Living Portraits: The Poets
Poets photographed by Carl Van Vechten, including images featured in the exhibition Living Portraits: Carl Van Vechten’s Color Photographs of African Americans, 1939-1964, on view at the Beinecke Library from April 30 through June 30, 2009.
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Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka),1962
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Living Portraits: Carl Van Vechten’s Color Photographs of African Americans, 1939-1964 features some 140 never-before-exhibited color photographs by Carl Van Vechten. Van Vechten (1880-1964) had an artistic vision rooted in the centrality of the talented person. He cherished accomplishment, whether in music, dance, theater, fine art, literature, sport, or advocacy.
He began to make photographic portraits in 1932; in 1939 he discovered newly available color film. For a quarter century, he invited friends and acquaintances, well-known artists and fledgling entertainers to sit for him, often against backdrops reminiscent of the vivid colors and patterns of a Matisse painting. Among his subjects were a very young Diahann Carroll, Billie Holiday in tears, Paul Robeson as Othello, and a procession of opera stars, composers, authors, musicians, and others who made notable contributions to the cultural life of the country. The exhibition includes 140 full-sized portraits, digitally reformatted from Van Vechten’s original slides. [ca. 140 items]
Selected images from the Carl Van Vechten Photograph Collection
Images above: Langston Hughes, Owen Dodson, Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Countee Cullen, Duward Collins, Nicolas Guillen, photographed by Carl Van Vechten. Photographs by Carl Van Vechten are used with permission of the Van Vechten Trust; the permission of the Trust is required to reprint or use Van Vechten photographs in any way. To contact the Trust email: Van Vechten Trust.
April is National Poetry Month!
The Potters’ Wheel
A handmade journal of poetry, paintings, designs, and photographs created by a group of young women, including poet Sara Teasdale who later won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1918). Images: Teasdale’s “Guenevere,” with accompanying illustrations by Williamina Parrish in The Potter’s Wheel; Teasdale’s and Parrish’s signature marks, 19 April 07 (Sara Teasdale Papers, ZA Teasdale); photograph of Sara Teasdale, 1914 (Uncat ZA Ms 140).
April is National Poetry Month!
Play de Blues and Misery
Play de Blues / Misery — Image by Aaron Douglas, poem by Langston Hughes, from Six Poems, [1926].
(detail)
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Poets’ Portraits
Photographs of poets by poet, editor, and photographer Jonathan Williams (collection record in Orbis: Jonathan Williams Photographs; view additional images from this collection).
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Jonathan Williams (self portrait)
April is National Poetry Month!
Modern Poetry in Review
Modernist Little Magazines & Poetry Reviews
Little Review, September 1917
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Blast, June 20, 1914 (more images from this issue)
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Harlem, November 1928
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The Egoist, January-February 1919 (more images from this issue)
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Broom, January 1922
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Transition, 1928
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Poetry, 1912
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New York Dada, April 1921 (more images from this issue)
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These and other literary magazines can be located in Orbis, Yale’s catalog for books; related manuscript collections can be located in the Yale Finding Aid Database.
April is National Poetry Month!
Visual Poetry
Visual Poetry by K.S. Ernst; locate full descriptions of these and additional examples of Ernst’s work in the Yale Collection American Literature in Orbis.
Drop Caps: G , 2006
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[Texture– rough around the edges 2, 2003]
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Male, 1987
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Corrections
Poets’ corrected manuscripts and working drafts
H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), “Helios” (YCAL MSS 24)
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Langston Hughes, “Portrait of a Woman: Harriet Tubman” (JWJ MSS 26)
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Ezra Pound, “Canto 98” (YCAL MSS 43)
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Gertrude Stein, “Objects” (YCAL MSS 76)
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Jean Toomer, poems (JWJ MSS 1)
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Robert Penn Warren, “The Corner of the Eye” (YCAL MSS 51)
April is National Poetry Month!
A Poem by Phillis
Phillis Wheatley, An Elegiac Poem: on the Death of that Celebrated Divine and Eminent Servant of Jesus Christ, the Reverend and Learned George Whitefield…, [Boston: Ezekeil Russel, 1770]. (JWJ Zan W56 +77OE; view all images in this set)
April is National Poetry Month!
Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities 
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