Pre-poetry verbiage:

Theme: While taking this course, I stumbled across a new word: “ekphrastic” meaning “a vivid, dramatic description of a visual work of art, or a written response to a work of art”. As soon as I read this definition, Frida Kahlo’s “The Wounded Deer” (also known as “The Little Deer” or “El Venado Herido”) all but physically leapt into my mind. Her work is hugely important to me at all levels, especially emotionally and even physically, in terms of who the artist is and her great, never-ending pain. How she coped with that pain through her painting never ceases to astonish and inspire me.

Threads: Thus I (thought I) knew I could “easily” write five ekphrastic poems. The goal turned out not to be so effortless – how do you do justice to something like this painting? These 5 poems are my attempts to do just that.

“Small Noticeings”
1. The word “ekphrastic” suddenly seemed to pop up everywhere, e.g. news magazines, magazines for poets and other writers...

2.Particulars within the painting itself that I'd not really attended to previously (or that I don't remember having noticed per se), e.g. (a) the far scene in the background of lightning playing over the surface of an apparently calm body of water; or (b) how the nine wounds on the deer correspond to the more than 9 wounds she suffered in her accident @ 18 that ruined her health for the rest of her life; or (c) how the trees form columns, and these columns are badly damaged (they may refer to her perception of the wounds in her back as “The Broken Column” which she painted at least once).

3. Dreamed about La Casa Azul, The Blue House where Frida Kahlo lived much of her life

Literary tools
1. Alliteration
2. Internal rhyming
3. End rhyming
4. No, or very little, punctuation (I like the idea of a reader providing their own, so to speak)
5. Enjambment

Poetry II class?
I don’t plan on taking the Poetry II course at this time. That is not to say that I wouldn’t be interested at a later date!
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Five Poems:

My painting carries with it the message of pain.

-- Frida Kahlo

The Wounded Deer

Little Deer, oh wounded Deer
Your face serene
Though in throes of stabbing pain

Bounding away
With a ballerina’s grace
From the fierce lightning storm
Behind these murky woods
While blood pours from nine ruthless wounds

Plunging further
Through dark trees as shattered as you
Into the forest of your death

Do you wear the antlers of Artemis
She too is a Deer Who will travel with you
Until at last She lets your pain and life
Rise to the mourning branches above
And you fall with a soft sigh

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The Green Branch

A broken green branch
Bereft of my life-giving source
I lie helpless under your frantic hooves
Beating a panicked pain-driven tattoo
As you race through the woods
Crimson ichor raining everywhere.

Little deer, do not stumble over me
Leap high with the last of your life!
I am broken youth
My own, your own,
But I will lie in your grave
Hoping we both might rise
I a new Tree, you a new, laughing Being.

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Her Death Awaits

Watch now with mounting dread
How bolts of lurid lightning
And bolts of savage steel
Illuminate this scene

Both, piercing ––
One, the innocent sky
The other, the innocent flesh of
A young hind stunned from shock

Threat of being hit by lightning
Terror as she’s struck by arrows –
The little deer flees both

Though riddled with wounds
How can she show a serene face
When Death grins at her triumphantly?

Or is hers the mask of stoicism
Despite the murderous aim
Of arrows and lightning?

Her death still awaits
Watch now with mounting dread

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The Wide Blue Sea

Wounded deer, come back to me!
I, the wide blue sea
That lies far in the distance
Still and serene
While a brutal drama
Of crashing lightning, broken trees
And arrows poisoned with cold cruelty
Screams through the woods

I am the source of your profound sadness
I can be its watery grave
I am your suffering, I am your healing
I am your defenselessness and protection
I am your rage at your debility
And I your cool serenity
Rest now within my gentle embrace
Wounded deer, come back to me!

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Her spinal column was broken in three places in the lumbar region. Her collarbone was broken, and her third and fourth ribs. Her right leg had eleven fractures and her right foot was dislocated and crushed. Her left shoulder was out of joint, her pelvis broken in three places.
-- Hayden Herrera, Frida

The Wounded Deer II

I stand in awe before this small painting
“The Wounded Deer”
By a goddess whose temple was built
With broken columns
Consecrated
With the blood of a deer
Inhabited
By demons of pain and tears
Destroyed
By Xolotl, that dark deity of death

Who could ask for more hellish attendants than these
Yet she surprised
All her erstwhile tormentors
Divine or mortal
Trapped them in pigment
Painted them into submission
Flattened them onto masonite, canvas, metal, cardboard
They could not escape her

So is it any wonder that
I stand in awe before this small painting
By the wounded deer herself
The goddess
Frida Kahlo

Sophie Wolf

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