Photographs

By John Unterecker 1923–1989 John Unterecker

Proof Sheets: 36 Prints

 
These photographs are the index of an hour,
           memory clocked along negative margins:
                       one through twelve, one through twelve, one
                        through twelve.
 
Even in a sequence there is choice,
          as when I chose not to photograph silences between words—
 
choice of the parted lips—
          or choose now a sequence out of time.
                       Scissors: chopped time.
 
Rearrangement is good:
          You are characters in a drama called then.
 
You are figures for mythology.
          I shall make Phaedra blonde, Theseus dark, Hippolytus
          blonde—
 
blue eyes: blue eyes; that will do—
          Antigone singing in the graveyard wind,
 
a twelve-year old who is Jocasta alternate weeks.
          Neither imagination nor my willing flesh can move this
          hand
 
one fraction of an inch;
          a shift of stance could have juxtaposed mouths.
                        The fixed frame
 
is the drama:
           Hippolytus at banquet;
                   Phaedra in her chamber,
                                 behind her that painting blurred
 
into an omen,
          as if Theseus were Creon, Meleager, shepherd, faun;
                   Oedipus barefoot, hairskin beast;
                             Antigone maenad, Helen, Artemis.
 
                                       Only out-of-focus figures move.


Source: Poetry (February 1970).

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This poem originally appeared in the February 1970 issue of Poetry magazine

February 1970

Biography

Poet, editor, and scholar John Eugene Unterecker earned an MA and a PhD at Columbia University. He is the author of Stone: Poems (1977), the critical work A Reader’s Guide to W.B. Yeats (1959), and the biography Voyager: A Life of Hart Crane (1969), which was nominated for a National Book Award. Editor of the Columbia University Press American Poets series, Unterecker taught at the College of the City of New York, Columbia . . .

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Poem Categorization

SUBJECT Living, Time & Brevity, Relationships, Home Life, Arts & Sciences, Photography & Film

POET’S REGION U.S., Western

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