Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Rebecca Wolff’s "Portrait" is an exploration of representation, impermanence, and the tension between artistic capture and lived reality. The poem considers the act of portraying a figure—whether in painting, memory, or language—as an attempt to fix something that is inherently transient. Through shifting perspectives and layered imagery, Wolff interrogates the limitations of portraiture, both as an artistic practice and as a means of preservation. The poem resists the notion that a portrait can fully encapsulate its subject, suggesting instead that what is truly significant—the passage of time, the presence of absence—is always beyond the frame.

“The thing to avoid is in that frame, the reasoned screen fixing light and shade in pithy squares of shape.” This opening line immediately complicates the idea of a portrait. The speaker suggests that what must be avoided is already embedded in the frame, as if the act of capturing an image necessarily includes an unwanted truth. The phrase “reasoned screen” implies that the portrait is an intellectual construct rather than an emotional or organic one, its light and shadow arranged into deliberate, perhaps artificial, balance. The word “pithy” adds another layer of detachment, hinting at compression, oversimplification, or even wit—suggesting that what is captured is a reduction of reality, not its full expression.

The description of the subject follows: “A man sitting outside in a wood chair, his shirt is brighter than the page he squints at.” The details are specific, yet their significance is ambiguous. The brightness of the shirt in contrast to the faded page suggests a difference in permanence—the book, like skin, has browned with exposure, while the man remains momentarily luminous. The act of squinting implies an effort to see clearly, yet the poem itself complicates clarity, positioning portraiture as a process that both reveals and obscures.

“There is the indispensable one.” This sudden assertion is enigmatic. Who is indispensable? The man? The artist? The very act of depiction? The line stands alone, inviting interpretation while reinforcing the idea that what is crucial is not necessarily what is seen, but what is understood beyond the frame.

“If it is this easy to paint / objects why not call it / ‘portraiture’?” The enjambment here emphasizes the distinction between objects and portraits, questioning what makes a portrait different from a simple depiction of things. The line suggests that while objects may be easy to render, true portraiture requires something more—perhaps the ineffable presence of the subject, the magnetism that draws the viewer into the image. This is reinforced by the description that follows: “The hunch of shoulder, the magnet / of the subject at the center, hedged around with frets and greenery.” The man’s posture, his centrality, and the natural elements surrounding him all contribute to his significance, yet they also fence him in, suggesting both focus and containment.

The next lines—“Diminishing and cantilevered (staying out of my way) on the gentle slope.”—introduce movement and instability. The subject is not fixed but diminishing, his presence architectural yet precarious. The parenthetical aside—“staying out of my way”—suggests a tension between the observer and the observed, as if the act of viewing (or painting, or remembering) requires the subject’s absence. This absence becomes literal when “he comes indoors for respite, [leaving] a charred spot.” The image is striking: his departure is marked by a burn, as if his presence was something combustible, something that left an imprint even in its erasure.

“I have changed the wrong thing.” This confession alters the stakes of the poem. The speaker acknowledges an error, implying that an act of alteration—whether in art, memory, or perception—has led to an unintended loss. The pang of this mistake is captured in the next image: “The pang of fixity, a bleached and empty rocker.” The rocker, once occupied, is now void, its emptiness made even more stark by the bleaching effect, suggesting time, exposure, and loss.

The final lines push the poem toward a meditation on transience and sacrifice. “If he will burn so resolutely in a fraction / of the doorway, in the cool hewing of the garden, then why not call it martyrdom?” The man, now reduced to his lingering trace, takes on a near-mystical quality. His presence is ephemeral, yet intense—his departure leaving a permanent mark, his existence defined by his vanishing. The question of martyrdom suggests that his presence, like a saint or a figure of devotion, is defined by suffering or loss. The poem leaves us with this unresolved tension: does the act of capturing a person in art, in memory, in vision, inevitably reduce them to an abstraction, a symbol of their own disappearance?

Throughout "Portrait", Wolff interrogates the relationship between presence and representation, permanence and impermanence. The poem resists the idea that portraiture can truly preserve a subject, suggesting instead that what is most essential is what escapes the frame. In its exploration of light and shade, substance and absence, it offers a meditation on the ways we attempt to hold onto people, only to find that their presence is most vividly felt in what they leave behind.

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