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| Ivor Abrahams The Conqueror Worm (from portfolio series - E.A. Poe Tales and Poems) 1976 screenprint Tate, London |
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| Patrick Caulfield Still Life Ingredients 1976 screenprint Tate, London |
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| Dieter Roth Self Portrait as a Drowning Man 1974 acrylic paint, watercolor and glue on cardboard Tate, London |
from MOUNT BLANK
And it if had been cut out of cardboard,
Cardboard would serve. It always had: inside
Contours partly jagged, part caressingly
Smooth – for even children were trained to trace
Its silhouette that they might come to know
It – there was only the unmarked flatness
Of surface fused to its depth. What he saw
Was not a picture of his seeing, nor
An image of his dimmest sleep. And, say,
That there was no cardboard (or, if there were,
A little azure hat for the mountain,
Doing no harm), say that the crookedness
Of its high tower was a beckoning,
And that it was a place to get to – still,
Cardboard is as cardboard does: biting out
Its part of the available blue and
Masking some gummier construction taped
Behind it, emptiness and passe-partout.
– John Hollander (1974)
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| Richard Hamilton Picasso's meniñas 1973 etching Tate, London |
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| Lucian Freud Naked Portrait 1972-73 oil on canvas Tate, London |
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| David Hockney Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy 1970-71 acrylic on canvas Tate, London |
from THE DAY THE HOUSES SANK
Next day the houses sank beneath the waves.
First the foundations, lapped by the oily tide;
Then lintel, windowframe, brick, eaves, tile, slate.
Now in the watery light wave after wave
Rolls overhead, crests, passes, and subsides.
– Constance Urdang (1971)
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| John Piper Near Newcastle Emlyn, Cardigan 1968 screenprint Tate, London |
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| Ron Davis Vector 1968 acrylic paint on plastic Tate, London |
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| Peter Kinley Figure in a Doorway 1967 oil on canvas Tate, London |
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| Claes Oldenburg Lipsticks in Piccadilly Circus, London 1966 collage on postcard Tate, London |
from FRAGMENT
The pictures were really pictures
Of loving and small things. There was a winter scene
and half-hidden sketches of the other three seasons.
Autumn was a giant with a gray woollen cap.
Near him was spring, a girl in green draperies
Half sitting, half standing near the trunk of an old tree.
Summer was a band of nondescript children
Bordering the picture of winter, which was indistinct
And gray like the sky of a winter afternoon.
The other pictures told in an infinity of tiny ways
Stories of the past: separate incidents
Recounted in touching detail, or vast histories
Murmured confusingly, as though the speaker
Were choked by sighs and tears, and had forgotten
The reason why he was telling the story.
– John Ashbery (1966)
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| Leonard McComb Portrait of a young man standing 1963-83 life-size bronze with gold leaf Tate, London |
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| Patrick Caulfield Black-and-white Flower Piece 1963 oil on panel Tate, London |
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| Frank Stella Hyena Stomp 1962 alkyd paint on canvas Tate, London |
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| William Scott White, Sand and Ochre 1960-61 oil on canvas Tate, London |
THE MOTHER
On the hilltop, close to the house of the empress, Your temple
Is dark, sunken: a pit. The thick crowded pillars
Stumps only. The dread of Your presence
Lopped, like them, cold in mutilation.
Throning it here, in the stillness: vacancy.
In times beyond this time, were you robed in darkness?
You were known, then, as the Great Goddess. You are
Great even yet, more terrible, Mother Cybele, now you are nothing.
– Babette Deutsch (1961)
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| Keith Vaughan Warrior 1960 drawing Tate, London |
Poems from the archives of Poetry (Chicago)