Poem for the Study for the Programme
After Degas
By Robert Fillman
November 15, 2024
November 15, 2024
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One evening he scratched black chalk on paper,
sketched the swanlike movements of a couple, their slender legs and pointed toes, outlines of a tutu and ballet shoes. He drew
the bodice of a singer and her score, some man of high birth in a feathered cap and wig, harp and bass fiddle, a bow poised and hovering just above the mute strings. Underneath, two enormous metal stacks
chuff smoke while schooners bob in the harbor. Nothing is passive, everything untamed. But it is the space in the bottom right
corner of the page that has me thinking about emptiness, that void framed by such ornate design, the candle-lit shadows of the artist’s dreams left untouched after all this time, the work he was meant to do an orphan searching for a father’s hand. |
NOTE: On March 18, 1990, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston was subject to perhaps the most notorious art robbery in history. Many works by Degas were among those stolen.
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Robert Fillman is the author of House Bird (Terrapin, 2022) and the chapbook November Weather Spell (Main Street Rag, 2019). His next collection, The Melting Point, is forthcoming from Broadstone Books in 2025. Individual poems have appeared in Poetry East, Salamander, Spoon River Poetry Review, Tar River Poetry, and Verse Daily. He teaches at Kutztown University in eastern Pennsylvania. Other work can be found at www.robertfillman.com.
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Author’s Note:
I am a lover of ekphrastic poetry. It is a form I enjoy reading—and writing. There’s something exciting about recreating a feeling or exploring a latent narrative in a visual piece of art, using only words on the page. Those restrictions put pressure on the writer. In one sense, you’re looking for what is presented in the original piece—the essential elements. In another, you’re searching for what is absent, for what emerges in the empty space. For years, I’ve been fascinated by the artworks stolen—and potentially lost forever—from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. So I’ve taken on the project of writing an ekphrastic poem for each of the missing masterpieces.