“If You Wish a Picture”: Ekphrasis as Technique in Solmaz Sharif’s Look

Abstract

This article analyzes the use of ekphrasis in Solmaz Sharif’s debut poetry collection, Look ( 2016 ). The poems in Look are constructed around terms taken from the United States Department of Defense’s Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms and describe the experiences of Sharif and her Iranian family in the aftermath of the events of 9/11. The prominent presence of sight and visuality in the collection will be analyzed through the concept of the “scopic regime.” Turning attention towards Sharif’s description of artifacts of family memory, including a video recording of Sharif’s father and a series of photos of her uncle, it is argued that ekphrasis functions in the collection as a mechanism by which to determine the conditions of visibility within the collection and, in so doing, navigate the problematics of mediating trauma and violence in the contemporary scopic regime.