Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

David Lehman’s "Edvard Munch" draws its inspiration from the Norwegian artist best known for The Scream, a painting that has become an enduring emblem of existential anguish and modern alienation. The poem is not a direct ekphrastic response but rather a meditation on identity, anonymity, and the collective human experience of fear and disorientation. Through a shifting, ambiguous voice and fluid imagery, the poem captures the unsettling essence of Munch’s work, particularly the way his figures seem suspended in a state of perpetual crisis.

The opening lines—“From time to time they say ‘me’ and ‘you’ / and really mean: anyone.”—suggest a dissolution of personal identity. The pronouns that usually anchor speech to specific individuals become interchangeable, a gesture toward universality. This elision of the individual recalls the faceless, distorted figures in The Scream, where the central figure’s agony is at once intensely personal and entirely depersonalized. The speaker’s insistence—“You can’t blame them though. / It’s not their fault. They can’t help it, they don’t mean it.”—further emphasizes a kind of helplessness, a lack of agency that mirrors the painting’s silent yet overwhelming terror.

Lehman expands on this idea with imagery of urban anonymity: “Though their names are taped on crowds of mailboxes, screaming in subways or floating across an ocean of bottles, still they can’t help it.” Here, the chaos of modern life—anonymous apartment dwellers, the cacophony of a subway, and messages lost at sea—contributes to a sense of existential vertigo. The inclusion of “screaming in subways” serves as a subtle nod to The Scream, linking Munch’s imagery to contemporary experience, where crowded cities and their relentless motion often leave individuals feeling insignificant or overwhelmed.

The tension between remembering and forgetting then takes center stage: “It’s hard to remember. / Exactly who they are. And inexcusable to forget.” This paradox echoes the existential crisis at the heart of Munch’s painting—where identity is both desperately sought and terrifyingly elusive. There is an anxiety about the fleeting nature of personal recognition, the fear that one might be swallowed into the faceless masses, reduced to an indistinct blur.

The poem’s final image is its most striking: “Even for one voiceless instant— that loud, boisterous weekend when a face comprised of all their faces turned, before your startled eyes, into a giant painting of a shriek.” This climactic moment is both specific and indefinite. The phrase “a face comprised of all their faces” suggests a collective identity, as if the weight of an entire crowd’s emotions has coalesced into a single entity. This transformation into “a giant painting of a shriek” is a direct invocation of The Scream, but rather than describing the painting itself, Lehman suggests an experiential, almost hallucinatory vision in which reality itself becomes Munch’s nightmarish world.

Structurally, the poem is free-verse with a controlled, deliberate flow, reflecting both the fluidity of identity and the inexorable build-up toward its final, chilling realization. The enjambment propels the reader forward, mirroring the unstoppable momentum of time and perception. The voice is restrained yet unsettling, much like Munch’s own brushwork—subdued in color, yet pulsing with anxiety.

Ultimately, "Edvard Munch" distills the existential dread of The Scream into a contemporary meditation on selfhood, anonymity, and collective fear. Lehman captures the sensation of recognizing, even momentarily, that one?s individuality is fragile, easily dissolved into the faceless multitudes of modern existence. In doing so, he does more than simply reference Munch’s most famous painting; he reanimates its spirit, revealing its persistent resonance in a world that remains as chaotic, isolating, and inexplicably terrifying as ever.

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