A Poet [Un poeta] 1941

Luigi Bartolini made this etching, A Poet, and wow, look at this, it’s full of line work, cross-hatching, and this kind of dreamy light. I can almost feel him working on that plate, scratching away, thinking about this guy sitting alone on a pier, with all these other structures looming around him. He's there with his hat and baggy clothes, contemplating something, right? Probably he's thinking about writing. The lines are so delicate but intense. It’s like he’s trying to capture something that’s not quite there. That's the thing with art - and poetry - it’s about trying to communicate something just beyond our grasp. And that's how artists inspire each other, right? Bartolini is talking to other artists, and even to poets, across time. Each artist responds with their own voice to something they saw or felt, trying to find the right mark, the right word.