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Straight Up | Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

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Let’s Talk About Literary Exposure

January 14, 2021 by Jan Herman Leave a Comment

Some would call it visibility. If you’re talking books, how about millions upon millions of Youtube views for a reading from Supervert’s ‘Necrophilia Variations.’ A dozen years ago when that video had two million views, I called it “viral reading.” Three years later, on Dec. 30, 2015, the video had 18.6 million views. Today it has some 28 million views. So what has this meant for selling the book?

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Jim Haynes, RIP

January 12, 2021 by Jan Herman Leave a Comment

Jim Haynes

Brad Spurgeon memorializes him: “End of an Era, but not of a Philosophy of Life.” I never met Jim. But he was extraordinarily welcoming when we corresponded by email about the strange case of Orwell’s typewriter.

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Let’s Begin the New Year . . .

January 3, 2021 by Jan Herman 3 Comments

From 'Selected Shorter Poems (1950-1970) © by Emmett Williams

. . . with an old poem by a late friend: “buster / duchamp / and / marcel / keaton / walked / down / an / exploding / staircase / hand / in / hand / covering / their / immodesty / with / twinkling / dead / pans / did / marcel / keaton / and buster / duchamp”

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Heathcote Williams: ‘Cobalt Blues’

December 29, 2020 by Jan Herman 2 Comments

I was reminded of ‘Cobalt Blues’ this morning by Louise Erdrich’s op-ed “Not Just Another Pipeline” about “a tar sands climate bomb” in Minnesota now under construction and racing “to lock in pipeline infrastructure” before it can be stopped.

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‘Burroughs and the Dharma’

December 17, 2020 by Jan Herman

William S. Burroughs was not a Buddhist: he never sought or found a “Teacher,” he never took Refuge, and he never undertook any Bodhisattva vows nor—for that matter—did he ever declare himself a follower of any one faith or practice.. He did not consider himself a Buddhist. But he did have an awareness of the essentials of Buddhism, and in his own way, he was affected by bodhidharma.

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On Account of the Pandemic . . .

December 9, 2020 by Jan Herman

VACCINE: It’s not a matter / of knowing we will end— / though it’s no fun, / that is not the matter— / everything will end. / The matter is, / there’s no cure for that. / When death is deleted / by coding—digital, / genetical, biochemical— / whatever combination / it takes—something else / will provoke us. Freud / thought it perpetual.

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Pandemic Poems From Cold Turkey Press: Mistress Death

November 30, 2020 by Jan Herman

This handmade, 16-page chapbook is not about Covid-19, but the virus is present in every line.

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REDUX: The Shithole and the Shithouse

November 16, 2020 by Jan Herman

The White House in Washington, D.C. also known as Trump's Shithouse.

Originally posted Jan. 17, 2018. By now many, many millions of people have seen the rebranded Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. Or if they haven’t, at least that many have googled it. If you’re the one person who hasn’t seen it, here it is. And here, not incidentally, is Trump’s Shithouse in Washington D.C., also known as The White House.

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His Birthday Was 79 Years Ago Today

November 15, 2020 by Jan Herman

Heathcote Williams [Photo: JH, 2013]

Heathcote Williams was an unstoppable force. Even in death he is unstoppable. His writings, his activism, and his personal example continue to inspire others. At heart, Williams was a revolutionary. The historian Peter Whitfield placed his work in a “great tradition of visionary dissent” stretching from William Blake and John Ruskin to DH Lawrence and David Jones. I had the privilege of recording Williams’s final vinyl LP-cum-CD, “American Porn,” at his home in Oxford several years before he died. The poems he read — “Mr. President,” “The United States of Porn,” “Forbidden Fruit, or The Cybernetic Apple Core,” and “Snuff Films at the White House” — were in their uncompromising nakedness CT scans of history.

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Another Lesson in the Art of Drawing

November 14, 2020 by Jan Herman

We’ve been following Amélie, a talented, 14-year-old student artist whose drawing has shown impressive skill. The last time she was asked to copy a sketch by Daumier. The point of that exercise was to shape the forms through the tonal value of the lines rather than outlining them with a fixed line. The idea was to develop the contours of the forms through the process of drawing. This time she was asked to draw an object as part of a study of natural forms.

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Thanks to Covid-19, We Know Her Better Than Before

November 13, 2020 by Jan Herman

“She’s a city-dwelling, / sagely bearded / mountain man, / a libidinous old dame / dressed in evening wear. / Her eyes are hooded . . . / Into this zone of mirth / our mistress of endings / sends the world spinning / out of orbit.”

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Kosti Does His Self-Publishing T-h-a-a-a-n-g . . .

November 11, 2020 by Jan Herman

Richard Kostelanetz shows us his M-A-N-Y books from Archae Editions. And he is stacked.

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GC CUNY at the Center of the Conversation
The Science of Superheroes

November 10, 2020 by Jan Herman

FREE ONLINE EVENT: “The pop-culture universe of superheroes is filled with extraordinary humans and abilities. Captain America, the Hulk, and Black Panther seem to lie firmly in the realm of fantasy, but the technology behind them might not be as farfetched as we think. In his book ‘The Science of Marvel,’ Sebastian Alvarado shows that, using quantum physics, evolutionary biology, and mechanical engineering, we can find real-world parallels to superpowers such as ‘spidey sense’ and Thor’s lightning. He speaks with Shane Campbell-Staton, host of the podcast ‘The Biology of Superheroes,’ about where the science meets the fiction.” — GC Presents

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A ‘Noir’ Drawing Brings the 16th Century into the Light

October 28, 2020 by Jan Herman

Hans Badung Grien (Albrecht Durer’s favorite pupil) was a master engraver as well as draftsman and painter. His drawing of a bearded old man is the subject of Gerard Bellaart’s ‘noir’ drawing, which embeds the Grien portrait from memory at its center.

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Lear Lite

October 26, 2020 by Jan Herman

Shakespeare’s writing—all of it, poetry and plays—was repulsive to Tolstoy, who claimed that whenever he read Shakespeare he was overcome by “repulsion, weariness, and bewilderment.” As for “King Lear,” ranked among Shakespeare’s four greatest tragedies, he found it “at every step,” according to George Orwell, “stupid, verbose, unnatural, unintelligible, bombastic, vulgar, tedious and full of incredible events, ‘wild ravings,’ ‘mirthless jokes,’ anachronisms, irrelevancies, obscenities, worn-out stage conventions and other faults both moral and aesthetic.”

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When Emmett Williams Squared the Alphabet . . .

October 19, 2020 by Jan Herman

In 1956, his color scheme was as bright as day. In the plague year of 2020 a color inversion is like the night.

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Bob Kaufman: ‘Tin Pan Alley’

October 12, 2020 by Jan Herman

“No one has ever written a song about Coronary Thrombosis, / Even though its blessings have been widely recognized . . . / Even though it has saved many people from a lifetime of sorrow . . . / Even though it has rescued many people from bottomless pits of Death . . . / Even though it has provided a good life for millions of doctors, nurses, / Ambulance drivers, morticians, stonecutters and countless others. / Yet, on ungrateful Tin Pan Alley / No one has ever written a song about Coronary Thrombosis.”

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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…

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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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My biography of the Hollywood director William Wyler, A Talent for Trouble, is available as an ebook at Amazon and an ebook on iTunes at the Apple … [Read More...]

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