Self-Portrait Poem by gershon hepner

For three score years and ten I’ve tried
to paint a beautiful self-portrait;
with words I bricks-and-mortar it,
but it has not been quite what I’d
intended it to look like so
I’ll leave it to an artist who
is greater than I am––that’s you! ––
to be the painter who can show
the world how I appear, Yes, warts
and all is what you may outline;
about my flaws I will not whine––
but don’t play piano on my fortes,
for while I listen to what you’ve
depicted me as looking like
I hope that what you’ve drawn won’t psych
me so of me I’ll disapprove.

Inspired by an article by James Barron in the NYT, September 24,2009 (“Self-Portraits Speak More than Words”) :
Burt Britton says it was like that old Johnny Mercer song: a quarter to three, and there was no one in the place except him and a guy on a barstool. The place was the Village Vanguard. Mr. Britton was filling in for the bartender and just wanted to close up for the night. The conversation sounded like a boozy Alphonse-and-Gaston routine. “He kept asking, ‘What do you want from me, kid? ’ ” Mr. Britton recalled, “and I kept saying, ‘I want to lock up, go home, get some sleep.’ ” Mr. Britton said he kept serving the man drinks, and the man kept asking, “What do you want from me, kid? ” Finally, Mr. Britton said, he shoved a piece of paper across the bar and told the man, “Do a self-portrait for me, drink your drink, and let’s call it a night.” It turned out that Norman Mailer could draw. His abstract self-portrait was the beginning of what Mr. Britton calls “all this madness, ” a quirky collection of several hundred …
While still at the Village Vanguard, he asked Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock to pick up a pen and do self-portraits. He also got one from an under-age high school basketball star who later changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. When Mr. Britton sneaked him in the back way and served him Coca-Cola, Lew Alcindor drew a long stick figure and signed it “Lew.” Bloomsbury’s estimates are $2,000 to $3,000 for the Davis, $1,500 to $2,000 for the Hancock, $400 to $600 for the Abdul-Jabbar and $2,000 to $3,000 for the Mailer. Some of Mr. Britton’s self-portraitists revealed themselves with words as well as sketches. Below his self-portrait, dated 1974, Tennessee Williams wrote “off-off-off-off-off B’dway.” “That was when he couldn’t get a play anywhere, ” Mr. Britton said. Lillian Hellman captioned her self-portrait “what I wanted to look like and don’t.” By the hair she wrote “blonde curls, natural” and by the eyes, “deep blue eyes, natural.” “First thing I thought was, she wanted to look like Jane Fonda, ” Mr. Burton said. “I pick up the phone and I call her. I said, ‘I know the feeling. I want to look like Alan Ladd.’ It wasn’t even a lie. I did.”
Jorge Luis Borges — who had gone blind when he was in his 50s — did his in the basement of the Strand, using one finger to guide the pen he was holding with his other hand. “His translator brought him in, ” Mr. Britton said. “The portrait is perfect, but what I most remember was escorting him upstairs to the main floor, where it became clear he was listening to the room, the stacks, the books, and him telling me, ‘You have as many books as we have in our national library.’ ”

9/24/09