Since today is the 120th anniversary of Willem de Kooning's birthday, I am reminded by my staff of thousands of his fervent efforts "to break the willed articulation of the image." Which, as it happens, is not dissimilar to the goal of the cut-up procedure in writing, intended by Brion Gysin and William Burroughs to free the mind and language itself from preconceived formulations. Nor is it a bad follow-up to yesterday's blogpost about "Cut Up or Shut Up."
Kevin Ring, the indefatigable editor of Beat Scene magazine, emailed me a few months ago to ask about the new reprint of "Cut Up or Shut Up" released by the German publisher Mokolo Print in a facsimile edition in English with a new cover design by Robert Schalinski and a modest intro by yours truly. Ever curious about all things Beat, Ring wanted to know the back story of the book's origin and development. Et voilà!
Before I needed to earn a living from writing, I was a member of the avant-garde — fervent and full of high opinion. The other day I came across a typescript of "Synchronic Non-Causative Agent," an unpublished paper of mine written more than half a century ago. Reading it over, I got the bright idea of posting here despite its age.
Leah Lowe, Professor of Theatre and Director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University, talks about the ability for theatre to impact environmental activism.
Any adaptation needs to be epic.
Few works of literature go so deep into the need for home and family as the John Steinbeck novel The Grapes of Wrath. And Ricky Ian Gordon’s 2007 opera version packed the Carnegie Hall stage April 17 with the necessary magnitude of resources, plus extra relevance. No longer a piece of American history and...
In this episode, we learn how leaders of a global network of arts and cultural districts regard their influence on community health and well-being. A transcript is available on the NEA website.
Katie checks in with music director, supervisor, conductor, and pianist (Gutenberg!, The Who's Tommy, and KPOP on Broadway; Anne of Green Gables; Diary of a Wimpy Kid; Picnic at Hanging Rock), Amanda Morton.
I wrote a book looking at how different ways of moral and political theorizing drew different conclusions regarding whether the state should, or should not, subsidize the arts. At the very end of the book I give something of a personal view. There is a review circulating that is terribly confused about this (I won’t link – I read it so...
Since 2001, the Jazz Journalists Association (over which I preside) has celebrated some 350 “activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz,” as Jazz Heroes. The class of 2024 Jazz Heroes has just been announced, recognizing the good works of 33 people whose efforts extend from the Baja-San Diego borderland to Ottawa, Canada, through 27 U.S cities, from Akron...
A. Robert Lee is such a prolific author in both his creative and academic books that I won’t try to characterize his writings other than to say they invariably illuminate life and literature with a wealth of scholarship, intelligence, and linguistic mastery. I will say, however, that his sense of humor is one aspect of his writings that I most treasure.
