I Now Why Do I Want to Get Up So High 1
Picture of the Poet and Horace H. Pippin Before the Perigee2
II If a Man Knows Nothing But Hard Times 3
A Primitive Portrait 4
III I’ve Seen Men Die 6
Like This, Like That 7
Night March, 369th Infantry 8
A Canel 9
Finding the Words 10
Shrapnel 11
The Speller 12
Form and Shapes 13
Fire 16
Hard 17
Horace Pippin’s Red 18
IV War Brought Out All the Art in Me 20
Tell My Heart 21
Losing the Way, 1930 22
Prophet 23
Surface Decoration 24
The Subtlety of Blue 25
V You Have Requested an Explanation of the Picturr 26
Domino Players, 1943 27
The Satisfactions of a Limited View 28
Topoanalysis 29
Victorian Interior, 1945 31
1939 32
The Trapper Returning Home, 1941 33
Lilies, 1941 34
In a Painted Room 35
Why, Oh Why, the Doily? 36
White Flesh 41
The Warped Table, a Still Life, 1940 42
Birmingham Meeting House 43
Harmonizing 44
Contemplation, the Art of 46
Newly Discovered Portrait of America’s First Black President 48
by Horace H. Pippin (1888-1946)
VI Now I Know How You Feel Alone 49
Erotica 50
Definitions 51
Commitment 54
My Wife Is Not Home at This Time 55
VII Then a Hand Lightly Layed on Me. Then a Still Voice 56
Blessing 57
Notes 58
Acknowledgements 64
