Document Type
Poetry
Abstract
[First paragraph]
Amanda Tai’s first collection of poems, Symptoms of Breaking, institutes a new relationship to mimesis where it is most apparent in poetry, the ekphrastic poem. Of course, it is problematic to speak of mimesis when it comes to ekphrasis even though one might say that it is one of the most obvious cases of poetic mimeticism. From the Greek meaning to "out speak" suggesting a certain eccentric effect at work, we already have a sense of removal when it comes to ekphrasis, not to mention that this terminology did not originally refer to "art on art" but on "the thing itself" in general, the thing of course already being a removal from, to use Plato’s terminology, the "pure form" of the particular thing.
Repository Citation
Clinton, Alan, and Amanda Tai. "She Breaks Up with Paintings." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 11, no. 4, 2011, pp. 1–6. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol11/iss4/9