Gwendolyn Stewart--People, Places, and Politics
BEYOND POLITICS: THE POWER OF PHOTOGRAPHS
This photograph to me captures Anne's duality, and argues against reducing her to her death.
Cover the top part of the picture; look at the legs tortuously twisted together. It is well known that she made a number of attempts to kill herself. Now cover the bottom half of the photograph, and look at the arms and radiant face. She told me she always felt joyous when she was rescued from those attempts. There was of course no final rescue, but I am not convinced that she "really" meant this suicide attempt, that she would not have welcomed another rescue. -- Gwendolyn Stewart
"The high point of the winter for Sexton was the reading arranged for
her at Sanders Theater on 7 March [1974] by the Harvard Literary Club. Since this reading
was to serve as the Boston debut of The Death Notebooks, she was ambitious for a big
turnout. When she saw the mimeographed flyer -- with a typo in the book title -- produced
by the Literary Club, she went into high gear. Bob Clawson now owned an advertising
agency, so she hired him to produce a poster, using the photograph by Gwendolyn Stewart
she had wanted Houghton Mifflin to print on the dustjacket of The Death Notebooks. This
was inserted into both the Harvard Crimson and the Boston Phoenix as a flyer, and was also
distributed around greater Boston by a flying wedge of friends. ...
"Sexton paced slowly to the stage with Dan Wakefield. While he made a warm
introduction, she stood leaning against the wall behind him, stunning in a black jersey
top that wrapped her body and a long black-and-white skirt slit to the knee. (The poster
did its work so well that later, people who had been in the audience thought she had been
wearing the dress in the photograph, which one person remembered as red.)" -- from ANNE
SEXTON, by Diane Wood Middlebrook.
"Another of her [Anne Sexton's] reading outfits is on display in a famous photo by
Gwendolyn Stewart that was on the cover of Diane Wood Middlebrook's controversial 1991
biography of Sexton.... [T]he image on the front is so glorious and alive, it reveals a
lust for life that makes it perfectly understandable why the book's terrible revelations
of character deficiencies ... are delivered in a tone that is sad and loving and
forgiving.... The photo is all charisma and charm, the poet is shown twisted into place,
her legs tightly crossed, her feet in white shoes with a crisscross buckle, her sleek
black-and-white dress aswirl in Matisse-style geometry, bangles spangled down her arms,
her hands lively and expressive, as if arguing a point or responding with glee to some
juicy gossip, a Salem menthol draped between her fingers." -- from BITCH, by
Elizabeth Wurtzel.
ANNE SEXTON, DIANE MIDDLEBROOK, and GWENDOLYN STEWART were all BUNTING
FELLOWS.
Two Links: THE BUNTING
| THE BUNTING II
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