Poetry Of Imperfection Poem by gershon hepner

Wrinkles, crows’ feet, sagging of a breast,
embarrassing when they’re subjected to inspection,
can be, exposed and openly confessed,
both paradigms and poetry of imperfection.


Simon Schama writes about Rembrandt's nudes in The New Yorker, October 11,1999 (“A Naked Rembrandt: Was he a man distracted by earthly delights, or a painter who knew exactly what he was looking at? ”) :

From the beginning, Rembrandt was powerfully drawn to ruin, to the poetry of imperfection. He enjoyed tracing the marks left by the bite of worldly experience: the pits and pocks that gave the human countenance a mottled richness. Other than the Holy Scripture, he cared for no book as well as the book of decay, its truths written in the furrowed brows of old men and women; in the sagging timbers of decrepit barns; in the lichenous masonry of derelict old buildings; in the mangy fur of a valetudinarian lion. He was a compulsive peeler, itching to open the casing of things and people, to winkle out the content packed within. He liked to toy with poignant discrepancies between outsides and insides––the brittle husk and the vulnerable core.


10/10/99