Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Jack Hirschman’s "Four" is a brief yet deeply impressionistic poem that merges visual art, literary allusion, and intimacy, constructing a moment where presence and creation intertwine. The poem’s structure is fluid, its language sparse yet evocative, allowing meaning to emerge as much from what is left unsaid as from what is explicitly stated. It is a meditation on perception, transformation, and the way a presence—like a lover, or even inspiration itself—can shape and redefine the self.

The poem begins with a striking simile: "You come into a white room the way brushstroke enters my eye, defines me." The white room is a space of possibility, reminiscent of an empty canvas, an open field of perception. The lover’s entrance is compared to a brushstroke, suggesting both artistic creation and a moment of revelation. Their mere presence is an act of definition, of shaping the speaker’s sense of self. This suggests that identity is not static but something formed in response to others, much like a painting is altered by each successive mark.

The line "‘Tall, and of a port in air.’" is an echo of Wallace Stevens' "Anecdote of the Jar," a poem about how an object placed in the wilderness imposes order, creating meaning simply by existing. Hirschman repurposes this literary reference, applying it to the lover. The beloved is described as tall, possessing a presence that shifts the space around them. The port in air suggests both elegance and a sense of destination, as if the beloved is a harbor, something to which the speaker is drawn. This reference to Stevens subtly reinforces the theme of how objects—and people—alter their surroundings simply by being.

The next lines introduce sound and intimacy: "I take the line of another written about a jar and put it to your ear." This is a striking image—language, borrowed from another poet, becomes something almost tactile, something the speaker places onto the beloved. The jar now contains "the sea, the sea is in it," evoking both vastness and containment. This echoes Stevens again, whose jar in Tennessee imposed structure upon nature. But in Hirschman’s poem, the jar is not just an ordering force—it is empty, until the beloved turns to drink from the lip of it. This suggests transformation; what was once void now holds meaning. The act of drinking from the jar evokes both physical intimacy and an intellectual or emotional exchange, as if the beloved’s presence animates what was previously inert.

The poem concludes with an image of stillness and aftermath: "Now it lies still, on its side your wild strokes, so many memorables, drying." The jar, once filled with sea and meaning, is now toppled, suggesting that the act of creation or communion has passed. "Your wild strokes" returns to the earlier painting metaphor, implying both artistic energy and passionate movement. These strokes are now drying, signaling the completion of a moment, the residue of something once fluid and immediate now settling into permanence.

"Four" operates as both an intimate portrait and a meditation on artistic influence. The beloved is both muse and creator, shaping the speaker’s perception while also bringing a dormant world to life. Hirschman’s interplay of visual, literary, and tactile imagery suggests that love, like art, is a process of defining, transforming, and ultimately leaving traces. The poem’s restrained language and allusive depth invite the reader into its white space, much like the beloved entering the room, allowing each to bring their own interpretation to the fleeting but deeply resonant moment it captures.

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