Triangles of Light: The Edward Hopper Poems
Hoggard assumes the persona of the great American realist artist Edward Hopper to talk about 51 artworks from throughout his long career. Hoggard has obviously studied Hopper and the psychology of artists fairly intently. As the title suggests, major concerns of the poems are light and shape. Formal matters, however, unavoidably evoke emotions and memories. Often Hoggard’s Hopper ripostes to critics with reductive asperity; of Drug Store, a 1927 oil, he says, “I know this looks like reportage / but it’s fiction, an invention / of reds and blues and greenish blacks / in a grid whose gestures / chant mysteries to me.” He is angrily impatient with sexualized readings, especially when they include presumptions about his life. It helps Hoggard that Hopper’s typical imagery is so familiar, so that a mere title—each poem bears the title of the picture it’s about—conjures characteristically Hopperish sparse interiors, deserted-seeming landscapes, and averted faces. Perhaps the best thing about these poems is that they seem ideal companions to the best biographies and analyses of the great artist. --Ray Olson