More Than a Rock

28On Art and Writing

I delight in photographs

I delight in words

I delight in mixing both

To see what happens if they bend

My pity for the pure photographer

My pity for the pure poet

Is tempered by the responsibility

I have to three media

Whereas they to only one.

—Minor White

Painter Edward Hopper was known for his insistence on not discussing his work. Among his oft-quoted quips is this: “If you could say it in words, there’d be no reason to paint.” What seems to have escaped him was that the opposite holds just as true: things expressible in words cannot always be expressed in painting. In a greater sense, I believe it is fair to say that although a degree of overlap exists among all means of communication—visual, audible, inscribed, or mixed—each ...