Portrait of a Poet

"Portrait of a Poet" of 1955 — made in the final year of Onchi's life — represents the culmination of his lifelong project of poet portraiture. Without specific identification of the subject, the title stands as a category rather than a particular person: the poet as a type of creative being that Onchi found consistently worthy of his most serious formal attention. That this late work was addressed to a poet rather than any of his other frequent subjects (composers, artists, cultural figures) reflects the centrality of poetry to Onchi's own self-understanding as a maker of visual poems.