A still shot from Rich Allen’s latest movie. If you look at the shoes .. well, the sneakers … you can see these kids were not actors.
‘A Poem for Patriots’ and ‘Upside the Morning’
Two books by Mark Terrill have arrived with ekphrastic poems of great appeal: “The Salvador-Dali-Lama Express” and “Great Balls of Doubt.” Here are two poems with images from daily life and the thoughts they arouse.
World of Trouble
New Folio from Cold Turkey Press
The epigraph (“I’ll do penance with farts and groans / Kneeling on my marrowbones”) comes from a poem by James Joyce. The folio includes four deformed sonnets (“Cursed,” “Her Days All Flee,” “World of Trouble,” “Mirage”) and a poem (“After Carl”).
A Documentation by Florian Vetsch
The Garden by Paul Bowles
Paul Bowles wrote a short story called “The Garden” in 1963. Three years later Joseph McPhillips asked him to dramatize the story for students at the American School of Tangier. Bowles, who was in Thailand at the time and about to leave for Morocco by ship, wrote scenes for the play on his way back and airmailed them to McPhillips, who immediately started rehearsals. Following Bowles’s advice, McPhillips involved artists and writers such as Marguerite McBey, Ira Belline, Brion Gysin, and John Hopkins. The play was staged in Tangier in April 1967, but was never published. This documentation offers the original text of the play (translated as well into German) with an evocative motherlode of illustrations that trace the play’s genesis from page to stage.
Let’s All Say Goodbye to Spotify
The music-streaming service claims that “listening is everything.” But it’s tone deaf. And many agree. As do we.
A Tale by Mohammed Mrabet
As Told to Paul Bowles and Transcribed by Mark Terrill
Mohammed Mrabet, a young Moroccan painter from Tangier, met the American ex-patriate composer and writer Paul Bowles in 1965. Bowles, who lived in Tangier for decades, taped many of Mrabet’s spontaneous stories and translated them into English, eventually resulting in the publication of more than a dozen books. Mark Terrill, himself an American ex-pat writer and poet, recalls that during a kif-fueled visit with the two of them, in 1985, Mrabet began “improvising some of his crazy tales while Paul simultaneously translated for my benefit, and I quickly jotted this one down.” Terrill bought several of Mrabet’s drawings, including the one that illustrates this newly printed poster from Cold Turkey Press.
Four Books That Recently Came Our Way
Poetry by Leia John, by William Cody Maher, by Ira Cohen, and a memoir by Theo Green. Have a look and please don’t take offense at the explicitness of John’s lines.
(Yesterday this blogpost disappeared from the site, inexplicably, so the staff has re-posted it. Apologies to all who clicked on it and were directed to a dead end.)
Pandemic Ghosts?
Not long before the pandemic this was the artwork at the entryway to a pub on Fifth Avenue located directly across the street from the entrance to the main branch of the New York Public Library, famed for its vast holdings and archival collections. Like many enterprises here in the city, the pub is now gone. So is the artwork. It’s reassuring to report, however, that the library and its holdings are still there.
Youth + Talent + Dedication
Amélie, An Artist in Her Own Right
A precociously talented student artist — Amélie by name — drew our attention in 2020 with her studies of a Daumier drawing and again with studies of natural forms. Now 15, she has achieved such splendid results that it is perhaps no exaggeration to say she is already an artist. Recent drawings and sculptures testify to that.
‘I Am That I Am’ ‘I Am That, Am I?’
Brion Gysin and the Divine Tautology
“The whole idea of the permutations came to me visually on seeing the so-called Divine Tautology in print. It looked wrong, to me, non-symmetrical. The biggest word, That, belonged in the middle but all I had to do was switch the last two words and It asked a question: ‘I Am That, Am I?’ The rest followed.” — Brion Gysin
The Brooklyn-based publisher DABA Press is bringing out the most complete edition of Brion Gysin’s permutated poems published and recorded to date. The book is gorgeous to look at, sets the poems in their rightful context, and does justice to Ian Sommerville’s computer collaboration.
Q&A with Lucy Glendinning
Extraordinary British Sculptor Works from Inside Out
Her sculptures, to be exhibited at Art Miami, have a striking “innerness,” an interiority of gaze and stance, as well as a primal quality that seems a function of their feathery or furry surfaces. In all their variations, they express a human connection to animal origins.
‘so unlike the realm of / love and ardor’
In a world of trouble
so unlike the realm of
love and ardor
the singularity of death
has come to this —
we shrink,
abandoned, into history. …
Paul Valéry Reminds Us
‘A Poem Is Never Finished, Only Abandoned’
Mine have never been finished either. And so . . . an updated, revised, redesigned, and expanded collection in both hardcover and paperback editions is out now, with a new title: “All That Would Ever After Not Be Said.”
William Burroughs Reminds Us
‘The Rulers of This Most Insecure of All Worlds Are Rulers By Accident, Inept Frightened Pilots’
‘Not one-man rule or rule of aristocracy or plutocracy but a small group elevated to positions of power by random pressures and subject to political and economic factors that leave little room for decisions. They are representatives of abstract forces that reach power through surrender of self.’
The Uninhibited Bite of Dutch Mordant
With an artist as prolific and versatile as Gerard Bellaart, it is not easy to pinpoint his “style.” His paintings bring a dream world out of hiding. His drawings look spontaneous. But you can be sure they are supported by years of deep training. You can also be sure they are not “easy” viewing.
Mustill Artworks Newly Archived at Emory University
Norman Ogue Mustill (1931-2013) was an American artist, who primarily used collage as his medium. He was born in Montreal, Canada and was educated at the Montreal Museum of Art and Ecole Des Beaux Artes. During the 1950s, Mustill lived in New York (New York), Los Angeles (California), and Mexico City (Mexico). He moved to San Francisco (California) in 1960, which led to collaboration with filmmakers, painters, and poets of the beat generation. Mustill was not interested in being a public figure and avoided the art world. He adopted the middle name “Ogue,” which he took from the fashion magazine Vogue to protest the fashionable.” — Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library
Moloko to Publish Dutch Mordant
“All drawing from the imagination I’d consider a form of automatic drawing; if it exists, it will exist only for the first time. … I think [my images] arise from the instinctive tendency to not look for semblances or analogies. Meaning, to find all that happens in spite of me—imagination versus verisimilitude. One forever seems to be looking for a dimension not directly visible and through the technique at one’s disposal express the sensation that evokes.” — Gerard Bellaart