Round 74

Yusef: "After the Opening, 1932 by Anna Ziegler

Bob: "Nostalgia II" by Charles Wright

Ziegler imagines Edward Hopper after a gallery opening in 1932. The reader's response will depend on how convincingly the scene is painted: Hopper's need for solitude, scorn for the Rockefellers, etc... The poem is more of a short-story, really. I feel a lack of verisimilitude, but maybe it's just me.

Wright's poem ends with a simile that has me scratching my head:

The future, like Dostoyevsky, poised
To read us the riot act

I've never "gotten" Wright's poetry, and this poem is no exception. I understand it semantically, not aesthetically. He has a certain feel for language, but the results obtained seem duller than we might expect. Is it a problem of tone?

This one is a tie.

After 74:

20-41-12