Thursday, May 21, 2020

PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST ~



Robert Frost
portrait by Jeff Wrench
2018



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Dear Anyone and Everyone in Amherst, MA.,

I have been a regular visitor to your lively (when students are there), quiet (when students are gone) town for well over fifty years.

Recently my companion and I noticed, when waiting at the light at the main street four corners, a painted portrait of what appeared to be the actor Maggie Gyllenhaal and found that both interesting, yet strange. When we were on foot we saw on the reverse side (the sidewalk side) a painted portrait, and quite well done, of the poet Robert Frost. The younger Frost, when he lived in Derry, New Hampshire. Raising chickens.

Of course Frost was well acquainted with Amherst and Amherst College, but don’t you know Emily Dickinson lived a stone's throw down the road from where these portraits are on display? Wouldn’t it be awarding and receptive to have a portrait of Dickinson instead of Gyllenhaal at this popular four corners? Others must be questioning this as well.

At a leafy spot in town one might, one day, see a portrait of Robert Francis! More should know and read this poet.





Maggie