SOURCE: Lundquist, Sara. “Reverence and Resistance: Barbara Guest, Ekphrasis, and the Female Gaze.” Contemporary Literature 38, no. 2 (summer 1997): 260-86.

In the following essay, Lundquist discusses gender perspective in Guest's ekphrastic poems—that is, poetry inspired by or written about specific works of art.

Composer John Gruen, in his reminiscence of the New York arts scene during the 1950s and 1960s, employs both photographs and text to show how ardent artistic endeavor merged in those days with fervent socializing. He chronicles the doings of a group of people whose admiration of each other's as-yet-unrecognized work coincided with delight in each other's conversation and company. Studio photographs of artists at work are mixed with photographs of parties in bars and on beaches; pictures of elegant gallery openings are mixed with comical posings and blurred informal snapshots of leisure and levity. A typical photograph full of people is accompanied by a half-page...