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Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

Upcoming in Berlin
A ‘Pandora’s Box’ of Life’s Struggles and Wonders

June 30, 2025 by Jan Herman Leave a Comment

In several media — photography, video, poetry and live performance — Signe Mähler and William Cody Maher will introduce a world in which the personal and the universal intersect and mirror one another. The pair will explore how the story of a married couple can echo both global events and private memories — using the past as a lens to see and understand the present.

Steff Signer: Cabinet Music XI

June 27, 2025 by Jan Herman Leave a Comment

Concept & Music: Steff Signer * Photography: Mario Baronchelli *
Acrostic Poetry: Florian Vetsch * Cornet Introduction: Markus Breuss *
Poetry Recitation: Jaswant Hanspal

Remembering Janine Pommy Vega

June 24, 2025 by Jan Herman 1 Comment

She’ll get a street named for her in New Jersey, where she was from. The last time I saw Janine was on the Lower East Side at the Bowery Ball Room in Manhattan, for a reading to celebrate a book of poems by migrant farmworkers, “Estamos Aquí,” which she had translated. One of her last messages to me, dated 6/19/2007, arrived not long after. It could have been written yesterday.

William Wyler, an Old Favorite, Speaks About Film

June 24, 2025 by Jan Herman Leave a Comment

Well, of course he’s a favorite. See “A Talent for Trouble.”

Channeling Rimbaud’s Last Words

June 19, 2025 by Jan Herman Leave a Comment

The last words of Arthur Rimbaud as imagined by Carl Weissner was published in a limited handmade edition. It is a small masterpiece — small only because it isn’t longer.

‘Talk Dirty to Me’

June 18, 2025 by Jan Herman 2 Comments

Postmodern Jukebox is a helluva pick-me-up for any day of the week.

‘absent minds’ / ‘patient spring’ / ‘biting elbows’

June 15, 2025 by Jan Herman 1 Comment

Here are three of the images under consideration for a chapbook entitled ‘biting elbows,’ to be made from a collaborative effort by Gerard Bellaart and myself during a visit to his studio in Le Liboreau, France.

‘Burning Bridges’

June 13, 2025 by Jan Herman Leave a Comment

The poet says he’s “in the business of burning bridges.” That’s not all the business he’s in.

‘Throw the Bums Out’

June 9, 2025 by Jan Herman Leave a Comment

Given the Trump regime’s hostility to the arts and humanities, it seems useful to recall that the antagonism was characteristic of local politicians on the right for many years before MAGA came along to voice their resentments on a national scale. This is perhaps too obvious to point out. But even so . . .

This Was My Song — It Is Ours Now More Than Ever

June 7, 2025 by Jan Herman 2 Comments

Long, long ago — in 1970 to be precise — the Berkeley radio station KPFA borrowed a collage of mine for the cover of its guide. I had titled it “This Is My Song,” thinking of it as an obituary for the 1960s.

Visions at Midnight: Pages from a Notebook

May 27, 2025 by Jan Herman

“At first glance these collages look like they are digitally produced images owing their provenance to artificial intelligence or photoshop manipulation. But they are actual paper collages, cut-and-paste handwork in the truest sense. What sets them apart is that they are two images, one message, all at once.” Mark Terrill

‘After Words’ at The Grolier Club Tells of a Revolution

May 21, 2025 by Jan Herman

If anybody had said to me that the shaggy “mimeo revolution” of little magazines begun in the 1960s would be the subject of an exhibition as elegant as this one, and in as venerable a setting, I wouldn’t have believed it. During that period I played a small part in what was happening as the editor of a little mag myself. I thought we were participants in a rebellion more than a revolution.

Hanging In, She’d Rather Not

May 19, 2025 by Jan Herman

Cursed by Alzheimer’s.

DEATH on 23TV

May 6, 2025 by Jan Herman

The medium has changed, but . . . not the message.

Remembering One of His Most Fabulous Monologues

April 30, 2025 by Jan Herman

Famous Last Words of a Dopified Rat (not unlike those of Dutch WhatsHizName)

While everyone is busily summarizing the first 100 days of Trumpscheisse.2, the staff here can’t help recalling pre-Trumpscheisse.1, when these words fell from his lips like the last delirious words of a rat. Makes me think of “The Last Words of Dutch Schultz,” that Burroughs screenplay about a bootlegging mob boss who was shot dead while urinating in a Newark bar.

Louise Landes Levi
A Voyager’s Magnum Opus: ‘The Goddess’

April 26, 2025 by Jan Herman

There are many kinds of poets. Among them are the voyaging / visionary poets, like Allen Ginsberg and Ira Cohen, both of whom were mentors to as well as models for Louise Landes Levi, who has not only traveled widely, as they did, but has turned her voyaging — that is what her kind of travels must be called — into a life of poetry and music and, not least, who has created a literary chronicle of her experience.

Fossils Dug Up from the Internet

April 25, 2025 by Jan Herman

They arrived in a dream and became a reality.

Next Page »

Jan Herman

When not listening to Bach or Cuban jazz pianist Chucho Valdes, or dancing to salsa, I like to play jazz piano -- but only in the privacy of my own mind.
Another strange fact... Read More…

About

My Books

Several books of poems have been published in recent years by Moloko Print, Statdlichter Presse, Phantom Outlaw Editions, and Cold Turkey … [Read More...]

Straight Up

The agenda is just what it says: news of arts, media & culture delivered with attitude. Or as Rock Hudson once said in a movie: "Man is the only … [Read More...]

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