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Dian Parker's avatar

Shocking, yes! How young he is, how vulnerable. I still maintain he didn’t kill himself, but taunted by the kids in the village for being “different.” He was too in love with painting to quit. Thanks for this. I’ll be writing about him in March.

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Melanie Bettinelli's avatar

He looks so much sadder without the beard. My husband had a beard when I met him and I cannot imagine him without it. It's funny how facial hair can be so mutable and yet can also feel so definitive. And how it can feel like such an affront when someone changes so radically, like they are doing it *at* you. I like how the speaker of your poem takes it so personally, it really makes me ponder how we relate to long-dead artists like Van Gogh, how we can feel so possessive of them. He did so many self portraits and I've only had a chance to really ponder a handful of them. It would not have occurred to me to write a poem about one of them, I tend to lean more towards landscapes than to portraits; but now I rather want to spend that kind of time pondering and writing about his portraits as well.

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