The BlueIris Semi-Nightly Poetry Break, 1/23/08

"After the Opening, 1932"

Why hadn't he thought of it before?
He turns to Jo, to the waiter handing out
buttered rolls, glasses of wine, caviar:
everyone must go! He realizes chairs
should remain in disarray, windows open,
gleaming ends of rump roast steaks and salmon
pâtés cooling in neglected browns and pinks.

At the Whitney, earlier, he was approached
by a small man in a quivering grin.
If you don't mind me saying so, he began,
but Hopper did, and turned to admire
his lost faces, lights flirting with darks,
the tip of a steeple just brushing the sky.
You've really got it, you know—
what it's like when no one's around.
Hopper took an inward bow, then noticed
the white tied bow in New York Restaurant,
quiet blue back and perched vase towering
over a Room in Brooklyn, where light
and afternoon would have done.

It will not do! He can scarcely eat;
Jo chats with the Rockefellers,
the Pierpont Morgans, Guggenheims,
while Hopper's lost in an empty room.
From now on, he vows, all will be absence—
shadows the dreams of long gone men,
roads into the distance only roads, eyes
only eyes, with nothing behind them.

—Anna Ziegler

Wow, this is an esoteric one...

Is it about Edward Hopper?

Interesting group of descriptions...

This line especially speaks to me:

From now on, he vows, all will be absence—

I like the feeling of that one...

Thanks, sweetie!

:hug:

"I love the work of Edward Hopper and have written poems in the past inspired by the narratives suggested in his paintings. This time, I wanted to write a narrative of Hopper himself. I imagined a fanciful moment in which he understood that he could go no further with the idea of life's emptiness in his work, that this would speak to even greater truths, among them that every piece of art implies a sort of absence—that of the artist having left it behind, the way, in the poem, he has left his Opening and moved on."

"...You've really got it, you know—
what it's like when no one's around..."

I believe he does. Thanks BlueIris, again.

:-)