A UNIQUE SILENCE Poems of the Ulster Museum
An Ekphrasis Project by students from the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s and Trinity University in San Antonio, in collaboration with the Ulster Museum.
The challenges of our moment have obliged us to work in isolation; our interactions with each other have been, for the most part, framed. Either by windows bearing one spring into the next, or ourselves in miniature squared off by one piece of communications software or another; more than ever, we interact with representations of each other.
Stephen Sexton Lecturer in Poetry, Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University, Belfast In this fourth collaboration with the Ulster Museum, students of the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University, Belfast are joined by students of Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, in their contemplation of ‘A Unique Silence’, an exhibition containing six Rembrandt etchings among works by D.C. Sturges, Gertrude Anna Bertha Hermes, John Copley and others.
Valentine Cunningham has said that writing is always tormented by the question of real presence. This is true of ekphrasis, this multifarious genre of looking, thinking, imagining; description, translation, interpretation. Few, if any, of the poems in this publication come from authors who saw these etchings in the flesh — Botanic Gardens may as well be San Antonio when it comes to ‘real presence’. Ekphrasis is, on one fundamental level, about the distance between image and word. It’s also, between people, about intimacy. It says, in its way, this is what I see. What did you see? What was it like?
Unique too was knowing that other eyes on other screens were simultaneously considering the same images, and in doing so considering intimacy and distance, light and shadow, time and space, as well as the shifting borders of our public and private lives.
Jenny AssociateBrowneProfessor of English, Trinity University, San Antonio
If, as critic John Berger has argued, the encounter with a work of art ‘completes’ it, perhaps the conversation of two people struck to distinct response by the same image continues it, delightfully, late into the night, an ocean away.
Sincere thanks to the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queens, The Ulster Museum and the Trinity University Humanities Collective for their support of this project.
It is always interesting to consider the practice of close looking, but even more so during a season when I so often found myself writing ‘see’ you soon to acknowledge our mediated gazing. Also, to observe the ‘unique silence’ of Rembrandt in conversation with the ‘unique’ silence of weeks spent looking at these etchings, as well as their new museum neighbors, on our respective computer screens. But then again, the wholly particular nature of any encounter with art remains, at least for me, what makes ekphrasis so exciting.
Although many of his paintings are associated with the dramatic and awe-inspiring style of seventeenth-century Baroque painting, Rembrandt’s etchings communicate a unique silence that is often found in the ‘Golden Age’ of Dutch art: the stillness of nature, the intimacy of the human face and thoughtful depictions of biblical scenes. Rembrandt’s fearless experimentation with etching led him to develop a new style and to push the limits of the technique, cementing his status as a printmaker who would inspire the generations that followed. The accompanying works in the exhibition were from the wider Ulster Museum print collection. They welcomed Rembrandt by demonstrating how the medium of print has evolved and yet still reflects his groundbreaking work, and these prints engage with the legacy of Rembrandt’s art. My hope behind the selection was for the existing prints in the collection to speak to the Rembrandt etchings, greeting him by revealing how his techniques and skills have inspired printmakers for hundreds of years. For me, no two works speak more clearly to each other, or appear more different, than Rembrandt’s The Descent from the Cross by Torchlight (1654) and Gertrude Hermes’ 1929 wood-engraving Through the Windscreen. Rembrandt is remembered for perfectly communicating light within darkness, using Tenebrism to create atmosphere and emotion. Three hundred years later Hermes created her own technique to do this, and (I believe) there are few works more atmospheric than her print. In fact, she herself described printmaking as “bring[ing] light out of the dark”. In A Unique Silence, Rembrandt’s etchings started a conversation between creators throughout the centuries, a conversation that continues through the poems in this pamphlet.
Anna CuratorLieschingofArt,Ulster Museum A Unique Silence was a celebratory exhibition. It offered us a chance to share six etchings by the famed Dutch artist Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, that were recently gifted to the Ulster Museum. It was also a celebration of what lies at the heart of the museum’s activity – our responsibility to provide public access to, and the chance to engage with, significant works of art. The master printmaker’s work now belongs to you as part of the public collection, thanks to the Acceptance in Lieu of Tax scheme.
Gertrude Anna Bertha Hermes (1901 – 1983) Through the windscreen Wood1929 –BELUM.Pt36engraving
The lines became powerful waves of flower stems and electricity, a gentle sloping reality between what is natural and what is contrived. You sit inert at the wheel, closer to darkness than line, spitting dashes at the divine world around you. Around the corner, obscured by line, the virgin mother is caught in the beam of her own halo.
PASSENGER after Gertrude Hermes ‘Through the Windscreen’
In the beginning was a line, then another. The lines were crossed by more lines and together they were called light. A road appeared in the headlights, thick lines lined it and thin scratches licked the pavement as you began to drive it.
ELIZABETH MCINTOSH
MATTHEW RICE PARABLE OF THE LINE after Gertrude Hermes ‘Through the Windscreen’ The engine-hum stills you into silence synonymous with movement, as through the windscreen lines sag under birdless weight, an iconographical brightness making you forget the dark, the car, the road itself, the trees waiting to bow in the headlights.
Dwight C. Sturges (1874– 1940) Study of a female nude Date EtchingUnknown
CIARA KEOGH STUDY OF A FEMALE NUDE Empty space filled with Shadow the dark outlining her form she stretches Ghost of a smile A stray lock of hair, soft curves Observe quiet dark Face value or worth Lies without the hand that shades Only reflection She lights up a room Dusk following in her wake A step from darkness In mind, body, soul What does it mean to be dark? When is it allowed? Empty space filled with Shadow the dark outlining A form on the floor No longer Twenty-six,sleepingwesay her name Still seeking justice Where can we find them? Justice and sanctuary Here, they are missing
We lose the ones who Are absent from our museums Their stories untold Names immortal on Lips curved, wet with saltwater Not enough to save Empty space filled with Shadow the dark outlining The artist, missing Pencil left behind Destined for a show unseen For a year long gone Remembered fondly Why do some deaths matter more? News story gravestones Mural monuments No scholars devote to those Their studies narrow Choosing instead a Study of a female nude
EMILY YOUNGERMAN WHAT IS SHE DOING NAKED BY THE LAKE?
Bare, bare, bare skin scratched, bumpy, uneven; she braves cracked mountain terrain. She must know that the whistling wind could scatter the lines of her body far, far away in an instant. Whistling wind whips against the sharp angle of her bent arms; scoring stitches shut her lines of communication. She stands Goosebumpssilently.scatter all the way up; she stretches her sewn lips into a grimacing smile and waits.
LOGAN MUZYKA AN ETCH OF WHO WE WERE The roundness of some parts The flatness of others Take a marker, let’s draw out Where lines should be Take a knife, let’s carve out where emptiness belongs lines, lines beauty is all about lines Draw them out etch on my skin All we are is lines Standing up, stars dance across our eyes Hands tremble Hair turns to straw All so we can reverse The biological necessity Of padding around our uterus Of legs that move us Of arms that hold the only ones Who intimately crave our bodies Take a marker Mark us up Add to my list of complaints Lines should be Curvy here
Straight ILet’sbutyetdelicate,rounded,theresmoothfemininetoned,strong–nottoostrong–drawitoutamlikeyounow– we are of the same kind Let’s bite our fingernails off Before they grow too long and scratch the back of our throats, Preventing us from adding to the world with our words rather than our bodies And so we kill ourselves by the kilo Shatter our own spirits Into shards of glass That slice through who We once were
LEAH TAYLOR SKINNY DIP after ‘Study of a female nude’ by Dwight C. Sturges Hands planted on the bend of her hip riddled with crosshatched strokes creeping down the skin, repeating and various, like stretch marks. Her stomach is untouched, protruding clear as the ocean whose gaze falls on her (the side that cannot be seen) unmarked and flowing into the horizon.
I, too, admire the stranger, the smooth curve of her breast, the nipple —unapologetic in its erection— that seems to fade into a cloudless sky. I imagine her face to be just as beautiful, but it hides behind ashy curls and shadows like those growing on her back and thigh. With a body so free, eyes obscured by shade, how am I to know if she is looking back at me?
John Copley (1875 – 1950) Fog Lithograph1923
SHELBY SPERLING FIGURES IN FOG Sorrow is held in contempt by Fog Sketches of the flesh Shadows conceal any proof of innocence What I have is shallow What light is left blinds me What is right is dark It plays with me It picks me up Caresses my curiosity And spits me out As architecture stretches out into oblivion And melts together like sorrow and fog My memories billow Seeking a pace to land Through Fog I can make out his shape Through this man I see my father
Consider just how familiar: my upturned collar, the outline of my ears. How long have you anticipated this visitation, this unreadable expression? How often do you study strangers’ faces trying to form my own? When you peer down the page the street falls away. All the noise of the city greys, buildings exist only to frame me in your threshold,
CAIT PHENIX FOG after John Copley Here I am, at last, out of the gloom and onto your doorstep, these lines that look like a man.
exactly as I am: a guest who never really leaves. And all you can seem to look at is the light against my eye, marvelling at its contrast. The way it illuminates the socket cutting through the fog like a searchlight. Opaque and almost real. As if it’s signifying the depth, the importance of me standing here, and you delighting– in the crosshatch shadows which appear, and the errant shape of a strand of hair –do not have to invite me in.
JESSIE METCALF WITH BUTTER AND SALT
What did John have to hide in your left eye? In the buildings behind? He rolled fog right over your face and that place. You look like someone young once, recently, but not now. In your brow and the eye I can see you have the resigned sadness of change, like someone said: We’re moving away, They’re out of work, Fish for dinner, or She’sevennot going to make it. You don’t want me to look away. You wait for me to say something like: To a cottage on the coast, The post office is hiring, With butter and salt, or even I work miracles. But I don’t and your forehead clouds and draws, your mouth shrinks and curls, and finally I thank John for hiding. All at once you melt and steel. I want everything I cannot see.
JESSIE METCALF HOW NOT TO BE AFRAID
Bringing the fear closer to the carpet
Closing the distance like a chapter I’m thinking of sleeping forever because My sleep has no corners For fear to hide around; When you wake up all you can remember is How to be afraid And you may find yourself Forgetting how to wake up Again.
The way out looks a lot like sleeping and you may find yourself
I cannot see the fear but I know that it’s there: Marching with the marching band in tight parking lot lines
So many corners I forget how not to be afraid
Faceless, not really seeable, I convince myself, not really there: Spilling in tears spilling behind a bedroom door
Simmering on the concrete in puddles I stumble through, there: Around every school hall corner
Melting in sweat melting down seared skin peeling
Taking the place of escaping when the way out is as Unseeable and as unreal as the fear in the sweat and corners
Rembrandt Harmenzoon van Rijn (1606 – 1699) The Sleeping Herdsman DonatedBELUM.U2019.10.3Etching1644aspartofthe Acceptance in Lieu Scheme, 2019
MATTHEW RICE TRIO difficulti. initially to look beyond the trio in the foreground. theii. couple appear to corpse, the man covers his eyes. itiii.now occurs the man may be resting his head in his hand. ifiv.he rests his head in his hand he could be dozing, the couple glanc es up at him, for fear they might give themselves away, softnesses on each other’s mouths. inv. the shadows, the sign of the devil, middle fingers held in place by a wherevi.thumb,it’s impossible to determine the cattle’s interest, or whatever might suggest it.
MADDIE WEST WHAT ONE FARMER SAID TO THE OTHER Mimicking the crops that kiss the soil, Cows lean in closer for comfort Against the shade of trees Who have for years worn a strong base And stretch to join hands with other branches A farmer keeps his flocks With forearms that guide the current Not a speck has asked him anything Yet he’ll say No one knows the pain Of mud-stuck boots in the rain He looks one straight in the eye Maintains an opaque eye contact You’ve never seen beauty in real life You’ve never seen soil transform color Illuminated by lights for all time They’re more than one farm hands And man in a commune They take breaks together, Old and wise in their faces Yet they rest under baby blue skies
Others talk of philosophy on the surface But those who dig beneath into the fertile, Dirt that stains callus hands Have the modest place on the platter To breath in actuality to the bone To live in a time of baroque Irregular form in all places And still know the true shape From the ground up to the face front Of who contains the true virtue Maybe in another life That is far beyond any fields Cows meet for coffee And chat about the rain There is no true way to be sure Yet the animals give praise to know They have a place to stay Because of those who graze and gaze Destined to be parents to the earth
They make canvas out of visual art While they discuss Descartes and Spinoza
Rembrandt Harmenzoon van Rijn (1606 – 1699) The Adoration of the Shepherds: with the lamp , 1654 DonatedBELUM.U2019.10.4Etchingaspartofthe Acceptance in Lieu Scheme, 2019 Gwendolen Mary Raverat (1884 – 1957) Nativity, BELUM.Pt149Wood-engraving1916
MACKENZIE COOK & EVEN THE COWS & even the cows were watching, twin headed, twin horned twin eyed with twin tongues twined about twin sets of teeth. Cows and their large flat tongues, huge sponges of flesh. Cows and their sloped eyes, cows with backsides swallowed up in dark. Twin cow heads borne out from one body of shadow. What mythical births lurk in these old images, the crevices ink can’t swim to? & even the cows are just representations of cows (white on black // black on white) muscled backsides caught mid-shudder. Myth breathes into Rembrandt, breathes into Raverat, myth breathes life into twin-headed cows.
John Northcote Nash (1893 – 1977) The Sacred Grove (Ovid: Elegy 1 book 3) TheBELUM.Pt6Wood-engraving1925LadyMabel Annesley Gift, 193
Pluck me out of the darkness and make me something divine, alive.
The sulfur burn black bile bleeding bites Wrenched from earth by greedy fingers wrought into the life that binds, the mercy, the grace
A body my body the body below Are the locked dark sides sharp? The weevil and wretch Tough plank log knotted Dead godhead dry rotted Do I look like I’m breathing to you? My body below where smooth stones fairy rings fire flings
If only I could reach down and splash my face in that still reflective pool if only I could raise my own voice join the songs and blackberry juice dribbling down my throat the pangs of scraped knees breeze through my hair the fear and fawning of a real beating heart Who will come see me know me find my eyes through the shy starlight pinpoints
A face that must be there
Beating soles shaking dance flashing eyes prayers and chants
In the pond splash stillness my bare feet on moss slick stones A body below me where I cannot look or touch
DIVINE ALIVE In the grove the groove the wood the forest the life that rises and stays still while white stricken birch bends and breezes around always searching reaching for a warm bite of sun
RUBY WALKER
The flames the graves the clasping hands the charing lambs whether weeping or singing
Rembrandt Harmenzoon van Rijn (1606 – 1699) The Descent from the Cross by torchlight BELUM.U2019.10.2Etching1654
LIAM CALDWELL
After Rembrandt As in a power cut the gallery falls into darkness. The only light is the shaky flame above the body. We witness the miracle, the mastery of shade, the spectrum of monochrome. The lines on a man’s face give him his years as he arranges a makeshift stretcher, the cloth shining white, draped over spars to carry him into a tomb of total dark the artist cannot bring himself to draw.
DESCENT FROM THE CROSS BY TORCHLIGHT
Rembrandt Harmenzoon van Rijn (1606 – 1699) Six’s Bridge DonatedBELUM.U2019.10.6Etching1645aspartofthe Acceptance in Lieu Scheme, 2019
HANNAH HSU UNCLOUDED DAY A scrawl a scratch Could be from a story book Or aOrdreamamemoryPerhapsachildhood memory Ah yes, I remember That little dock by the lake Lush and alive with wild shrubbery as sailboats sit still on the Reflective waters Needle on copper So quick it steals a moment From the sky itself And the movement it capturesSeems to suggest colors OnUnseenandanCalmanunclouded day Can you hear? The church bell ringing in the distance? Almost a whisper Or more like a hum It lingers in the air But the trees sing a sweeter song while Wind weaves whispers To And fro Between blades of grass Picking up Promises we left in the dirt while digging for worms
Bread crumbs of from heaven’s table Crushed into copper by a man with a careful yet carfree, quick eye
Suggesting the sky in its stolen moment
Copper so quick it captures colors So quick it suggests a moment to steal the needle from the sky itself
Once etched into memory What does it take To become real again?
Needle on copper steals a quick moment from the sky itself From the sky itself it steals a moment So quick it steals The movement it captures from the sky itself
Fresh-pressed ink on fibers? Or closed eyes And an open mind With hard-pressed possibilities?
Detail from Unclouded day “Needle on copper So quick it steals a moment From the sky itself And the movement it captures Seems to suggest colors”
Copper so quick to capture color that one seems to see
Needle on copper from the sky itself seems to suggest colors
Finding out is as simple as Taking a few more Steps Forward. To cease to remember and to start seeing.
Some wisp of cloud some cluster of rain
A watchful eye?
Can you see the loose thread falling down? And the moment it captures the colors suggested by the needle On sky Stealingitselfamoment
Itself stolen from sky The movement so quick So quick to suggest The capture of a movement a moment colors copper A needle from the sky it steals it captures colors So quick So quick to suggest colors Suggest the stolen moment sky movement moment The needle itself So quick So TheDetailquick.#2artist’s name is scrawled in the ForForcornerareason.areasonit is scrawled in to WhoDiscoherancetoldyou to put so much weight into That particular order of letters To pay a pretty penny to peek at a particular picture That the master Rembrandt van Rijn Van VanRijnRijn Therein did not bother to Properly title? Could it be carelessness? Or a collector’s callous mistake? Perhaps he was too busy creating to Anticipatingbe such a fuss around his sketch Yes, Perhaps this etch Was little more than a memory An exercise in recording An artist’s way of reporting
The scene the escape of an unclouded day Or perhaps he was on his way To the church in the distance Or the house of a friend None of that really matters in the end And for what reason Do you still stand still Gaping at the scrawl At the memory of a RembrandtmanHarmenszoon van Rijn Imagining his careful hand, (can you? I can.) Yet I wonder how much would you care If the name wasn’t there? And for what reason Are you still here? Enraptured by the work of another When there’s so much wildness in the world Left uncaptured?
Ian Fleming (1906 – 1964) Gethsemene BELUM.Pt207Etching1931
Jesus:God: Dear father, I don’t eat. I don’t sleep but I clasp my palms on the portable pulpit, craving the splinters. I place a spirit better than mine on the pyre in my mind and shed each layer of presence, bleached clean for consumption.
SORCHA NÍ CHEALLAIGH A SELF-PORTRAIT OF JESUS PRAYING IN THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMENE
after ‘Gethsemene’ by Ian Fleming and the late-00’s alternative-electronic group Desire Jesus: Dear father, I’m unsure I exist, despite evidence to the contrary, despite the glory formed to trap my neck, despite the attempts to render the fine lines deepening my brow, despite the impending softness of my betrayers’ lips on mine.
Jesus:God: Dear father, do you think this feeling could last forever, like forever ever, forever ever? The shadows suggest otherwise. A form greater than matchstick trees. The ink crawls toward me. Stops dead when believed seen. Arrested in peripheral vision. God:
Jesus: Father, I do nothing but think of you. I am alone. My head turned left. I find them weak.
The spirit willing, returned unfound. I search in sounds and throw the salt spilled on the counter over my shoulder.
There is nothing left to drink.
Jesus:God: Father, do you know the difference between love and obsession? I feel none and both simultaneously. Write emails unhinged from the waist and grow my moustache long enough until it breaks, prepared to die in my bitterness and a semblance of agony.
Jesus:God: I’mAbba,all that is holy.
Trace my fingers with my essence. I become my own son. I invent my reality from visions corroded into blocks and memories of Victoria Park; place myself at the scene of Gethsemane in the landscapes of France. My fate is pungent enough to taste, god, I do nothing but think of me. If nothing in distress, the emergency services are unavailable to treat the destiny you afforded me. Despite my pleas, I wish to decide my fate in lines of ink and curate my salvation, ofdivine,myown creation. I break my body for no one else to eat, snatch the cup from my tongue, and empty it on the street. I let the hour come and succumb to self-adoration.
Anoint my lips with oleum infirmorum and anticipation. Narcissus and the bodiless dream. My kiss leaves only traces of my God:Jesus:God:reflection.
Rembrandt Harmenzoon van Rijn (1606 – 1699) Bearded man in a furred cap and robe BELUM.U2019.10.1Etching1631
Alone, you can count how many lines make a shadow and it’s always a lot less than you think. Is the man beneath the millers hat related to the hand? Are you tired of this life? Don’t we look alike in artificial light?
Even though I recognise the face: the bulbous nose the pumice skin, the cross stitch on his shawl. I can neither confirm nor deny the Master is his son. Fifty-percent of interaction is ambience and the day I saw his ‘son’ the hard floor echoed with the step of a hundred worshippers. And due to the lightness in my head I felt the authenticity of things in the presence of him, unlike today — grounded, a father’s face twice removed. This house hasn’t the grandeur of the Rijksmuseum.
JAMIE FIELD MASTER AND SON