If Not for These Wrinkles of Darkness: Rembrandt van Rijn: A Self-Portrait

Winner of the Sixth Annual White Pine Press Poetry Prize, selected by Pattiann Rogers.

Seventeenth century Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn’s life, known to us almost exclusively through his paintings and thin written documentation, is the stuff of real drama: he survived several plagues, two wives, and four children. Selected by Pattiann Rogers as the winner of the Sixth Annual White Pine Press Poetry Prize, these lyric poems convey the emotional life of the artist and show him as deeply human: flawed, burdened, sympathetic, and desperately honest about himself and others.

Stephen Frech has published widely in magazines and journals. He lives in Chicago.