{"product_id":"the-gazers-spirit-poems-speaking-to-silent-works-of-art","title":"The Gazer's Spirit: Poems Speaking to Silent Works of Art","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis magnificent book is a gallery of words and images that celebrates the sister arts of poetry and painting. John Hollander  the eminent poet and critic  has selected more than fifty works of artpaintings  prints  drawings  photographs  and sculptures from antiquity to the presentand matched them to poems that address the same images in their verses. The result is an illuminating and ingeniously organized chronicle of words and images in conversation  as well as a powerful introduction to how  across Western culture  great writers have been inspired by pictures.  The Gazers Spirit focuses on leading examples of ecphrastic poetry  or poems that directly confront particular works of art. Hollander  who is one of the most distinguished contemporary practitioners of the ecphrastic tradition  has crafted a survey of enormous range  taste  and depth  from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. The heart of the book is its gallery of poems and images set side by side.  There are poems whose presence in this book is all but inevitable  such as Audens \"Musee des Beaux Arts\" paired with Breugel the Elders Landscape with the Fall of Icarus  and delightful surprises  such as Edith Whartons sonnet that casts fresh light on Leonardos Mona Lisa. Here are Robert Browning and Michelangelo; Walt Whitman and George Inness; and Randall Jarrell and Albrecht Drer writing and drawing about The Knight  Death and the Devil.  Among the poets are many visually sophisticated writers such as James Merrill  Richard Howard  Marianne Moore  and Richard Wilbur; the visual objects in the book are both celebrated and obscure  as various as a Greek sculplture  a medieval tapestry  a famous Renoir  or a fountain by an anonymous architect. In some cases  obvious affinities  such as a poem by Vicki Hearne on a white horse by Gauguin  produce unexpected poetic results.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44966826442805,"sku":"ByrdShop_0226349497","price":100.84,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780226349497.jpg?v=1770582161","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-gazers-spirit-poems-speaking-to-silent-works-of-art","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}