Edward Hopper's Nighthawks
The following six poems were written in response to Hopper's Nighthawks. These materials would work well in a Socratic Seminar, starting with just the image itself. Possible opening questions: "What is going on? / What's happening?" or "What could the title of this painting be?" or "What happens next?"
Once the poems are introduced, compare and contrast their different ways of responding to the painting, and use these poems as models for students to write their own reactions.
Once the poems are introduced, compare and contrast their different ways of responding to the painting, and use these poems as models for students to write their own reactions.
Nighthawks: After Edward Hopper's Painting
(Wolf Wondratschek, born 1943, German writer and poet)
It is night
and the city is deserted.
The lucky ones are at home,
or more likely
there are none left.
In Hopper’s painting, four people remain
the usual cast, so-to-speak:
the man behind the counter, two men and a woman.
Art lovers, you can stone me
but I know this situation pretty well.
Two men and one woman
as if this were mere chance.
You admire the painting’s composition
but what grabs me is the erotic pleasure
of complete emptiness.
They don’t say a word, and why should they?
Both of them smoking, but there is no smoke.
I bet she wrote him a letter.
Whatever it said, he’s no longer the man
who’d read her letters twice.
The radio is broken.
The air conditioner hums.
I hear a police siren wail.
Two block away in a doorway, a junkie groans
and sticks a needle in his vein.
That’s how the part you don’t see looks.
The other man is by himself
remembering a woman,
she wore a red dress, too.
That was ages ago.
He likes knowing women like this still exist
but he’s no longer interested.
What might have been
between them, back then?
I bet he wanted her.
I bet she said no.
No wonder, art lovers,
that this man is turning his back on you.
(Die Gedichte [Zurich: Diogenes, 1992] 450)
(Wolf Wondratschek, born 1943, German writer and poet)
It is night
and the city is deserted.
The lucky ones are at home,
or more likely
there are none left.
In Hopper’s painting, four people remain
the usual cast, so-to-speak:
the man behind the counter, two men and a woman.
Art lovers, you can stone me
but I know this situation pretty well.
Two men and one woman
as if this were mere chance.
You admire the painting’s composition
but what grabs me is the erotic pleasure
of complete emptiness.
They don’t say a word, and why should they?
Both of them smoking, but there is no smoke.
I bet she wrote him a letter.
Whatever it said, he’s no longer the man
who’d read her letters twice.
The radio is broken.
The air conditioner hums.
I hear a police siren wail.
Two block away in a doorway, a junkie groans
and sticks a needle in his vein.
That’s how the part you don’t see looks.
The other man is by himself
remembering a woman,
she wore a red dress, too.
That was ages ago.
He likes knowing women like this still exist
but he’s no longer interested.
What might have been
between them, back then?
I bet he wanted her.
I bet she said no.
No wonder, art lovers,
that this man is turning his back on you.
(Die Gedichte [Zurich: Diogenes, 1992] 450)
Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, 1942
(by Joyce Carol Oates)
The three men are fully clothed, long sleeves,
even hats, though it’s indoors, and brightly lit,
and there’s a woman. The woman is wearing
a short-sleeved red dress cut to expose her arms,
a curve of her creamy chest; she’s contemplating
a cigarette in her right hand, thinking that
her companion has finally left his wife but
can she trust him? Her heavy-lidded eyes,
pouty lipsticked mouth, she has the redhead’s
true pallor like skim milk, damned good-looking
and she guesses she knows it, but what exactly
has it gotten her so far, and where? — he’ll start
to feel guilty in a few days, she knows
the signs, an actual smell, sweaty, rancid, like
dirty socks; he’ll slip away to make telephone calls
and she swears she isn’t going to go through that
again, isn’t going to break down crying or begging
nor is she going to scream at him, she’s finished
with all that. And he’s silent beside her,
not the kind to talk much but he’s thinking
thank God he made the right move at last,
he’s a little dazed like a man in a dream —
is this a dream? — so much that’s wide, still,
mute, horizontal, and the counterman in white,
stooped as he is and unmoving, and the man
on the other stool unmoving except to sip
his coffee; but he’s feeling pretty good,
it’s primarily relief, this time he’s sure
as hell going to make it work, he owes it to her
and to himself, Christ's sake. And she’s thinking
the light in this place is too bright, probably
not very flattering, she hates it when her lipstick
wears off and her makeup gets caked, she’d like
to use a ladies’ room but there isn’t one here
and Jesus how long before a gas station opens? —
it’s the middle of the night and she has a feeling
time is never going to budge. This time
though she isn’t going to demean herself —
he starts in about his wife, his kids, how
he let them down, they trusted him and he let
them down, she’ll slam out of the goddamned room
and if he calls her Sugar or Baby in that voice,
running his hands over her like he has the right,
she’ll slap his face hard, You know I hate that: Stop!
And he’ll stop. He’d better. The angrier
she gets the stiller she is, hasn’t said a word
for the past ten minutes, not a strand
of her hair stirs, and it smells a little like ashes
or like the henna she uses to brighten it, but
the smell is faint or anyway, crazy for her
like he is, he doesn’t notice, or mind —
burying his hot face in her neck, between her cool
breasts, or her legs — wherever she'll have him,
and whenever. She’s still contemplating
the cigarette burning in her hand,
the counterman is still stooped gaping
at her, and he doesn’t mind that, why not,
as long as she doesn’t look back, in fact
he’s thinking he’s the luckiest man in the world
so why isn’t he happier?
(originally published in The Yale Review, also published in The Best American Poetry 1991)
(by Joyce Carol Oates)
The three men are fully clothed, long sleeves,
even hats, though it’s indoors, and brightly lit,
and there’s a woman. The woman is wearing
a short-sleeved red dress cut to expose her arms,
a curve of her creamy chest; she’s contemplating
a cigarette in her right hand, thinking that
her companion has finally left his wife but
can she trust him? Her heavy-lidded eyes,
pouty lipsticked mouth, she has the redhead’s
true pallor like skim milk, damned good-looking
and she guesses she knows it, but what exactly
has it gotten her so far, and where? — he’ll start
to feel guilty in a few days, she knows
the signs, an actual smell, sweaty, rancid, like
dirty socks; he’ll slip away to make telephone calls
and she swears she isn’t going to go through that
again, isn’t going to break down crying or begging
nor is she going to scream at him, she’s finished
with all that. And he’s silent beside her,
not the kind to talk much but he’s thinking
thank God he made the right move at last,
he’s a little dazed like a man in a dream —
is this a dream? — so much that’s wide, still,
mute, horizontal, and the counterman in white,
stooped as he is and unmoving, and the man
on the other stool unmoving except to sip
his coffee; but he’s feeling pretty good,
it’s primarily relief, this time he’s sure
as hell going to make it work, he owes it to her
and to himself, Christ's sake. And she’s thinking
the light in this place is too bright, probably
not very flattering, she hates it when her lipstick
wears off and her makeup gets caked, she’d like
to use a ladies’ room but there isn’t one here
and Jesus how long before a gas station opens? —
it’s the middle of the night and she has a feeling
time is never going to budge. This time
though she isn’t going to demean herself —
he starts in about his wife, his kids, how
he let them down, they trusted him and he let
them down, she’ll slam out of the goddamned room
and if he calls her Sugar or Baby in that voice,
running his hands over her like he has the right,
she’ll slap his face hard, You know I hate that: Stop!
And he’ll stop. He’d better. The angrier
she gets the stiller she is, hasn’t said a word
for the past ten minutes, not a strand
of her hair stirs, and it smells a little like ashes
or like the henna she uses to brighten it, but
the smell is faint or anyway, crazy for her
like he is, he doesn’t notice, or mind —
burying his hot face in her neck, between her cool
breasts, or her legs — wherever she'll have him,
and whenever. She’s still contemplating
the cigarette burning in her hand,
the counterman is still stooped gaping
at her, and he doesn’t mind that, why not,
as long as she doesn’t look back, in fact
he’s thinking he’s the luckiest man in the world
so why isn’t he happier?
(originally published in The Yale Review, also published in The Best American Poetry 1991)
Nighthawks
(by Samuel Yellen) (1952)
The place is the corner of Empty and Bleak,
The time is night's most desolate hour,
The scene is Al's Coffe Cup or the Hamburger Tower,
The persons in this drama do not speak.
We who peer through that curve of plate glass
Count three nighthawks seated there--patrons of life:
The counterman will be with you in a jiff,
The thick white mugs were never meant for demitasse.
The single man whose hunched back we see
Once put a gun to his head in Russian roulette,
Whirled the chamber, pulled the trigger, won the bet,
And now lives out his x years' guarantee.
And facing us, the two central characters
Have finished their coffee, and have lit
A contemplative cigarette;
His hand lies close, but not touching hers.
Not long ago together in a darkened room,
Mouth burned mouth, flesh beat and ground
On ravaged flesh, and yet they found
No local habitation and no name.
Oh, are we not lucky to be none of these!
We can look on with complacent eye:
Our satisfactions satisfy,
Our pleasures, our pleasures please.
(by Samuel Yellen) (1952)
The place is the corner of Empty and Bleak,
The time is night's most desolate hour,
The scene is Al's Coffe Cup or the Hamburger Tower,
The persons in this drama do not speak.
We who peer through that curve of plate glass
Count three nighthawks seated there--patrons of life:
The counterman will be with you in a jiff,
The thick white mugs were never meant for demitasse.
The single man whose hunched back we see
Once put a gun to his head in Russian roulette,
Whirled the chamber, pulled the trigger, won the bet,
And now lives out his x years' guarantee.
And facing us, the two central characters
Have finished their coffee, and have lit
A contemplative cigarette;
His hand lies close, but not touching hers.
Not long ago together in a darkened room,
Mouth burned mouth, flesh beat and ground
On ravaged flesh, and yet they found
No local habitation and no name.
Oh, are we not lucky to be none of these!
We can look on with complacent eye:
Our satisfactions satisfy,
Our pleasures, our pleasures please.
More Light
(by Donald Finkel)
“He himself admitted that it might be present, but denied that it was intended. Indeed, the emphasis on it annoyed him: ‘The loneliness thing is overdone,’ he said. But it undeniably exists.” ~ Lloyd Goodrich, Edward Hopper
Or is it the light that exists for him as he paints?
Not that old buttery-yellow light-bulb light,
but this miraculous light the makers call “fluorescent,”
this clear-as-day light that bathes the diner,
this harbor in a sea of darkness. How it pours
through the plate-glass window, rinsing the red brick
wall across the street, spilling through the window
of somebody fast asleep! It’s seeping into her dream.
You’d think the man in the white cap had more light
than a man would need to make it through this night.
The coffee urns are beaming over his shoulder
like stainless angels! What else would he talk about
to the dude whose cigarette’s gone out? And what
would the lady be studying there but a book of matches?
And the man in the dark gray hat with his back to us —
is there anything left in his glass but light, more light?
(by Donald Finkel)
“He himself admitted that it might be present, but denied that it was intended. Indeed, the emphasis on it annoyed him: ‘The loneliness thing is overdone,’ he said. But it undeniably exists.” ~ Lloyd Goodrich, Edward Hopper
Or is it the light that exists for him as he paints?
Not that old buttery-yellow light-bulb light,
but this miraculous light the makers call “fluorescent,”
this clear-as-day light that bathes the diner,
this harbor in a sea of darkness. How it pours
through the plate-glass window, rinsing the red brick
wall across the street, spilling through the window
of somebody fast asleep! It’s seeping into her dream.
You’d think the man in the white cap had more light
than a man would need to make it through this night.
The coffee urns are beaming over his shoulder
like stainless angels! What else would he talk about
to the dude whose cigarette’s gone out? And what
would the lady be studying there but a book of matches?
And the man in the dark gray hat with his back to us —
is there anything left in his glass but light, more light?
A Midnight Diner by Edward Hopper
(by David Ray) (1970)
Your own greyhounds bark at your side.
It is you, dressed like a Siennese,
Galloping, ripping the gown as the fabled
White-skinned woman runs, seeking freedom.
Tiny points of birches rise from hills,
Spin like serrulate corkscrews toward the sky;
In other rooms it is your happiness
Flower petals fall for, your brocade
You rediscover, feel bloom upon your shoulder.
And freedom's what the gallery's for.
You roam in large rooms and choose your beauty.
Yet, Madman, it's your own life you turn back to:
In one postcard purchase you wipe out
Centuries of light and smiles, golden skin
And openness, forest babes and calves.
You forsake the sparkler breast
That makes the galaxies, you betray
The women who dance upon the water,
All for some bizarre hometown necessity!
Some ache still found within you!
Now it will go with you, this scene
By Edward Hopper and nothing else.
It will become your own tableau of sadness
Composed of blue and grey already there.
Over or not, this suffering will not say Hosanna.
Now a music will not come out of it.
Grey hat, blue suit, you are in a midnight
Diner painted by Edward Hopper.
Here is a man trapped at midnight underneath the El.
He sought the smoothest counter in the world
And found it here in the almost empty street,
Away from everything he has ever said.
Now he has the silence they've insisted on.
Not a squirrel, not an autumn birch,
Not a hound at his side, moves to help him now.
His grief is what he'll try to hold in check.
His thumb has found and held his coffee cup.
(published in Poetry, January 1970)
(by David Ray) (1970)
Your own greyhounds bark at your side.
It is you, dressed like a Siennese,
Galloping, ripping the gown as the fabled
White-skinned woman runs, seeking freedom.
Tiny points of birches rise from hills,
Spin like serrulate corkscrews toward the sky;
In other rooms it is your happiness
Flower petals fall for, your brocade
You rediscover, feel bloom upon your shoulder.
And freedom's what the gallery's for.
You roam in large rooms and choose your beauty.
Yet, Madman, it's your own life you turn back to:
In one postcard purchase you wipe out
Centuries of light and smiles, golden skin
And openness, forest babes and calves.
You forsake the sparkler breast
That makes the galaxies, you betray
The women who dance upon the water,
All for some bizarre hometown necessity!
Some ache still found within you!
Now it will go with you, this scene
By Edward Hopper and nothing else.
It will become your own tableau of sadness
Composed of blue and grey already there.
Over or not, this suffering will not say Hosanna.
Now a music will not come out of it.
Grey hat, blue suit, you are in a midnight
Diner painted by Edward Hopper.
Here is a man trapped at midnight underneath the El.
He sought the smoothest counter in the world
And found it here in the almost empty street,
Away from everything he has ever said.
Now he has the silence they've insisted on.
Not a squirrel, not an autumn birch,
Not a hound at his side, moves to help him now.
His grief is what he'll try to hold in check.
His thumb has found and held his coffee cup.
(published in Poetry, January 1970)
Inventing My Parents
after Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, 1942
(by Susan Ludvigson)
They sit in the bright cafe
discussing Hemingway, and how
this war will change them.
Sinclair Lewis's name comes up,
and Kay Boyle's, and then Fitzgerald's.
They disagree about the American Dream.
My mother, her bare arms
silver under fluorescent lights,
says she imagines it a hawk
flying over, its shadow sweeping
every town. Their coffee's getting cold
but they hardly notice. My mother's face
is lit by ideas. My father's gestures
are a Frenchman's. When he concedes
a point, he shrugs, an elaborate lift
of the shoulders, his hands and smile
declaring an open mind.
I am five months old, at home with a sitter
this August night when the air outside
is warm as a bath. They decide,
though the car is parked nearby,
to walk the few blocks home, savoring
the fragrant night, their being alone together.
As they go out the door, he's reciting
Donne's "Canonization": "For God's sake
hold your tongue, and let me love,"
and she's laughing, light
as summer rain when it begins.
(Everything Winged Must be Dreaming (1993), Louisiana State University Press)
(also in Sweet Confluence: New and Selected Poems (2000), Louisiana State University Press)
after Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, 1942
(by Susan Ludvigson)
They sit in the bright cafe
discussing Hemingway, and how
this war will change them.
Sinclair Lewis's name comes up,
and Kay Boyle's, and then Fitzgerald's.
They disagree about the American Dream.
My mother, her bare arms
silver under fluorescent lights,
says she imagines it a hawk
flying over, its shadow sweeping
every town. Their coffee's getting cold
but they hardly notice. My mother's face
is lit by ideas. My father's gestures
are a Frenchman's. When he concedes
a point, he shrugs, an elaborate lift
of the shoulders, his hands and smile
declaring an open mind.
I am five months old, at home with a sitter
this August night when the air outside
is warm as a bath. They decide,
though the car is parked nearby,
to walk the few blocks home, savoring
the fragrant night, their being alone together.
As they go out the door, he's reciting
Donne's "Canonization": "For God's sake
hold your tongue, and let me love,"
and she's laughing, light
as summer rain when it begins.
(Everything Winged Must be Dreaming (1993), Louisiana State University Press)
(also in Sweet Confluence: New and Selected Poems (2000), Louisiana State University Press)
Hopper's "Nighthawks" (1942)
(by Ira Sadoff)
Imagine a town where no one walks the streets.
Where the sidewalks are swept clean as ceilings and
the barber pole stands still as a corpse. There is no
wind. The windows on the brick buildings are
boarded up with doors, and a single light shines in
the all-night diner while the rest of the town sits in
its shadow.
In an hour it will be daylight. The busboy in the
diner counts the empty stools and looks at his
reflection in the coffee urns. On the radio the
announcer says the allies have won another victory.
There have been few casualties. A man with a wide-
brimmed hat and the woman sitting next to him are
drinking coffee or tea; on the other side of the
counter a stranger watches them as though he had
nowhere else to focus his eyes. He wonders if
perhaps they are waiting for the morning buses to
arrive, if they are expecting some member of their
family to bring them important news. Or perhaps
they will get on the bus themselves, ask the driver
where he is going, and whatever his answer they
will tell him it could not be far enough.
When the buses arrive at sunrise they are empty as
hospital beds--the hum of the motor is distant as
a voice coming from deep within the body. The
man and woman have walked off to some dark
street, while the stranger remains fixed in his chair.
When he picks up the morning paper he's not
surprised to read there would be no exchange of
prisoners, the war would go on forever, the
Cardinals would win the pennant, there would be
no change in the weather.
(Paris Review, September 1974, Issue 59, p. 80)
(by Ira Sadoff)
Imagine a town where no one walks the streets.
Where the sidewalks are swept clean as ceilings and
the barber pole stands still as a corpse. There is no
wind. The windows on the brick buildings are
boarded up with doors, and a single light shines in
the all-night diner while the rest of the town sits in
its shadow.
In an hour it will be daylight. The busboy in the
diner counts the empty stools and looks at his
reflection in the coffee urns. On the radio the
announcer says the allies have won another victory.
There have been few casualties. A man with a wide-
brimmed hat and the woman sitting next to him are
drinking coffee or tea; on the other side of the
counter a stranger watches them as though he had
nowhere else to focus his eyes. He wonders if
perhaps they are waiting for the morning buses to
arrive, if they are expecting some member of their
family to bring them important news. Or perhaps
they will get on the bus themselves, ask the driver
where he is going, and whatever his answer they
will tell him it could not be far enough.
When the buses arrive at sunrise they are empty as
hospital beds--the hum of the motor is distant as
a voice coming from deep within the body. The
man and woman have walked off to some dark
street, while the stranger remains fixed in his chair.
When he picks up the morning paper he's not
surprised to read there would be no exchange of
prisoners, the war would go on forever, the
Cardinals would win the pennant, there would be
no change in the weather.
(Paris Review, September 1974, Issue 59, p. 80)
Nighthawks
(by Joseph Stanton)
It is about 11 p.m. It is 1942. Edward and Jo have
just seen The Skin of Our Teeth, off-Broadway. They
have sought the solace of a cup of coffee and a moment’s
respite before the five-block walk back to Washington
Square. They have been here before and can call the
counter man by name. They sit near where he works
at the slicings for tomorrow’s sandwiches, knowing
he will ask about the play. They want to talk about it.
Edward found it funny. Jo thought it said.
The man across the counter, who sits alone, is
Mr. Antrobus, disguised as Thornton Wilder, but the
Hoppers know nothing of this, nor that this scene is
a continuation of the play, nor that it will become
Edward’s most famous picture.
Edward and Jo talk about the Antrobus children
and think, without sharing their thoughts, about the
Hopper children that will never be.
Jo rides the high stool, turning over and over a
matchbook that says “God is love” on both sides.
Edward’s right hand, holding a cigarette, rests on the
counter a fraction of an inch from Jo’s left hand, but
they do not touch.
The cafe is a cool slice of fluorescent light jutting
into the darkness that is New York City night. It is the
prow of a ship riding the ghosted blue of doorways
and the long, dangerous green of alleyways — shoals
of shadow.
The war is everywhere and nowhere. The casualty
lists in the evening paper tick off the seconds till dawn.
Mr. Antrobus/Wilder — missing his haunted, imagi-
nary domesticity — shoves his Times into his coat pocket,
leaves a tip, and leaves. He is thinking he will ride the
last train out of Penn Station to a little, nonexistent
suburb in New Jersey, where, in a little house near a
pond, a little family he will never have waits crouching
around a fire, while dinosaurs thunder down suburban
streets and the terrible, ridiculous cold comes on.
(from Imaginary Museum : Poems on Art)
(by Joseph Stanton)
It is about 11 p.m. It is 1942. Edward and Jo have
just seen The Skin of Our Teeth, off-Broadway. They
have sought the solace of a cup of coffee and a moment’s
respite before the five-block walk back to Washington
Square. They have been here before and can call the
counter man by name. They sit near where he works
at the slicings for tomorrow’s sandwiches, knowing
he will ask about the play. They want to talk about it.
Edward found it funny. Jo thought it said.
The man across the counter, who sits alone, is
Mr. Antrobus, disguised as Thornton Wilder, but the
Hoppers know nothing of this, nor that this scene is
a continuation of the play, nor that it will become
Edward’s most famous picture.
Edward and Jo talk about the Antrobus children
and think, without sharing their thoughts, about the
Hopper children that will never be.
Jo rides the high stool, turning over and over a
matchbook that says “God is love” on both sides.
Edward’s right hand, holding a cigarette, rests on the
counter a fraction of an inch from Jo’s left hand, but
they do not touch.
The cafe is a cool slice of fluorescent light jutting
into the darkness that is New York City night. It is the
prow of a ship riding the ghosted blue of doorways
and the long, dangerous green of alleyways — shoals
of shadow.
The war is everywhere and nowhere. The casualty
lists in the evening paper tick off the seconds till dawn.
Mr. Antrobus/Wilder — missing his haunted, imagi-
nary domesticity — shoves his Times into his coat pocket,
leaves a tip, and leaves. He is thinking he will ride the
last train out of Penn Station to a little, nonexistent
suburb in New Jersey, where, in a little house near a
pond, a little family he will never have waits crouching
around a fire, while dinosaurs thunder down suburban
streets and the terrible, ridiculous cold comes on.
(from Imaginary Museum : Poems on Art)