Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

An Incandescent Poet in His Solitary Cell

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Gerard Bellaart writes that after the South African poet Sinclair Beiles died, in 2000, “a wealthy collector who owns the largest holding of Sinclair’s manuscripts visited me” — this was in 2008 — “and assured me that he would sort out a proper gravesite. Seeing the grave now in the condition it is in makes […]

Loose Screws in Politics

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Mike Ferguson’s permutation poem makes a whole lot of sense. It is also a reminder of the influence of Brion Gysin, who set the template for permutation poems back in the 1960s. Brion Gysin Let the Mice In includes texts by Gysin, William S. Burroughs, and Ian Sommerville. It is an expensive collector’s item these […]

Courage

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Click each image to enlarge. “Corragio” — My old friend said. / And then he put / the gun to his head. / That’s what it took / to blunt the pain / with a hunk of lead. / It’s no walk in the park. / The night is cold, / and my friend is […]

Two Ways of Looking at a Poem

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No shore receives them. / All the portents dog their ride. / Their bodies sink in rough seas. We surf on a gentle tide. / The shore awaits us. / No portents dog our ride. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

NNOI Festival = 90% Water

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Living organisms are gathering near the old water mill in Groswaltersdorf, 70 kilometers north of Berlin. NNOI Festival 2018 July 12 — Crossposted at IT: International Times, The Newspaper of Resistance. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

‘… I floated by Daylight Donuts …’

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Driving down 68 today the old van rose up a / few feet and flew into a windless corridor / and only then did I realize it had something / to do with you. / It was similar to driving down the road / but the fact that the tires were not touching the / […]

Your Obituary Is Waiting

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​(for Philip Larkin) My ego prefers an obit published by the NY Times. But anywhere else will do, even etched into a headstone that nobody reads in a cemetery where nobody ever goes. I don’t know why I care, but I do. I don’t know why anyone should care, but it’s the custom to. —JH […]

Celebrating Carl Weissner, Buk, and Burroughs

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They say Berlin is the place to be. Since I can’t be there myself, here’s the next best thing . . . This is the Maher-Mähler film about Carl that will be screened as part of the celebration: Always These Nightmares!      Toward the end of his life Carl was a writer on a […]

When Language Is Incorrect

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Mokusatsu Asked what he’d do first if called upon to rule a nation Confucius replied, “I’d correct language. If language isn’t correct Then what is said is not what’s meant And what ought to be done remains undone. Morals and art deteriorate And justice goes astray – And if justice should disappear Then people will […]

The Nature of the Beast

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Furthermore . . . “As Matisse noted, black is a colour too & in certain hands the superior one.” — Gerard Bellaart EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Speaking of Hans Magnus Enzenberger . . .

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His poem “last will and testament”  begins: “get your flag out of my face, it tickles!” Jerome Rothenberg’s appealing translation from the German continues: and get that tinny wreath off my chest, it’s rattling too much; toss it over with the statues on the garbage heap, and give the ribbon to some biddies to doll […]

‘Majestically lonely and white . . .’

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Now that you’ve had a look at the moody green splendor of the moors near Manchester, England, take a look at the brilliant skyscape near Bordeaux, France (courtesy of our staff), and a favorite poem of theirs. ‘A History of Clouds’ Hans Magnus Enzensberger Appearing as they do, overnight, or out of the blue, they […]

From the Pond Across the Street

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We would travel light years to find alien beings inhabiting fabulous worlds. — Malcolm Mc Neill Some things just won’t stay down. ‘The permutations are infinite: Whatever it is, the joke is on us.’ EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

The Moody Splendor of Manchester

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I was corresponding by email recently with Jay Jeff Jones, an American expat playwright, journalist, and poet, who is working on a new edition of Jeff Nuttall’s Bomb Culture, a long-out-of-print classic about the British counterculture of the 1960s. Jones, who has lived in Manchester, England, for many decades, wrote that he was “in fine […]

The Sorrows

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War is always a poison to the soul, even the most just wars. No more important victory was ever achieved than World War II, but America was poisoned, perhaps fatally, by the aftermath of its own success, because we never faced what war really is. It’s very difficult. There are no words for it. — […]

Streaming What We Breathe

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Quantum Words for Bill Osborne Stealthy quantum words phantoms of expectation and suicides of time riddle us with springs and traps. Self-delusion streaming what we breathe we who breathe in silence holding worlds together   &    apart like ancient beacons bearing witness in halos of fading light. — JH EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

‘Meeting Jim’ (Who’s Having the Time of His Life)

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I’ve never met Jim. We’ve only corresponded by email about the strange case of Orwell’s typewriter. But I know that Jim Haynes is a man for all reasons — pleasure, food, sex, mind, books, theater, life — and that to meet him in person all you have to do is show up at his door […]

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