Vox Populi
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Ma Yongbo: Swimmer in the Ocean
On a painting by Deborah Bogen
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Swimmer in Ocean
The swimmer moves through a snowbank that never stops melting,
that keeps melting
yet never quite disappears.
She swims in the melting snowbank
all the way to the sea,
where the snowbank still lingers.
A brown cloud drifts over this ocean.
Inside it someone refuses to vanish.
Someone keeps swimming. Dreaming of her own slow melting.
~~~~
Poem copyright 2025 Ma Yongbo
Painting copyright 2025 Deborah Bogen
Ma Yongbo (a.k.a. Yongbo Ma) is a professor of American literature at Nanjing University Of Science And Technology
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A gorgeous ekphrastic poem❤️
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I love the painting for the way it portrays the energy of the sea and the way the swimmer is part of the sea, and the poem captures that union beautifully.
An inspired collaboration.
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Yongbo has a way with poetry. I always stop, look, and listen when a poem pairs with a work of visual or musical art. Here Yongbo creates his own mystery, and heightens the sense of the swimmer going onward in their slow crawl of the sea. A three way dialogue with the reader/viewer. I’d vote for more such collaboration.
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Thanks, Jim. The poem and the painting speak to each other. I enjoy listening to the dialogue between them.
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Yes, I agree with you Jim, I know that Yongbo has indeed written several poems in response to Deborah’s beautiful artwork
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The first time I saw this beautiful painting by Deborah, I was enchanted, and Yongbo’s poetry compliments her art perfectly. A wonderful creative partnership of two great artists and great friends. I am so pleased to see their wonderful creativity together here today. Thank you Michael for sharing this beauty, the lines
‘ A brown cloud drifts over this ocean,
Inside it someone refuses to vanish’
have stayed with me since first reading, they are powerfully evocative
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Thanks, Helen. I love Deborah’s painting and I agree that Yongbo’s poem complements it beautifully.
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