This is an ‘ekphrasis’ exercise using the principle character of the movie, “Black Swan,” as subject.
Obscured by facial expressions and camera tricks,
her bad technique, which is supposedly perfect,
goes unseen by those who know
and by those who don’t much care.
The ballet director uses her to make
himself look good. Her fragile,
anorexic form bares a love-hate
relationship with fattening food. Her
mother invades her space too much,
too deeply to let her be herself, so
she throws her up and locks her out
of her bedroom so she can sprout wings.
A perfect Odette, she lacks Odile’s earthy
captivations, so she gets drugged
by a supposed friend, confuses fantasy
with reality, and dances off
to her perfect but untimely end.
This piece has taken on an interesting subject but may be mired too much in verticality. I have not seen the movie Black Swan, but I felt like I already knew each line coming next. Instead of concerning itself with retelling the story of Black Swan or describing the character in line with her story in the film, maybe in crafting this piece, a better approach would be to take the events of the film and describe them in extremely abstract terms. Focus only on describing it in new, interesting, unexpected ways. Arrange them at random, then see what sort of draft comes out of that. This might create more concrete imagery and discourage the natural vertical tendencies that come with this type of character description.
ReplyDelete