphrastic Review, Transom, and in the Plant Your Words Anthology published by Tiny Seed Press. A poem is forthcoming in from Tofu Ink Arts, both in print and online. She has published a debut collection of ecopoetry, Convivial Communiverse, with Atmosphere Press. She hikes, gardens, and studies works of natural history by Victorian writers with gusto. In August 2023, she participated in the Tupelo Press 30 / 30 project where she fundraised for the indie press by writing one poem each day for a month. She writes for a constellation of brilliant readers hopefully including street trees and feral animals she encounters in each city she travels to.

An Item on my Old Bucket List by Rose Mary Boehm

Niagara, 1857 by Frederic Edwin Church
Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art


Niagara—some say the name is a bastardised form of the Iroquois “Onguiaahra.” They say it means “The Strait.” Now “Niagara” has become associated with a thunderous image. That I can feel.
 
I only ever imagined its deafening voice,
its power, its white foam, its cold spray,
imagined myself in a slicker with a hood–
preferably blue (or red)–
on a boat, getting nearer, nearer, nearer,
before we are being sucked into unimaginable
depths, Charybdis and Scylla,
my fellow passengers quiet
in the face of such a relentless force.
 
When I close my eyes
I see dark clouds pulling up,
attracted like magnets to a cauldron
of deep water, angry foam, killer rocks.
The door to Hades.
Who will pay the ferryman?

This poem, inspired by Frederic Edwin Church’s 1857 painting Niagara, was first published in The Ekphrastic Review, October 20, 2023 in their Ekphrastic Challenges series. Read about ekphrastic poetry in Niagara.

boehm
Rose Mary Boehm


Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as eight poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was three times nominated for a ‘Pushcart’ and once for ‘Best of Net’. DO OCEANS HAVE UNDERWATER BORDERS? (Kelsay Books July 2022), WHISTLING IN THE DARK (Cyberwit July 2022), and SAUDADE (December 2022) are available on Amazon. Also available on Amazon is a new collection, LIFE STUFF, published by Kelsay Books November 2023. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/

Read about the origins, pronunciation, and variants of the Word Niagara

Hearing the World Differently by Kate Young

Niagara, 1857 by Frederic Edwin Church
Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art

 

The gallery lies in silence.
Clusters of faces pause
canvas to canvas
lips miming words,
the unheard musings of the many.
 
I inhale their movement,
jackets and backpacks jostle
the canvas to my right
the vertical drop of Niagara Falls
drawing us into its power.
 
The tide turns.
My eyes conjure sounds
only I can hear,
decibels of cyan and teal
the roar of acrylic licking the frame.
 
I taste the grit of salt on teeth,
sea-spray fresh on my face.
Violet tones colour my mood,
the distinctive tang of oil on wood.
I open my senses, hear it all.

This poem, inspired by Frederic Edwin Church’s 1857 painting Niagara, was first published in The Ekphrastic Review, October 20, 2023 in their Ekphrastic Challenges series. Read about ekphrastic poetry in Niagara.

kate-young
Kate Young

Kate Young lives in England and enjoys writing poetry, painting and playing the guitar and ukulele. Her poems have appeared in various webzines, magazines, and Chapbooks. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlet A Spark in the Darkness has been published by Hedgehog Press and her next pamphlet Beyond the School Gate is due to be published in May 2024. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet.

Nik Wallenda Walks a Wire Across Niagara Falls by Diana Cole

Niagara, 1857 by Frederic Edwin Church
Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art

 

 

Into a theatre of wind and mist 
            a cable dips, disappears. 
 
He moves steadily, 
            each step shortening
                        the improbable.
                                    He dissolves into thunder.
 
The camera loses      then finds his face 
            soaked, focused 
                        on distance relenting.
 
In shoes his mother made 
            elk-skin suede
                        his feet curl along the wire. 
 
He tells the cameraman 
            his arms are numb.
                        Weighs the long pole
                                    in sighs, side to side.
                                     
And we can see 
            the waters waiting
                        the letting go
                                 the urge to.
 
He inches ahead
            each second of inertia 
                        a pinpoint 
                                    from which we too
                                                step forward.  

This poem was previously published in Muddy River Poetry Review. 

This poem, inspired by Frederic Edwin Church’s 1857 painting Niagara, was also published in The Ekphrastic Review, October 20, 2023 in their Ekphrastic Challenges series. Read about ekphrastic poetry in Niagara. 

diana cole
Diana Cole

Diana Cole, a Pushcart Prize nominee, has published in numerous journals including Poetry East, Spillway, Main Street Rag, Cider Press Review, Friends Journal, The New Verse News and Orison Books. Her chapbook, Songs By Heart was published in 2018 by Iris Press and her latest book, Between Selves, in 2023 by Indian Press, Cyberwit.net. Recently, she was awarded 2nd place in the Notable Works 2024 Poetry Initiative.  She is a senior editor for The Crosswinds Poetry Journal.