Jan Herman

The first volume in a projected series called The Return to Reason has just been released by the British publisher Bite-Sized Books Ltd. The stated aim of the volume, titled 'The Poem is Part of the Eye,' is “to draw new readers toward poetry they may not be familiar with or have not previously engaged with at all.”

These poems have been called "tears for the tongue," "dark diamonds," and "sonnets of experience" that William “Blake himself would favour." (MÜ Magazine, London). Stadtlichter Presse also publishes an elegantly produced series of books called Heartbeats, which is devoted to American Beat and post-Beat poets and writers. Each book presents the original poems or prose with the German translations on facing pages. There are now more than three dozen in the series, including key titles by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (A Coney Island of the Mind), Gregory Corso (Gasoline), Philip Lamantia (Destroyed Works), Bob Kaufman (The Old Rain: Collected Poems), Richard Brautigan (Please Plant This Book), Jack Kerouac (Scattered Poems), Lenore Kandel (The Love Book), and as well as others by John Wieners, Philip Whalen, Lew Welch, Edward Dorn, Allen Ginsberg, Denise Levertov, Joanne Kyger, Diane di Prima, Elise Cowan, ruth weiss, d.a. levy, Albert Saijo, Ron Loewinsohn, William S. Burroughs, Ira Cohen, Edward Sanders, Herbert Huncke, A.D. Winans, Jack Micheline, Michael McClure, Harold Norse, John Giorno, Neal Cassady, William Everson, Peter Orlovsky, Stuart Z. Perkoff and Tuli Kupferg.

Dear Nancy — It's been a million years. What a thrill to see you and to hear your voice again. — Jan

Between July 2020 and June 2022, Gerard Bellaart filled 11 spiral-bound, 80-page sketchbooks with charcoal drawings. Some were preparatory for larger drawings and some were studies for paintings. But most were for the sake of sketching itself. Of the nearly 1,000 drawings, he selected more than 100 for this chapbook.

After reading the prologue, tell me you're not drawn into this refugee's tale.