"You could tell that he was getting back to work when the drinking stopped and the parties stopped. Sitting in uneasy silence-he hated being alone, but, spiritually, he was always alone-he'd put a pad of lined yellow paper on his clipboard and, in his strong, decorous hand, he'd start jotting down a world that honored his imagination, and his dead."
"That was long before I met Dodson, in the early nineteen-seventies, when I was fourteen. We were introduced by a woman he'd known since elementary school, in Brooklyn-now a schoolteacher who worked with my mother and who, like my mother, believed that I had a future as a writer. Soon after that, Dodson invited me over to his place to pick up some books he wanted to give away; eventually, our relationship changed, and my casual benefactor became my complicated mentor."
"I spent a great deal of time after school in his beautifully furnished apartment on West Fifty-first Street and learned so much there. I saw things I had hitherto seen only in books or in my imagination: beautiful Cocteau drawings, Victorian sofas, free-standing candelabras straight out of a nineteenth-century play. Dodson also had an extensive collection of art and photography books, including a first edition of Henri Cartier-Bresson's " The Decisive Moment,""
The Harlem Book of the Dead reissue presents funerary portraits that narrate Harlem lives, grief, and remembrance through photography, poetry, and visual art. The collaboration combines a photographer's images, a poet's voice, and an artist's visual framing to honor the deceased and communal memory. Owen Dodson's presence and creative life link theatre, mentorship, and a deep engagement with Black cultural forms, including directing James Baldwin's The Amen Corner. Personal recollections recall Dodson's richly furnished apartment and his collection of art and photography books, including a first edition of Henri Cartier-Bresson's The Decisive Moment and work by James Van Der Zee.
Read at The New Yorker
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]