![Norman O. Mustill and 'OU,' one of his large collages from the 1960s. [Photo: JH, 2007]](http://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/150x150xmustill-and-OU-400-150x150.jpg.pagespeed.ic.Duonm3EB7l.jpg)
Click and click and click and click and click and click and click and click again. … [Read more...]
‘Every Crumb Can Become a Piece of Cake’
November 29, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Here are a couple of Hanne Lippard's vocal tone poems. She combines a voice and accent to kill for with a witty, whimsical sense of humor. The words and the way she says them are a kick. … [Read more...]
A Thanksgiving Team: Burroughs & Mustill, Redux
November 28, 2013 by Leave a Comment
A Straight Up tradition continues. William S. Burroughs's words of gratitude on Thanksgiving Day paired with a couple of collages by Norman O. Mustill. Look and listen. It's delish . . . Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts — thanks for a Continent to despoil and poison — thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger — thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin leaving the carcasses to rot — thanks for bounties on … [Read more...]
Antwerp Public Linguistic Poem
November 28, 2013 by Leave a Comment
"It doesn't matter what happens. I like it when there are accidents. If anybody starts to argue that's OK. ... This is a public poem. This is the work I do for 45 years. I am completely meshuga. I do one every year." -- Alain Arias-Misson … [Read more...]
Prick Up Your Ears for Hanne Lippard
November 23, 2013 by 1 Comment
Click to listen. … [Read more...]
Paris Bookfair Focuses on New Practices in Art
November 12, 2013 by 1 Comment
14 Rue Bonaparte, from Nov. 14 to 17. Open to the general public. Free admission. Postscript: Nov. 23 -- The bookfair was jammed. Very impressive. The lecture hall was a19th-century amphitheater in back of the main hall. … [Read more...]
Einstein’s Brain
November 8, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Words by Heathcote Williams. Narration and montage by Alan Cox. … [Read more...]
Some Notes Toward ‘Death in Paris’
October 28, 2013 by 2 Comments
Not long ago Walter Hartmann sent me photos of several Moleskin notebooks that our cherished friend Carl Weissner left behind when he died. They're captivating. Many of the handwritten notes made their way into Death in Paris, Carl's bravura novel about a serial killer. "It is not quite natural for a guy around 50 who's never had sex with a live woman before ..." "'With a live woman.' -- What does that mean? He's been screwing dead girls?" "On some days, in order to escape to the sweltering heat, he goes into St. Sulplice … [Read more...]
Harold Norse: ‘Take a Chance In The Void’
October 25, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Via sloowtapes: During the early '60s Harold Norse was living in Paris at 9 rue Git-le-Coeur, later known as the Beat Hotel. Also living there were William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Gregory Corso, and Sinclair Beiles. All of them experimented with cut prose, a form of collage applied to texts and audiotapes. Norse made the technique totally his own, creating a hallucinogenic, irrational world of bizarre characters. ... At some point Harold bought a tape recorder and recorded himself reading his delirious cut-ups and his translations of … [Read more...]
Gay ‘Kit’ Marlowe: Poet, Spy, Elizabethan Proto-punk
October 16, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Heathcote Williams's play-in-progress, "Killing Kit," has yet to be given a workshop reading, much less staged in a full production. It traces "the volcanic life and mysterious death of Christopher Marlowe -- poet, playwright, and proto-punk; sworn enemy of Queen Elizabeth’s court and of her Church; a gay spy ensnared by the Tudors’ secret state, and William Shakespeare’s greatest influence." I've read an early version of the script. It's brilliant and at the very least pricks the bubble of Bardolatry. Williams has given me permission to post … [Read more...]
New From Cold Turkey: ‘Pricelessly Outrageous’
October 9, 2013 by 2 Comments
!['Le Regard d'Autrui' by Carl Weissner [Cold Turkey Press, 2013]](http://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Le-Regard-DAutruifrontcover360-150x150.jpg)
When Carl Weissner died, unexpectedly, he was only 71. "Le Regard d'Autrui," now published for the first time, posthumously, by Cold Turkey Press, was written in English. Why in English and why with a French title are unclear. What is clear, however, is that the tale shows him to have been a master storyteller as good as any of the celebrated writers who were beneficiaries of his masterly translations. To quote Heathcote Williams, Cold Turkey's "gem" is "an exquisite piece of book-making," while the story itself is "immaculate and … [Read more...]
Algren Actually Had Some Hope for Kerouac, at First
October 6, 2013 by Leave a Comment
![Nelson Algren's review of 'On the Road' [Chicago Sun-Times, Sept. 8,1957]](http://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/ALGREN-on-ON-THE-ROAD240-150x150.jpg)
Anyone interested in Nelson Algren's opinion of Jack Kerouac would get the impression from an item I posted several years ago that he was less than enamoured of him. Which would be accurate. After all, the item -- about Algren's indelible review of Kerouac's 1965 novel Desolation Angels -- was titled "The Beats Left Algren Cold, Kerouac Especially." As I recently discovered, however, Algren at first had some hope for Kerouac. His review of On the Road for the Chicago Sun-Times, when the novel was published, in 1957, was headlined "Kerouac … [Read more...]
Chris Burden Saved From the ‘Clutches of History’
October 5, 2013 by Leave a Comment
![“America” featuring 625 painted-cardboard submarines [1987]](http://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Burden-Navy-Ships-150x150.jpg)
Roberta Smith really digs the Chris Burden show at the New Museum. "Extreme Measures" is not only "a superb survey, but also a kind of transfiguration," she writes in her NY Times review. "It liberates the Los Angeles-based Mr. Burden from the clutches of history." I'm uncertain of what she means by the "clutches of history." Perhaps it's nothing more than a grandiose way of saying that this is, as she also points out, "the first American solo museum exhibition of Mr. Burden’s work since 1988, and his first in New York." Smith's review … [Read more...]
Two Poe Shows — One at the Morgan, One on Paper
October 4, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Not being a Poe man myself, I asked a friend who happens to be an avid Poe man, how he would describe him. His reply -- "The best writer, the best bad writer, America ever produced" -- was pretty much a capsule preview of Charles McGrath's excellent feature in this morning's NY Times about the new show, "Edgar Allan Poe: Terror of the Soul," at the Morgan Library & Museum, which comes, McGrath notes, "about 100 years too late to do his reputation much good." When Poe was finally admitted to the canon of respectable writers, in the second … [Read more...]
Heathcote Williams: ‘My Dad and My Uncle’
September 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment
![Royal Artillery gun crews and Howitzers WWI at Lydd [Bill Hyde collection].](http://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/My-Dad-and-My-Uncle-howitzer-1--150x150.jpg)
Words by Heathcote Williams. Narration and montage by Alan Cox. Written upon learning that WWI centenary Remembrance plans are to be given £50 million by the UK government.-- BBC News, 11 October 2012 My Dad and my Uncle were in World War One. At least they were in it, but not in it: Conscripted but never committed. My Dad was called up in 1915, And then run over by a field gun In an army camp at Lydd marsh in Kent, So he never actually made it Across the Channel to fight. His pelvis and both legs were crushed, In his first … [Read more...]
Sight Unseen, a Plug for Godfrey Reggio’s ‘Visitors’
September 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment
2002: "Naqoyqatsi," meaning "life as war," was the third in Reggio's qatsi trilogy. 1988: "Powaqqatsi," meaning "life in transformation," was the second. 1982: "Koyaanisqatsi," meaning "life out of balance," was the first. Reggio's latest, "Visitors," with another score by Philip Glass, will be released in 2014. … [Read more...]
19th-Century Balzac Meets 20th-Century Bellaart
September 23, 2013 by Leave a Comment
![Honoré de Balzac [by Gerard Bellaart, 1.XII,00]](http://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/balzac280-150x150.jpg)
Gerard Bellaart's masterly washed-pen drawing of Honoré de Balzac testifies to his great admiration for one of France's most prodigious writers. He is particularly fond of the 19th-century Balzac novel Illusions perdues, about a young poet living in Angoulême, a provincial town in "France profonde," who is desperate to make a name for himself in Paris. Gerard Bellaart in his studio. [JH, 2013] … [Read more...]
Get Your Megadeath ‘Fun Stuff’ Here
September 7, 2013 by 3 Comments
Words by Heathcote Williams. Narration and montage by Alan Cox. The National Atomic Museum ‘Hiroshima bomb earrings for sale’ Katherine Butler and Fiona Bell, London: The Independent, 6 August, 1999 In the National Atomic Museum At Albuquerque, New Mexico, You can buy souvenirs of ‘Little Boy’, The bomb that demolished Hiroshima, And of ‘Fat Man’, named after the bomb That destroyed Nagasaki three days later. They come from what the Museum Calls its “Exclusive” collection: ‘Little Boy’ earrings in sterling silver … [Read more...]
Nanos Valaoritis: On Language and Poetry
September 4, 2013 by Leave a Comment
At 92 / Nanos in his element / his element the world / his world the words / his words a philosopher's. Here's a poem of his -- "Endless Crucifixion" -- from the late-20th century. This is from the entry about him in Wikipedia: Nanos Valaoritis (Greek: Νάνος Βαλαωρίτης; born July 5, 1921) is one of the most distinguished writers in Greece today. He has been widely published as a poet, novelist and playwright since 1939, and his correspondence with George Seferis (Allilographia 1945-1968, Ypsilon, Athens 2004) has been a bestseller. … [Read more...]
‘A tiny smudge on the horizon at Ard na Caithne’
September 1, 2013 by 2 Comments
!['HEANEY AT GALLARUS' © by Heathcote Williams [Cold Turkey Press, 2013]](http://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/HEANEY-AT-GALLARUS-BACKrevised560-150x150.jpg)
30 VIII 2013Prolific as ever, Heathcote Williams wrote this poem in sublime tribute to Seamus Heaney on the day he learned of his fellow poet's death. … [Read more...]
Recent Comments
william osborne onPrick Up Your Ears for Hanne Lippard
Hanna has a very interesting poem/video about the color beige here: http://hildamagazine.com/hanne-lippard.html Like Hanna, I love beige, the color of the desert....william osborne onParis Bookfair Focuses on New Practices in Art
I hope the talk you are giving at the Paris Bookfair will be made available on the web.Jan Herman onSome Notes Toward ‘Death in Paris’
More than welcome, Gary. Thanks for your interest.Gary Lee-Nova onSome Notes Toward ‘Death in Paris’
What beautiful handwriting! I've already read a comment by Jan on Carl's handwriting. I think Jan used the word "exquisite,"...Jan Herman on New From Cold Turkey: ‘Pricelessly Outrageous’
That it is! Thanks, George -- JanGeorge Mattingly on New From Cold Turkey: ‘Pricelessly Outrageous’
Just got my copy of this book. Wonderful. A great reminder of Carl's genius, great good humor, fine ear, and...mad proust on Get Your Megadeath ‘Fun Stuff’ Here
I wonder if atomic winter snow globes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are available at the gift shop. "Now I am become...Winifred Fleet on Of ‘Victims, Perpetrators, Observers’
I knew Risa Dirtl in 1945 and liked her very much. We were in Vienna right after the war....kevin Ring on Get Your Megadeath ‘Fun Stuff’ Here
A chilling kick in the shins.william osborne on Get Your Megadeath ‘Fun Stuff’ Here
The same inured attitudes toward mass murder make Los Alamos, NM, home of the "National Laboratories" where the first and...