Tamar Yoseloff as Ekphrasist, and Her Hidden <i>Sweetheart</i>: ‘I Took His Heart, Placed It/in an Ivory Case’ <xref rid="fn1-humanities-475204" ref-type="fn">†</xref>

Abstract

This article investigates Tamar Yoseloff’s different engagements with the visual arts in her ekphrastic poems by focusing on her first collection Sweetheart (1998). There are many critical studies about the poetic ekphrastic tradition, but there is rarely an in-depth investigation into a poet’s dedication to ekphrasis. This article suggests that Tamar Yoseloff’s dedication to ekphrasis is traceable to her earliest work. With a close analysis of three poems from Sweetheart—‘The Two Fridas’, ‘The Arnolfini Marriage’ and ‘The Visible Man’, I argue that the book is a sustained exploration of the autobiographical and biographical enigmas represented in visual artworks and artefacts, as well as our identification with these enigmas. It is hoped that this article could initiate a discussion about the tradition of poets dedicated to ekphrasis being as long as the tradition of modern ekphrasis.

Keywords

• poetry
• ekphrasis
• visual arts
• Wittgenstein
• Freud
• psychoanalysis