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| Thomas Eakins The Concert Singer 1890-92 oil on canvas Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Édouard Vuillard In Bed 1891 oil on canvas Musée d'Orsay, Paris |
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| Henri Fantin-Latour Poppies 1891 oil on canvas Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide |
THE GREAT FIGURE
Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city.
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| Henri Fantin-Latour Zinnias ca. 1897-99 oil on canvas Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide |
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| Childe Hassam Washington Arch, Spring 1890 oil on canvas Phillips Collection, Washington DC |
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| Childe Hassam Improvisation 1899 oil on canvas Smithsonian American Art Museum |
ON GAY WALLPAPER
The green-blue ground
is ruled with silver lines
to say the sun is shining
And on this moral sea
of grass or dreams lie flowers
or baskets of desires
Heaven knows what they are
between cerulean shapes
laid regularly round
Mat roses and tridentate
leaves of gold
threes, threes and threes
Three roses and three stems
the basket floating
standing in the horns of blue
Repeated to the ceiling
to the windows
where the day
Blows in
the scalloped curtains to
the sound of rain
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| Edward Burne-Jones Hope 1896 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Max Klinger Académie ca. 1900-1910 drawing on green paper British Museum |
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| Camille Pissarro Pont Neuf 1902 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest |
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| Carl Fredrik Hill Palace interior with statue of an emperor and tigers before 1911 drawing Malmö Konstmuseum, Sweden |
POEM
As the cat
climbed over
the top of
the jamcloset
first the right
forefoot
carefully
then the hind
stepped down
into the pit of
the empty
flowerpot
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| Juan Gris White Tablecloth ca. 1912-16 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Houston |
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| Juan Gris Still-life before an open window, Place Ravignan 1915 oil on canvas Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Juan Gris Still-life with Newspaper 1916 oil on canvas Phillips Collection, Washington DC |
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| George Bellows Tennis at Newport 1919 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
– poems are by William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), from Selected Poems, edited by Robert Pinsky