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| Eugène Brands Portrait of Daughter with a Fish 1957 oil on canvas NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida |
-1957-assemblage-(wood-glass-printed-paper-found-objects)-North-Carolina-Museum-of-Art-Raleigh.jpg) |
| Joseph Cornell Suzy's Sun (for Judy Tyler) 1957 wood, glass, printed paper, found objects North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh |
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| Howard Dearstyne Untitled (Bottles in Wooden Crates) 1957 C-print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Ruth Ettling Rock Forms 1957 oil on canvas Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, West Virginia |
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| Edward Giobbi Sungathers #2 1957 oil on canvas McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas |
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| Ary Halsema Work Safely 1957 lithograph (poster in Dutch) Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam |
-Young-Voice-1957-oil-on-panel-Memphis-Brooks-Museum-of-Art-Tennessee.jpeg) |
| Josef Albers Study for Homage to the Square: Young Voice 1957 oil on panel Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Tennessee |
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| Peter Lanyon Gull Shore 1957 oil on panel McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas |
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| Mauricio Lasansky Self Portrait 1957 etching and drypoint Dallas Museum of Art |
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| O. Winston Link Hot Shot Eastbound, Iaeger, West Virginia 1957 gelatin silver print Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, West Virginia |
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| Ed Moses Moses y Branco 1957 oil on canvas Menil Collection, Houston |
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| Elmer Novotny Two Weeks with Pay 1957 casein on panel Akron Art Museum, Ohio |
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| Stephen Pace 57-21 1957 oil on canvas Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas |
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| Frank Paulin Carnival Worker 1957 gelatin silver print Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami |
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| Mark Rothko Untitled 1957 oil and mixed media on canvas Menil Collection, Houston |
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| Cristóbal Balenciaga Evening Gown 1957 cotton organdy and embroidered tulle Kunstmuseum, The Hague |
from Dichtung und Wahrheit (An Unwritten Poem)
XLVI
"My Love," says the poet, "is more wonderful, more beautiful, more to be desired than . . ." – there follows a list of admirable natural objects and human artifacts – (more wonderful, I should like to say, than Swaledale or the coast of North-West Iceland, more beautiful than a badger, a sea-horse or a turbine built by Gilkes & Co. of Kendal, more to be desired than cold toast for breakfast or unlimited hot water . . .)
What do such comparisons provide? Certainly not a description by which You could be distinguished from a hundred possible rivals of a similar type.
XLVII
"The One I worship has more soul than other folks . . ." (Much funnier, I should like to say.) To be accurate, should not the poet have written . . . "than any I have met so far"?
XLVIII
"I will love You forever," swears the poet. I find this easy to swear too. I will love You at 4:15 p.m. next Tuesday: is that still as easy?
XLIX
"I will love You whatever happens, even though . . ." – there follows a list of catastrophic miracles –(even though, I should like to say, all the stones of Baalbek split into exact quarters, the rooks of Repton utter dire prophecies in Greek and the Windrush bellow imprecations in Hebrew, Time run boustrophedon and Paris and Vienna thrice be lit again by gas. . . .)
Do I believe that these events might conceivably occur during my lifetime? If not, what have I promised? I will love You whatever happens, even though You put on twenty pounds or become afflicted with a moustache: dare I promise that?
L
This poem I wished to write was to have expressed exactly what I mean when I think the words I love You, but I cannot know exactly what I mean; it was to have been self-evidently true, but words cannot verify themselves. So this poem will remain unwritten. That doesn't matter. Tomorrow You will be arriving; if I were writing a novel in which both of us were characters, I know exactly how I should greet You at the station: – adoration in the eye; on the tongue banter and bawdry. But who knows exactly how I shall greet You? Dame Kind? Now, that's an idea. Couldn't one write a poem (slightly unpleasant, perhaps) about Her?
– W.H. Auden (1959)