Eyes with Winged Thoughts: Poems and Photographs
In Eyes with Winged Thoughts, the forty-four photographs and fifty-eight poems, reflecting on his long and extraordinary life, offer a rare glimpse of his thoughts and feelings about everything from romantic love to the Iraq war and the passing of Pope John Paul II.

He has done it all. Gordon Parks's life was an astonishing litany of firsts: in the 1940s he was the first African American photographer to work for the Farm Security Administration and for Vogue and Life magazines; in the 1960s he would become the first African American director of a major motion picture. A dominating figure in contemporary American culture, he was an artist of uncompromising vision and creativity.

In 2002 Parks received the Jackie Robinson Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award and was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame, just a few in a series of honors that began when he received a prestigious Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in 1941 and which now includes an Emmy, a National Medal of the Arts, and over fifty honorary doctorates. In his nineties, he revealed the luminous photographs on display in Eyes with Winged Thoughts and the poems—some meditative and lyrical, some raw with emotion about the war in Iraq and the tragedy of the tsunami—show that he is still a true American Renaissance man.
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Eyes with Winged Thoughts: Poems and Photographs
In Eyes with Winged Thoughts, the forty-four photographs and fifty-eight poems, reflecting on his long and extraordinary life, offer a rare glimpse of his thoughts and feelings about everything from romantic love to the Iraq war and the passing of Pope John Paul II.

He has done it all. Gordon Parks's life was an astonishing litany of firsts: in the 1940s he was the first African American photographer to work for the Farm Security Administration and for Vogue and Life magazines; in the 1960s he would become the first African American director of a major motion picture. A dominating figure in contemporary American culture, he was an artist of uncompromising vision and creativity.

In 2002 Parks received the Jackie Robinson Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award and was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame, just a few in a series of honors that began when he received a prestigious Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in 1941 and which now includes an Emmy, a National Medal of the Arts, and over fifty honorary doctorates. In his nineties, he revealed the luminous photographs on display in Eyes with Winged Thoughts and the poems—some meditative and lyrical, some raw with emotion about the war in Iraq and the tragedy of the tsunami—show that he is still a true American Renaissance man.
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Eyes with Winged Thoughts: Poems and Photographs

Eyes with Winged Thoughts: Poems and Photographs

by Gordon Parks
Eyes with Winged Thoughts: Poems and Photographs

Eyes with Winged Thoughts: Poems and Photographs

by Gordon Parks

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Overview

In Eyes with Winged Thoughts, the forty-four photographs and fifty-eight poems, reflecting on his long and extraordinary life, offer a rare glimpse of his thoughts and feelings about everything from romantic love to the Iraq war and the passing of Pope John Paul II.

He has done it all. Gordon Parks's life was an astonishing litany of firsts: in the 1940s he was the first African American photographer to work for the Farm Security Administration and for Vogue and Life magazines; in the 1960s he would become the first African American director of a major motion picture. A dominating figure in contemporary American culture, he was an artist of uncompromising vision and creativity.

In 2002 Parks received the Jackie Robinson Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award and was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame, just a few in a series of honors that began when he received a prestigious Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in 1941 and which now includes an Emmy, a National Medal of the Arts, and over fifty honorary doctorates. In his nineties, he revealed the luminous photographs on display in Eyes with Winged Thoughts and the poems—some meditative and lyrical, some raw with emotion about the war in Iraq and the tragedy of the tsunami—show that he is still a true American Renaissance man.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781416588573
Publisher: Atria Books
Publication date: 11/01/2007
Sold by: SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format: eBook
Pages: 128
Sales rank: 704,059
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

Gordon Parks was Life magazine's first Black photographer. His retrospective book of art photography, Half Past Autumn, published in 1997, coincided with an exhibition organized by the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., which traveled in the United States until 2003, and an HBO documentary that aired in 2000. He has authored numerous books of art, fiction, memoir (including A Star for Noon), photographs, and a CD of his music. He published The Learning Tree, a novel, in 1963, and three previous autobiographies, A Choice of Weapons, To Smile in Autumn, and Voices in the Mirror. He died in March 2006 at his home in Manhattan. He was 93.

Read an Excerpt

Eyes with Winged Thoughts

Poems and Photographs
By Gordon Parks

Atria

Copyright © 2005 Gordon Parks
All right reserved.

ISBN: 074327962X

Come Sing With Me!

Despite the turmoil, anguish and despair

disrupting the planet we inherited,

there is something good I choose to sing about.

That something lies within us, patiently waiting --

beneath us, above us and around us.

Its peaceful message yearns to fill

our places of murderous anger and hatred,

to flourish forever.

Hope is the song I have chosen to sing --

a deathless song, flowing steadily beside my faith.

Whenever the fist of doubt knocks at my door,

it is powerfully turned away by my hopeful singing.

When things go from bad to worse I still sing my song.

Why not?

It helps me endure the bloodthirsty days.

Once earth's fire had devoured my hopes.

As my twisted soul slid toward Hell,

Fate came racing from another direction.

Pinned to it was a belt of sun with new instructions.

These, it said, are for you! Suddenly Fear was gone.

I made peace with the mean roads I'd walked.

My jackals could now lie down in truce.

From that day on, I began singing the song called Hope.

I still sing it loud --

above the waves, fire, darkness and mud.

Copyright 2005 by Gordon Parks



Continues...


Excerpted from Eyes with Winged Thoughts by Gordon Parks Copyright © 2005 by Gordon Parks. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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