Through Painted Skies

Edward L. Edmonds is a professor of education at the University of
Prince Edward Island and honorary chief of the Mi’kmaq of Prince
Edward Island.

Dorothy Mahoney’s first book of poems is a good example of
“ekphrasis,” a term used to signify the strategy and practice of
deriving a poem from a work of art, usually a painting. The poems
manifest Mahoney’s own passionate interest in painters past and
present, and of both sexes. She herself is most erudite, prefacing
several of her poems with succinct relevant quotations and appending a
useful miscellany of endnotes. She is also a performer (she teaches art
in school), as we see in “Plaster Cast” and “Floral Grade Four.”
Above all this is the inspiration she draws from her daily life. There
is poignancy in “Migrant Mother,” pleasure recalled in “Café des
Artistes,” admiration of another’s skill in “Rope Work.” Her
selection of detail is always discriminating, and she certainly has a
concise style.