Tag: frederic edwin church

Spellbound by Elaine Sorrentino

 

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

 

Listen to Elaine Sorrentino reciting Spellbound


 

The last time I knew innocence
I was surrounded by breathtaking 
 
steadily booming over the falls
misting our awe-struck faces 
 
confirmation we are mere specks
in the realm of natural wonders.

I could have lingered there forever 
drinking in its mesmerizing thunder 
 
unknowingly balanced on the fraying
thread between well-being and illness  
 
before scalpels, needles, chemical
treatment made their grand entrance; 
 
momentarily living in the presence
of ferocious power, I could not get enough. 

 

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.
 
sorrentino
Elaine Sorrentino
 
Elaine Sorrentino has been published in Ekphrastic Review, Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Writing in a Women’s Voice, The Poetry Porch, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Agape Review, Haiku Universe, Sparks of Calliope, Muddy River Poetry Review, Panoply, Etched Onyx Magazine, and at wildamorris.blogspot.com.  

To Frederic Edwin Church Regarding Niagara Falls by Portly Bard

 

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

So much like ours, your river’s course
becomes the path of nature’s force
embracing ever lower plane
and carving ever deeper main
 
except where soil is bared to rock
or rise becomes a stubborn block
that, barring flood, will be its bound
or island it will flow around
 
as ending tributaries merge
and hasten more the mounting surge
to roar of sudden, fated falls,
the splendor eye so well recalls
 
by glimmer of prismatic twist
in fountain of its risen mist.

©2023 by Portly Bard. Reproduced on the Niagara Falls Poetry Project website with the permission of Portly Bard.

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.

 

Portly Bard.
Old man.  Ekphrastic fan.
Prefers to craft with sole intent…
of verse becoming complement…
…and by such homage being lent…
ideally also compliment.
 
Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise
for words but from returning gaze
far more aware of fortune art
becomes to eyes that fathom heart.

Niagara November 1978 by Daniel Brown

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

After Thanksgiving dinner in North Tonawanda
We drove to Niagara through chilly evening fog,
parked and walked carefully toward the falls.
The sidewalks and grounds were frosted lace,
along the path branches of flash frozen trees 
had spent blossoms suspended like icicle earrings.
Although we remembered 4th grade science
and the hydraulic water cycle
we forgot to realize that when they melt
the radiant ice diamonds 
will mingle with human breath
mist their way to heaven
before returning to earth 
in never ending rotation
to churn and crash over the falls
as they had for Frederic Edwin Church in 1857
when his breath and artistic vision 
captured and contributed to the movement 
of the eternal roar.

daniel brown
Daniel Brown

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.

Daniel Brown has recently published at age 72 his first collection Family Portraits in Verse and Other Illustrated Poems through Epigraph Books, Rhinebeck, NY. He has most recently been published in Jerry Jazz Musician and Chronogram Magazine and was included in Arts Mid-Hudson 2023 gallery presentation Poets Respond To Art in Poughkeepsie, NY.

Niagara by Father James B. Dollard

Niagara by Frederic Edwin Church
Incessantly thy waters thus have rolled
    Through the dim aeons of unmeasured Time,
    While God was fashioning His work sublime,
Or ere His sulphurous forges could grow cold!
When Egypt loved Osiris and retold
    His charmed birth from out Nilotic slime,
    When Chaldea read the stars, and Homer's rhyme
Was yet undreamt -- Niagara thundered bold.

So night and day throughout coverging years
    Hoarse voices rose above the hissing spray
        Scaring the lonely Indian on the shore!
These bellowing chasms harbored nameless fears --
    Demons and dragons in contorted play
        Lashing the frightened waters evermore!

Source: Rev. James B. Dollard. Poems. Toronto: The Catholic Church Extension Society of Canada, 1910.

About Father Dollard