My Last Duchess, Marianne Moore’s No Swan So Fine, Frank O’Hara’s Why I am Not a Painter,

Project description
Essay Topic: Poets have drawn upon works of visual art for their subject matter at least since Homer. Scholars of
literature even have a word for it (ekphrasis). In poems such as Shelley’s Ozymandias, Robert Browning’s
My Last Duchess, Marianne Moore’s No Swan So Fine, Frank O’Hara’s Why I am Not a Painter, or
Margaret Atwood’s This Is a Photograph of Me, specific works of visual art can provide a vehicle for
engaging with larger aesthetic, ethical, and even political issues. With reference to one of these poems, discuss
how poetic form helps to convey the poem’s attitudes towards the issues raised by the art object it considers.