Persimmons

The painting of “Two persimmons” (Line 76) that the speaker uncovers in the eleventh stanza is, along with the fruit itself, one of the poem’s most significant images. In a poem concerned with words and language, this ekphrastic departure (ekphrasis is the literary device of describing a work of visual art in a piece of writing) is deeply significant. The painting is a physical manifestation of an alternative to language. Just as words are used to refer to or conjure the idea of an object without the need of the object’s presence, the painting creates the illusion of the persimmons’ presence without actually being the fruit.

This connection between the painting and language is reinforced by the father’s use of traditional calligraphy materials such as a “wolftail” brush (Line 80) in its creation. Many classic Chinese ink paintings play with the fact that they are composed using calligraphy tools, and use strokes reminiscent of Chinese characters, blurring the lines between language and artistic representation. The father’s claim to have painted the fruit so many times he can reproduce it with his “eyes closed” and eventually even after he goes “blind” (Line 84), suggests that he did not model the persimmons in the painting on any real persimmons.