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| Anonymous Italian Artist Portrait of a Couple ca. 1580-90 oil on canvas Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
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| Cornelis van Haarlem Amorous Couple and Woman with Songbook ca. 1594 oil on canvas Princeton University Art Museum |
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| Master of the Half-Lengths Rest on the Flight into Egypt ca. 1540 oil on panel National Gallery, London |
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| Master of the Saint Bartholomew Altar Baptism of Christ ca. 1485-1500 oil on panel National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Hans Horions Salome dancing for Herod ca. 1665 oil on canvas Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Johann Liss Temptation of Mary Magdalen ca. 1626 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Johann Liss The Cursing of Cain ca. 1626-27 oil on canvas Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia |
-1636-etching-Metropolitan-Museum-of-Art-New-York.jpg) |
| Abraham Bosse Youth (from the series Four Ages of Man) 1636 etching Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Cornelis Schut Head of the Virgin with Dead Christ ca. 1640 etching Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Raphael Lamar West Orlando rescuing Oliver from the Lion ca. 1785 drawing (study for a painting illustrating Shakespeare's As You Like It) Morgan Library, New York |
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| Anthony van Dyck The Mocking of Christ ca. 1628-30 oil on canvas Princeton University Art Museum |
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| Cornelis van Poelenburgh Christ carrying the Cross ca. 1620-25 oil on copper National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Jacob Jordaens Groom bringing a Horse to its Master (illustration of a proverb) ca. 1645 gouache on paper (modello for tapestry) Musée du Louvre |
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| Peter Paul Rubens The Meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek ca. 1626 oil on canvas (modello for tapestry) National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Pensionante del Saraceni Fruit Vendor ca. 1615-20 oil on canvas Detroit Institute of Arts |
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| Aelbert Cuyp Lady and Gentleman on Horseback ca. 1655 oil on canvas National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
from Collected Poems
Word by word and war by war –
What makes one possible sustains the other too:
The urge to change, the power to deceive,
What makes one possible sustains the other too:
The urge to change, the power to deceive,
To fabricate a version of the world
Not as it is, but as someone imagines it to be.
The aim is not to say what happened
But to forge a monument by force, deploying
All the subtlety and weapons of the will
And leaving something broken in its wake: the simple truth
As it appeared in school each day . . .
Not as it is, but as someone imagines it to be.
The aim is not to say what happened
But to forge a monument by force, deploying
All the subtlety and weapons of the will
And leaving something broken in its wake: the simple truth
As it appeared in school each day . . .
* * *
I used to think there was a different way,
A less insistent one, accepting what it finds
Without revising it, without the specious clarity
And authority of art, and its pervasive
Atmosphere of will. But that turned out to be a style too,
A sweeter one perhaps, yet just as artificial in the end.
The point is general, not confined to art: to make
Is to destroy; to act is to replace what would have been
With something signed, that bears a name. When I was a boy
I thought a life just happened, or was there to find.
Wars were aberrations. Poems were another generation's.
I didn't realize you made it up, you made them up,
And that the self was not an object but an act,
A less insistent one, accepting what it finds
Without revising it, without the specious clarity
And authority of art, and its pervasive
Atmosphere of will. But that turned out to be a style too,
A sweeter one perhaps, yet just as artificial in the end.
The point is general, not confined to art: to make
Is to destroy; to act is to replace what would have been
With something signed, that bears a name. When I was a boy
I thought a life just happened, or was there to find.
Wars were aberrations. Poems were another generation's.
I didn't realize you made it up, you made them up,
And that the self was not an object but an act,
A sequence of decisions bound together by a noun . . .
– John Koethe (2006)
– John Koethe (2006)