I always enjoyed Edward Hopper’s work, so when I heard that a renowned poet had written a book solely on his paintings of course I picked it up. I don’t want to say I was disappointed by the book, because that isn’t entirely true. However, I wished that he had written more than a one to two page synopsis for each painting. Hopper’s paintings lend themselves to discussion quite easily. I would have like to see a more in depth analysis from Mark Strand, rather than what at times seemed like a shallow dive.
That being said, Strand did prove himself to be quite competent at describing and analyzing art. His explanations of composition and presumptions of what was going on in the paintings were all very interesting and well done. I just wanted more of it.
