The unattributed quote,"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture" is a clever and provocative observation. It invites us to think about both the relationships and the marked divisions between distinct artforms, while at the same time conjuring something impossible into existence: who can read this without imagining the possibilities of an architectonic jig?

The poets in this anthology each provide their own answers to questions about ekphrasis, demonstrating how art continues to initiate transformative encounters which both consolidate and illuminate our sense of our individual selves and our shared humanity. And the artworks of the poems themselves, too, provide the occasion of such encounters, inviting us to look anew at the artworks to which they respond and, significantly, to look anew at ourselves.