Edvard Munch's Scream: On Sale Today!

Not today actually but next Wednesday, "The Scream" is expected to fetch $80 million at Sotheby's. Private viewings in London and New York will have preceded the big auction. It's a painting that spoke to me as a young man; it is the daddy of all shrieks from Wes Craven's to Howard Dean's; and it (and Rilke) triggered a poem I wrote back in 1972 or '73 when I had just returned to New York after two years of intelligence work in the UK and France. Daryl Hine accepted it for Poetry magazine and here it is from the December 1973 issue. Looking at the painting, caught up in all the curves and swirls,don't overlook the fact that the screamer is standing on a bridge and that there are two "normal" fellows within earshot. A lot of Norway went into this 1893 painting. A lot of manuscripts were huirled into the flames. -- DL