Cold Turkey Press has printed a card of this photo and poem in a limited edition.
Last Breath
‘I Do Not Think. I Am Thought. I Am Thought in Action.’
Kurt Wold: ‘Stradoferous’
“I dreamt I could play the bicycle. This performance artwork plays with a number of themes, not the least of which is the continual contemporary pressure to present oneself as larger-than-life, in the hope that one might be noticed in a distracted culture. Of course the work also revels in those distractions.” — Kurt Wold
If This Was an Actual Real-Time Photo . . .
A Poem and Its Genesis: Malcolm Ritchie’s ‘Writing It’
And From the Outlaw End of the Writing Spectrum
“At age 84, Plymell continues to write, publish and perform—“doing nuttin”, as he says—from his home in Cherry Valley, New York. His activities keep Plymell in steady correspondence with a crowd of like-minded hellions, including rockabilly’s Bloodshot Bill, Sonic Youth founders Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, bassist Mike Watt, filmmaker Mark Hanlon, guitarist Bill Nace, photographer Philip Scalia and musicologist Byron Coley. Plymell and his wife, Pam, first happened upon Cherry Valley in late 1969 in coming to visit Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky at their East Hill farm. Moving there for good in early 1970, the Plymells have set into adding to their immense creative legacy.” – Benito Vila
Before the Day Is Over . . .
Malcolm Ritchie: ‘The Wake’
NYT Magazine’s Designers Push the Envelope
The print edition of the New York Times this morning made note of the “Corrections We Remembered in 2019” (see the renamed, redesigned online version), pointing out that correcting a mistake is “more than a procedural obligation … it’s ‘an ethical responsibility.’” In that spirit I might as well point out that The Times can screw up badly when its highly trained and forward-looking designers push the envelope too far, particularly in the print edition of the magazine.
Fluxus Impresario Readied for His Closeup
A feature documentary about the impresario of the international avant-garde art movement Fluxus from 1962 to 1978. Interviews with artists include Yoko Ono, Jonas Mekas, and Nam June Paik. Dedicated to cooperative methods and expanded processes, Fluxus could be everything and almost anything: kits, shops, festivals, islands, weddings, food, or Flux Lofts—a network of artist-owned lofts in SoHo, New York. The iconoclastic George Maciunas and the spirit of Fluxus provoke questions still critical to many working artists . . . and a helluva lot of silly serious fun.
When You Get to Your 85th . . .
“So I sit there with earphones, mind you West End of forgotten City East of what used to be a shade of time. Let’s not get into that again… machine gun fire loud & clear… airplanes moving in low & forgotten now like battles in the Pacific… distant artillery for the Americans don’t forget that buddy… sound of Japanese commandos… & Germany end of July 45, 17 sec. past the deadline… sunny morning in Hiroshima, stones trees houses people dust… it’s the 15th with transcribed music… cracks in the record, the unconditional surrender of Hollywood to TV…” — Jürgen Ploog
When I Think of 2019 . . .
Review: ‘Captivating … Teasing … Spare … Seductive’
“I was struck by poems made of lines that are poems all on their own—even as they unstack into melodic steps from top to bottom . . . Some are as spare as Chinese widsom. In Herman’s poems you know you are certainly ‘somewhere’ but maybe it’s somewhere only in atavistic memory, the realm of dreams. He writes with what Lavinia Greenlaw called ‘unsettled language,’ which brings less obvious aspects of imagination or observation to the fore . . . teasing, holding attention by where they might be heading. A doubtful adventure? A seductive noire? An obscene history lesson? And of course, mortality raises its knowing head more than once.” — Jay Jones
New Nationalism Suckled by Old Wolves
“The penultimate superstition of mankind is the State, and until the state has been rejected man will be a slave to darkness and ignorance: for fatherland, nation, country, patriotism, government are all black magic brewed in the witch’s cauldron of World History. The State Conscience, like its founders, Remus and Romulus, has always been suckled by wolves . . . ” — Edward Dahlberg
This Blogpost Is Personal
Ran into a tough opponent the other day. Took a header. I hit the pavement and it knocked me cold. Disfigured my face. An entire crew of firemen pulled up in full regalia, ladder engine included, had a look and got me a deluxe ambulance ride to the emergency room, plus a brainscan, a 24-hour overnight on a hospital gurney—the place was fully booked—and a bunch of stitches by a well-meaning young doc. Now home, condition improving, I got to thinking of Edward Dahlberg’s “Can These Bones Live.”
