Norman Ogue Mustill was an extreme dissenter. Nothing pleased him more than reaming out the human race. His collages stopped you dead with their vicious satire, like the writings of William S. Burroughs. And for technical precision Max Ernst didn’t do better.
Memory Pictures Coming In
Cold Turkey Press
*#%&@#$*@%#*&#+@%$+ ! ! !
If we call life
a fabulous blur —
as though it were a lark —
even when our sorrows
founder in the dark,
let’s just call it bad luck.
Cicero Sez
My two years of high school Latin got me to Julius Caesar’s account of his exploits in the Gallic war, written in a straightforward, rather simple style. Unfortunately, I never took third-year Latin, which would have got me to Cicero, whose style was more sophisticated, more complex, and thus more difficult. But I have read Cicero in English and his words of wisdom are eminently clear.
The war made a quick mess of the family.
I.B. Singer Tells the Bloody, Cold-Blooded Truth
I had never really read him . . . a few tales here and there, the novel ‘Enemies’ . . . until I opened a volume of his ‘Collected Short Stories’ not long ago. It has kept me riveted.
Early Reviews Are In
Book Launched in Brooklyn: ‘The Midnight Special’
UPDATED:
Colin Asher is “a calm and sophisticated storyteller who picks you up and sets you back down in places you didn’t anticipate,” NY Times book critic Dwight Garner writes. He calls “The Midnight Special” “a fog-piercing down-bound train of a book” that “underlines sheer human resiliency.” The Observer says Asher’s new book will “transform” the way you see art. Booklist calls it “mesmerizing.” Publisher’s Weekly likes it; Alex Gershman dives deep into the book on his YouTube Channel; Maurice Chammah drills down on Ike White, one of the book’s featured musicians, in a discussion with Asher at The Marshall Project. There is also my own early notice.
New from Moloko TRAVEL PAINTING
A. Robert Lee’s Omnibus Edition Is Here to Go
UPDATED
The author won’t need a headstone . . . This monumental omnibus will do . . . Five hundred and eight-six gorgeous pages of verbal pleasure . . . Intimate collaborations with esteemed artists . . . Landscapes of descriptive simplicity . . . Pure thought objectified . . .
David Hockney Liked to Draw by Other Means
David Hockney’s departure has drawn obituaries from across the art world and the popular press, which is testimony to his eminence whether his paintings and drawings are considered a simple pleasure to look at or regressive to contemplate. Whatever it comes down to, he loved to experiment.
Petit Cabinet #7: ‘Just Two More Times to Sleep’
A simple poem becomes an otherworldly love song with the collaboration of a singer and composer.
Stadtlichter Presse Makes My Heart Beat Stronger
It’s a wonder that the most intriguing publisher of American poets of the Beat Generation happens to be a German publisher, Stadtlichter Presse. Its “Heartbeat” series features not only the most notable — Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Corso, and Ferlinghetti — in bilingual editions, but also dozens of less famous Beats and Beat-era or Beat-related poets.
Statement of Fact
In my
generation’s war,
our peaceful protests
kept the peace
the best we could —
yet could not.
without my interference
the world
slips gently by
even when
it’s shouting
Mayday
New From Moloko
Taking a Trip with A. Robert Lee’s Travel Painting
UPDATED
Verse and vignette. New and selected writings. The title phrase belongs to the great haiku master Matsuo Bashō
Awaiting an Uncrackable Code
If poetry make nothing happen, as W.H. Auden once wrote, it sometimes uncannily anticipates what will.
The Bard Died 410 Years Ago Today. His Poems Live On
Sometimes he rewrote them. See an example and decide which you prefer: the early or the later version.
THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL is coming soon . . .
It Probes the Secret Prison History of American Music
Colin Asher, author of the critically acclaimed biography of Nelson Algren “Never a Lovely So Real,” now focuses on five emblematic figures — Huddle Ledbetter, Elmo Hope, Johnny Cash, Ike White, and Tupac Shakur — as he explores the influence of incarceration on blues artists, jazz musicians, country singers, rock’n’rollers, and hip-hop creators.
We Bloviate Therefore We Are
You have to go behind the billboards to understand what’s happening in America. So said the novelist Nelson Algren, who was as sharp a social critic as H.L. Mencken ever was. Seems to me that the British author A. Robert Lee would agree with Algren. But Lee has taken it upon himself to cite the billboards themselves as diagnostic proof.
Visual Culture Taking a Break
Buster Keaton has an idea about that..