Ekphrasis, Conceptual Reality, and the “Cubification” of Poetics

Abstract

When one thinks of cubism, there are many associations that come to mind. There is, on some accounts, an “elevation of style above substance,” which creates a new mode of perceiving the physical world. There is a fundamental rethinking of the interaction between the organic, geometric, and symbolic, and a simultaneous rethinking of the material realities at play. Cubist work flattens the individual nature of perception and multiplies the perspective to produce a sense of manufactured objectivity. This paper will examine a few poetic works that take on similar characteristics and replicate the tendencies of the visual arts movement of cubism, which took place from 1907 to 1914. This paper will also examine the exchange between cubist painters, particularly Picasso, and modernist poets who translated the visual arts movement to the literary sphere, such as Gertrude Stein and Guillaume Apollinaire. This exchange was not limited, however, to the modernist era and continues to manifest in contemporary poetics. Authors today take on the characteristics of the cubists in different shapes and forms, explorations and iterations that render each work quite different, yet still constituted by the same school. This paper will both explore poems that are intentionally written in response to cubism and poems that are less directly in its intentional lineage, particularly those of Gertrude Stein, Guillaume Apollinaire, and John Yau.