Summary

Perspective Box. NB: the author writes in present tense narration, but for the sake of clarity in this analysis, events that took place in his past are written about in past tense.

The author describes how, while in London to attend the awarding of a poetry prize for which he is nominated, he visited the National Gallery (of art) and became entranced with a peculiar work of art, titled “Perspective Box with Views of a Dutch Interior” (1). The box, he says, was painted in miniature detail to evoke the interior of a house – rooms, hallways, furniture, possessions, people, even a dog. He describes how, when looking at it through a pane of plastic that has been substituted for one of the sides of the box, everything that had been painted inside it looked distorted: but then, he adds, when he (or any viewer) looked...