Voices in the gallery

The forty writers in this book, all prominent poets and novelists, were asked to select a work of art from the University of Rochester's Memorial Art Gallery and respond to it with a poem, short story or essay.

The writers include Poet Laureates, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners, New York State Poets and MacArthur Fellows.

Their works range from the gritty "hour of charcoal and amber" in Kate Braverman's response to Douglas Gorsline's 1942 painting Bar Scene, to a delightful short story by Tom Gavin based upon Winslow Homer's magnificent painting "The Artist's Studio in an Afternoon Fog".

A notable group of nineteenth-century American landscape paintings caught the attention of a number of writers, while the poet John Ashbery found the contemporary landscape painting of Jane Freilicher to be a "continual joie de vivre." Other contributors include Andrea Barrett, National Book Award Winner for Fiction in 1996; Hayden Carruth, National Book Award Winner for Poetry in 1996; Anthony Hecht, Chancellor Emeritus of the Academy of American Poets; and Joanna Scott, recipient of the Pushcart Prize and the Lannan Literary Award.With imagination and originality, these writers have recreated the works of art and enable us to see anew many of the treasures in the collections of the Memorial Art Gallery.

Grant Holcomb is the Director of the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester.