Ekphrastic Stanzas: "Rows of Desolation"

Sometime Citric Acid contributor and all-around muse Lisa Alvarez put on Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row" the day after the election. Gloomy, hilarious, empowering, and of course a classic reappropriation of myth, fairy tale, and poetic expectations, she played this classic on "repeat" perhaps fifty times in a row (sic). Its rhythm and words provoked me, and Dylan himself seemed to invite my engagement: "I had to rearrange their faces and give them all another name."  I didn't quite know what I was doing but Lisa explained that it was ekphrasis, creating a comment on a piece of art or using it as a sort of frame to say or compose something new in response and as acknowledgement. And, of course "Desolation Row" is itself ekphrastic.

Later that week I also joined a local "ballot curing" campaign in the 45th Congressional District. Driving around Brea, CA. I listened to the ballad, dirge, or anthem while tracking down voters who'd failed to sign their Vote-by-Mail ballot but might have indeed cast their vote for Derek Tran and not the odious Trump-loving , anti-choice, reactionary Michelle Steel. He won, by the way, partly due to affidavits collected by grassroots citizen groups Seed the Vote, Chispa, and other volunteers! I've since written more stanzas, composing daily. It's a helpful writing discipline, an unlikely way to keep a sort of journal, find a creative response, and meditate further on both the song and our challenging, absurd, desolate moment.  And it's a very long song!

Thanks to editor Susan Zakin for publishing the first section of "Rows of Desolation" in her excellent The Journal of the Plague Years.  See the original there, and do read, share, and support the work of this remarkable online journal. 

Andrew Tonkovich is the founding editor of Citric Acid and longtime editor of the Santa Monica Review. His fiction, essays and reviews have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Ecotone, ZYZZYVA, Faultline, Juked, and Best American Nonrequired Reading. He wrote for both OC Weekly and the Orange County Register.  With Lisa Alvarez, he co-edited the landmark Orange County: A Literary Field Guide, and is the author of two fiction collections, The Dairy of Anne Frank and More Wish Fulfillment in the Noughties and Keeping Tahoe Blue and Other Provocations. His review of A People's Guide to Orange County appeared recently in Alta online. He hosts Bibliocracy Radio, a weekly books show on Pacifica Radio KPFK 90.7 FM in Southern California and lately available as a podcast sponsored by the Community of Writers.