When syntax re-enacts meaning:
” … expect nothing / be surprised …”
Remember This When Voting in the Midterms . . .
America’s top shitholer goes
whole hog at the public trough,
and never mind the rest of us . . .
News from Moloko Print
It Is Written: Times with Brion Gysin
This book by Udo Breger depicts encounters with Gysin, shared journeys between London, Paris, Basel, Amsterdam, and New York, as well as conversations, projects, and moments that paint a portrait of this extraordinary man. It is a personal document, a space for remembrance, and at the same time an invitation to rediscover Gysin.
‘Ignorant, Bigoted, Self-Seeking, Blatant, and Dishonest’
When William Jennings Bryan died, in 1925, H.L. Mencken wrote the most devastating obituary of an American politician you’ll ever read—and that includes Hunter S. Thompson’s farewell to Nixon. All you need to do is substitute “Trump” for “Bryan” to see how snug the fit will be when Trump takes his permanent leave.
Terri & Richard: Late-In-Life Sweethearts
She was Bob Dylan’s first manager in Greenwich Village and became a social activist. He was once a critic and became an avant-garde literary artist. Their story is told in a documentary short film by Alex Bijan Zandi.
The Midnight Express: NBA Finalist for Nonfiction
We’ve been following the trajectory of Colin Asher’s take on the prison history of American music. Here’s the latest.
UPDATED
If I Could But See It
A Dazzling Graphic Biography of William Morris
When a book such as this comes across the transom, my staff of thousands urges me to post a notice, even though I am far from an informed reviewer of graphic books. What I can do is extract some of the images to offer an impression of the artwork. The entire book dazzles the eye, while the story documents the life.
TIME TRAVELS: New and Old
My day suddenly veered into a collection of new and old poems by A. Robert Lee. I didn’t know what to expect. It turned out to be nothing less than a curriculum for life and learning, for pleasure, and for the intellect.
Untamed Pledge for the 2026 Elections
An article in the French newspaper Le Monde about untamed literature, Cut Up or Shut Up, and “the ‘Cut-Up’ movement,” drew a pledge 54 years later from S/U’s Staff of Thousands.
What Is Poetry? ‘A glimpse of sun.’ — Jim Harrison
I met Jim Harrison only once, in 1968, when we were on a “little magazine” panel with Russell Banks, Anne Waldman, and Charles Newman. Even then Harrison was a “character,” a voluble personality who cut quite a figure.—wore a rakish straw hat, a black patch on his blind left eye, and sported a hand-carved walking stick.
Myles & Waldman
Performance Poets Together Again
They go back a long way to the 1970s in New York, most notably to their participation in, and leadership of, The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
A Lost Poem Found
‘Born Black’ was lost eight years ago.
Memory Pictures Coming In
An Old Friend Is Gone Too Long
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.
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.