Behind the Seen

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Richard Avedon, American portrait photographer - died this day in 2004 of a brain hemorrhage while on assignment for The New Yorker…

Above: Self-Portrait, 1963

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Louis Untermeyer (Oct. 1, 1885 – 1977) was a leftist poet, essayist and editor, Poet Laureate from 1961 to 1963…

Louis Untermeyer: Inhibited

I could not pity your pain but I pitied the branches
Losing what little the frost had left them to hold.
I could not warm you with sorrow; I turned to the sparrows,
Clustered like heavy brown blossoms puffed out by the cold.

They could not help me. I looked at my hands; they were helpless;
Strange and detached, less related to me than the birds.
Baffled, I called on the mind: it carried me, floundering,
Lost among meaningless phrases, tossed in a welter of words.

Too great for my blundering comfort, your anguish confused me.
From a great distance, I saw you standing alone.
Frozen and stark, in a black iron circle of silence,
I could not pity your pain; I could scarcely pity my own.

— from Roast Leviathan (1923)

Photo: Nicholas Muray

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Walter De Maria (b. Oct. 1, 1935): Untitled, 1973 - gelatin silver print on paper (Smithsonian)

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Renowned 60s photographer (hippies and rock musicians) Elaine Mayes is 73 today…

Above: Trinka, Age 19 - Haight Street, 1968 - Vintage gelatin silver (Steven Kasher Gallery)

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Peter de Lory (b. Oct. 2, 1948): (Desert Landscape) Mineral Deposit, Little Hesue Crater, Death Valley, California, 1988 - gelatin silver print on paper (Smithsonian)

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American star photographer Annie Leibovitz, b. Oct. 2, 1949…

Photo: John Keatley - ‘One of the things that I found out during my research is that Annie looks through her camera with her left eye. That was interesting to me, and I thought about photographing her as if she were looking through a camera. My original thought was to have her closing one eye, but when I explained this to her, she started using her hands around her face. I really liked how this looked, and told her that I wanted to continue with that idea. That pose ended up being the one that I connected with the most’.

John Loengard: Annie Leibovitz and assistant Robert Bean on the Chrysler Building, New York, NY, 1991
Annie Leibovitz: Stephen Petronio (Joseph Saxton Gallery of Photography)

Annie Leibovitz: Christopher Nolan and Heath Ledger for Vanity Fair

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October 2 (1904 - 1991) is the birthday of anti-modernist English author, Graham Greene…

His best-known books are The Third Man (1949) and The Quiet American (1955) - both have been adapted into well-known films…

“Time has its revenges, but revenge seems so often sour. Wouldn’t we all do better not trying to understand, accepting the fact that no human being will ever understand another, not a wife with a husband, nor a parent a child? Perhaps that’s why men have invented God – a being capable of understanding.” ― Graham Greene, The Quiet American

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Marcel Duchamp, French Dada and Surrealist artist and chess enthusiast - died this day in 1968, aged 81…

Photo : unidentified artist “Five-Way Portrait of Marcel Duchamp” (1917), photo postcard, private collection courtesy Francis M. Naumann Fine Art

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Birthday of famed comedian and actor, Julius Henry Marx, known as Groucho: Oct. 2, 1890 - 1977…

The Marx Brothers made thirteen feature films, many of which are comic classics…

Grouchp took care of the verbal humor in the Bros.’s act - his jokes often hinged on the principle of the paraprosdokian figure of speech, in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part:

“I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.”

“Room service? Send up a larger room.”

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Mohandas Gandhi (also known as the Mahatma): Oct. 2, 1869 - 1948, the spiritual father of India…

Here Gandhi shows that he also mastered the paraprosdokian:

“What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea.” - M.G.

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Wallace Stevens - Vice President of Hartford Accident and Indemnity Co. - Oct. 2, 1879 - 1955…

Excerpt from Peter Quince at the Clavier:

Beauty is momentary in the mind —
The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.

The body dies; the body’s beauty lives.
So evenings die, in their green going,
A wave, interminably flowing.
So gardens die, their meek breath scenting
The cowl of winter, done repenting.
So maidens die, to the auroral
Celebration of a maiden’s choral.

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Alice Prin - like Gandhi no stranger to nudity - born on Oct. 2, 1901 (d. 1953)…

Alice was better known as Kiki de Montparnasse - muse, model, artist, performer and a major cultural presence in Parisian avant-garde in the 1920s…

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* John Keats:Ode on Melancholy *
* Velimir (Viktor Vladimirovich) Khlebnikov:A Refusal *
* Sylvia Plath:Mad Girl's Love Song *
* Dylan Thomas:Do not go gentle into that good night *
* Andrei Bely:Bright Death *
* John Berryman:Dream Song 63 *
* Denise Levertov:Seeing for a Moment *
* Robert Bridges:Eros the Greek god of love *
* Rainer Maria Rilke:The Fourth Elegy *
* Alexander Vvedensky:THE MEANING OF THE SEA *
* Taha Muhammad Ali:Empty Words *
* Li Ho :The Autumn comes *
* Jacques Dupin :De singes et de mouches *
* Jack Spicer : [Dear Lorca, Loneliness is necessary for pure poetry] *
* Doubt.Eugenio Montale *
* The Uncollected Poems of Alberto Caeiro.Fernando Pessoa *



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