Albrecht Dürer and Albrecht Altdorfer: A Genealogy, by Adam Pollak

Self-Portrait at the Age of Twenty Eight, by Albrecht Durer (Germany), 1500.

Self-Portrait, by Albrecht Altdorfer (Germany), 1530.

Albrecht Dürer and Albrecht Altdorfer: A Genealogy

Their parents called them
Albrecht. The Albrechts possessed talented eyes
And hands. And patience. Blood desire
And necessity: paint, silverpoint, engrave.
One Albrecht was raised by a metal-man, a gold-father
Named Albrecht. The other Albrecht must have had
A childhood once. One saw the others’ initials on a painting:
Little D nestled in the crawlspace of A.
​

The expressive battle portrait, the unadorned thing itself,
The animal studies and little landscapes.
People abandoned the castle long ago.
What they left behind is not important.
They do not appear in the wood, by the lake or the mountain
Or on the dirt road. Hands rise out of blue mist.

Adam Pollak

Adam Pollak is an MFA candidate and College Writing Instructor at American University, where he also serves as the poetry editor for FOLIO.  His poems have most recently appeared in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Little Patuxent Review, The Allegheny Review, and Prairie Margins.  He lives—quite happily—outside of Washington, D.C. with his wife and dog.