Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

Such a Great Read!
The Poet Dying: Heinrich Heine’s Last Years in Paris

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If the opening of Ernst Pawel’s biographical study of the 19th-century German poet Heinrich Heine doesn’t grab you, don’t bother to read on. But it if does, treat yourself to a great reading experience by getting hold of the book. ‘The Poet Dying’ includes a selection of Heine’s poems that runs to 80 or so pages, with the originals and the translations facing each other. Read an excerpt from one of the poems, ‘The Slave Ship,’ a depiction of the Dutch slave trade that gives you a solid dose of Heine’s sarcasm.

Jay Jeff Jones, RIP
Playwright, Essayist, Critic, and Such a Fine and True Poet

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He died Saturday, May 20, 2023. He was 77. After theater studies and acting with The Mime Troupe in San Francisco, he moved to England, where he mostly lived since. In London he worked for Transatlantic Review, the British Drama League, and Running Man Press — and later edited the quarterly New Yorkshire Writing and co-curated (with Douglas Field) exhibition “OffBeat: Jeff Nuttall and the International Underground” at the John Rylands Library in Manchester, which drew 130,000 visitors. He published poetry, essays, reviews, and fiction in many magazines and anthologies.

Essential Reading Signaled in the Night Sky

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The Flower Moon, seen over Byron Bay, Australia, on May 6, was a reminder of David Grann’s riveting ‘KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI,” which is essential reading to understand the history of America’s marauding westward ‘progress’.

High Market Value of a Modern First Edition Fills a Void

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A pre-owned, first edition copy of Necrophilia Variations sold yesterday on eBay with an asking price of $2,000. The author, who goes by the name Supervert, is embarrassed to brag about it. Although it wasn’t Supervert who sold it, and he doesn’t know who did, he tells me, “Market value helps fill the vacuum of feedback we writers are treated to.”

Gazing in Wonder at Jan Heller Levi

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IIt’s hard to say what is most memorable about the poems in these three collections—”orphans,” “Skyspeak,” and “Once I Gazed at You in Wonder”— because it means having to choose between their emotional impact and their marvelous candor, to say nothing of their literacy, intimacy, humor, and intelligence.

Poetry Comes First
Large Menu from Bite-Sized Books

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The first volume in a projected series called The Return to Reason has been released by the British publisher Bite-Sized Books Ltd. The stated aim of the volume, titled ‘The Poem is Part of the Eye,’ is “to draw new readers towards poetry they may not be familiar with or have not previously engaged with at all.”

Kleine Tiere / Small Animals — A Bilingual Edition

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These poems have been called “tears for the tongue,” “dark diamonds,” and “sonnets of experience” that William “Blake himself would favour.” (MÜ Magazine, London).
Stadtlichter Presse also publishes an elegantly produced series of books called Heartbeats, which is devoted to American Beat and post-Beat poets and writers. Each book presents the original poems or prose with the German translations on facing pages. There are now more than three dozen in the series.

Nancy Peters Saved City Lights Books, Yes!

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“While Lawrence Ferlinghetti certainly deserves all of the accolades he’s received, the fact of the matter is there would literally be no City Lights without Nancy Peters. Beyond shepherding City Lights through various fiscal crises and providing the steady anchor that allowed Ferlinghetti to travel the world as a poet and activist, Nancy’s vision as an editor and acumen as a publisher were a vital key to the success and longevity of City Lights Publishers.”

Bellaart’s ‘Noirs’
For the Pleasure of Charcoal Sketching

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Between July 2020 and June 2022, Gerard Bellaart filled 11 spiral-bound, 80-page sketchbooks with charcoal drawings. Some sketches were preparatory for larger drawings and some were studies for paintings. But most were for the sake of sketching itself. Of the nearly 1,000 drawings, he selected more than 100 for this chapbook.

The Eloquence of Erich Maria Remarque’s Last Novel

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After reading the prologue, tell me you’re not drawn into this refugee’s tale:

“Behind me lay a long and perilous road, the Via Dolorosa of all those who had fled from the Hitler regime. … Even after leaving Germany we were not safe. Only a very few of us had valid passports or visas. When the police caught us, we were thrown into jail and deported. Without papers we could not work legally or stay in one place for long. We were perpetually on the move.”

Malanga to Make a Rare Combo Poetry-Film Appearance

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Anyone who has seen the 1954 movie “Friendly Persuasion” might wonder if Gerard Malanga was the precocious child actor cast for comic relief with a pet goose that keeps chasing him around the family farm.

Of course he wasn’t. That was Richard Eyer. Malanga is the noted poet and photographer who once was part of Andy Warhol’s inner circle.

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