Former Poet Laureate, Mark Strand chose 23 Hopper paintings (?on what basis)—which are poorly reproduced in black and white—and wrote an analysis of each with several additional bridging chapters. Not a very satisfying analysis, dwelling largely on trapezoidal shapes, but several memorable observations worth the time reading this slim volume.

“Saturated with suggestion” is a marvelous summary of Hopper’s paintings. Strand comments on their “tone not content” as the “questionable narrative of what came before and the wonder at what will come next.” The idea of passage and temporal arrangement from this the frozen instant. Hopper “formalizes privacy in a virtual space where the influence and availability of feeling predominate.”