Portrait of a Poet, Inner Image

"Portrait of a Poet, Inner Image" of 1947 takes the poet portrait to a deeper formal register — not the outer face as observed from without but the inner image, the quality of consciousness that generates poetry. This ambition to depict interiority rather than exterior appearance was among Onchi's most radical formal challenges, requiring the invention of compositional strategies that could convey the specific quality of a creative consciousness without resorting to literal representation. The 1947 date places this challenging work in the immediate postwar period of reconstruction and rethinking.