Twenty Sketches & a Portrait of the Infinite by Edward Garvey
Product Details:
Copyright: Edward Garvey(Standard Copyright License)
Publisher: Red Flag Poetry
Published: April 2026
Language: English
Pages: 34
Binding: Saddle Stitch
Interior Ink: Black & white text
Dimensions (inches): 8.5x5.5
ISBN: 978-1-7378164-5-4
Overview:
This chapbook honors the art and life of Vincent van Gogh. It began years ago when first introduced to his paintings – I simply had to somehow capture my reactions. So, I wrote short poetical sketches of my favorites. Nothing more. Over many years, as the number of poems grew and reached twenty, the number and the possibility of a chapbook reminded me of Pablo Neruda’s classic Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair and that he had balanced his twenty shorter poems with a final longer one. Thus, I added a portrait of Vincent’s search for the spiritual that filled his life and was a major influence on his art.
Praise for Twenty Sketches & a Portrait of the Infinite:
"When we first encountered Edward Garvey's poetry, it felt like we were reading something secret, as though each word had been quietly placed just for us. Garvey illuminates his poems word by word, walking the reader through with a steady, unhurried hand. There is a hush that settles over you in his work, the same hush you feel when you pass a painting that stops you in your tracks. It is that drawing in of breath, that moment of stillness before meaning arrives, that makes his poetry so singular. In this chapbook, Garvey brings that same breathtaking quality to Van Gogh's canvases, finding in each painting a private world waiting to be entered."
- Ben & Tamarah, Bainbridge Island Press, Threes & Nines
Garvey sees the art of Vincent Van Gogh—and indeed, he sees the world entire—through the soul of a poet. The poet gleans humanity and narrative from the sometimes abstract, subtle impressions Van Gogh leaves of landscapes, and of the people who populate those landscapes. Not everyone perusing Van Gogh’s artistry would see so deeply, but Garvey does, and the poet teaches, encourages, and enables us to do the same in each and every poem and its visual muse. In every poem of this sparse yet spacious work, the poet’s words are a gift to the artist’s brushstrokes, and an incredibly worthy companion.
- Jeffrey Kanode, Eden Stories Press
Edward Garvey explores the intense raw energy of Vincent van Gogh’s paintings in Twenty Sketches and A Portrait of the Infinite. Taking van Gogh’s work, Garvey imagines what the subjects are feeling while they toil in the fields, walk in a park, or keep up with conversation in a café. In “Wheatfield with a Reaper,” one of van Gogh’s three paintings of a wheat reaper, the reaper could represent death, but instead, he’s very much in the world of toil and living. “Steadfast in his march, / he is faithful unto
death. / The bales, he’ll stack close / upon the unwavering earth, / large in its cycle, /reaping all that was sown. / Under a sun who will not blink.” These punchy imagistic poems expand the works of van Gogh, and makes one appreciate the natural symmetry of visual art and poetry. Garvey has a talented eye for what draws the viewer’s eye to a van Gogh work, so he can tell the real story behind the thick swirling brushwork.
- Alice Osborn, author of Heroes without Capes
