Poems of W. B. Yeats

During discussions between Hoyem and Helen Vendler about making a selection of Yeats' poems for an artist book, she proposed Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993). Yeats was the artist’s favorite poet; he had read the poetry since his youth. Diebenkorn was familiar with the Wallace Stevens selection by Vendler for Arion Press, and during a meeting at his home and studio in Healdsburg, California, he said that the Jasper Johns etching as a frontispiece was not sufficient for the book, in his opinion, and that he would do more to honor Yeats.

The six etchings begin with a double map of Ireland, positive and negative, with an excerpt from "I am of Ireland" that ends "But time runs on, runs on." Then appear five images of coats, from representational to abstract to a recombination, as if retracing the stylistic stages of his whole career, ending with an indicator of a new direction. The coats were inspired by a drawing he had made for his mother during World War II showing his Marine Corps tunic on a hanger on an open closet door. Its foreboding emptiness upset her, so she rolled it up and put it away in a dresser drawer, only to be found after her death. Too weak to work in his studio, Diebenkorn, then in his final illness, made the etching plates for this project sitting in a chair facing his drawing of his military jacket. 

When Hoyem and Ketcham visited the Diebenkorns in their home, the drawing was framed in one corner of the living room. Adjacent, on the next wall was another work of Diebenkorn, about the same size: a recent abstract of a coat or a suit bag or a body bag.