When a book such as this comes across the transom, my staff of thousands urges me to post a notice, even though I am far from an informed reviewer of graphic books. What I can do is extract some of the images to offer an impression of the artwork. The entire book dazzles the eye, while the story documents the life.
Archives for September 2026
If I Could But See It
TIME TRAVELS: New and Old
My day suddenly veered into a collection of new and old poems by A. Robert Lee. I didn’t know what to expect. It turned out to be nothing less than a curriculum for life and learning, for pleasure, and for the intellect.
Untamed Pledge for the 2026 Elections
An article in the French newspaper Le Monde about untamed literature, Cut Up or Shut Up, and “the ‘Cut-Up’ movement,” drew a pledge 54 years later from S/U’s Staff of Thousands.
What Is Poetry? ‘A glimpse of sun.’ — Jim Harrison
I met Jim Harrison only once, in 1968, when we were on a “little magazine” panel with Russell Banks, Anne Waldman, and Charles Newman. Even then Harrison was a “character,” a voluble personality who cut quite a figure.—wore a rakish straw hat, a black patch on his blind left eye, and sported a hand-carved walking stick.
‘Tribute in Light’
Phantom Presence of the Missing Twin Towers
It first appeared six months after 9/11 as a public art installation and has appeared every year since. It is presented from dusk of Sept. 11 to dawn of Sept. 12. It’s the most striking memorial to be seen, especially in person.
The Day the Twin Towers Vanished in a Shroud of Ash
My report grew longer by the minute. It ran, updated in real time, as MSNBC.com’s cover story. The lede kept changing throughout the day. … It was the scene of a nightmare … people on fire jumping in terror from the towers … the buildings collapsing … splinters of debris falling from the sky like confetti … deadly smoke blackening the air … an exodus of thousands of New Yorkers coated in white ash streaming on foot for hours across the city’s bridges.
Visions of ‘Ground Zero’ That Fell by the Wayside
“I have seen the future and it is B-I-G. It is also tall, fantastical, memorial, ecological, symbolical, cultural, commercial, skyward, subterranean, park-like, Lego-like and — what seems most certain — futuristic, as in a long way off.”