Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

‘Taking the Piss’ That May Pass for Shakespeare

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I spent more than a decade reviewing theater for a major metro daily and I’d never heard the term “nubbing (or taking the piss).” Hmmph. Heathcote Williams shows how it’s done in a sweet folio about to be published by Gerard Bellaart‘s Cold Turkey Press. As my good friend N.O. Mustill says via email, “me […]

‘Peter Bayliss and the Breatharians’

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The obituary in The Telegraph, in 2002, said: “He wanted no memorial, but his near-lunatic appetite for life will be impossible to forget.” The poet Heathcote Williams certainly remembers Peter Bayliss. He remembers, too, “the Bayliss Mischief” that “might still be working / From beyond the grave.” Here given their due are the vaunted philanthropic […]

MacFadyen Takes ‘Front Porch’ Look at Burroughs

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I knew when RealityStudio posted Ian MacFadyen’s review of “The Name Is Burroughs: expanded media at the ZKM, Karlsruhe” that it would be a major critique. I had already read his “Codename Burroughs,” the pamphlet that accompanied the retrospective, which was excerpted from a more complete text in MacFadyen’s book, William S. Burroughs. Cut. With […]

Bukowski & Catullus: Let Us Compare Obscenities

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The other day a friend of mine said, “I’m not sure a living human has written a good poem since Bukowski died.” His all-time Buk favorite is “The Best Love Poem I Can Write at the Moment.” Coincidentally, I came across a review by Michael Hinds of The FBI’s Obscene File: J. Edgar Hoover and […]

‘Artaud Fragmentations’

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And now for another kind of poem, as unlike “Death Is a Wind That Will Carry You Off” as day from night. It’s part of a large series of stenciled texts by the Dutch artist and writer Gerard Bellaart. At the urging of my staff of thousands, examples from Bellaart’s word-based series of artworks have […]

‘Death Is a Wind That Will Carry You Off’

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This poem is not intended as a companion piece to “Music for the End of Time.” The tone is entirely different, not at all apocalyptic. But it covers the same or similar ground, and I can’t help thinking that the difference in treatment is a merely a matter of temperament. Which is enough: Death is […]

VDRSVP #3 for Old Times’ Sake

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Someone told me he knew what RSVP stands for. But what did VDRSVP mean? “Black humor,” I said. No point giving away the joke. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Three ‘Not Poems’ by Stephen Schneck

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I remember meeting Stephen Schneck in San Francisco at City Lights Bookstore, where I was clerking at the time. He had published The Nightclerk, which won the International Formentor Prize, and I was starting a “little” magazine. He offered three “Not Poems” for the first issue. His novel, translated into 12 languages but banned in […]

Unbeatable Sinclair Beiles Tells It As It Was

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He talks about William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Tangiers, the Villa Deliria, the Thousand and One Nights, Naked Lunch, cut-ups, Minutes to Go, the Beat Hotel, Jean Fanchette, Ian Sommerville, the Dream Machine. It’s an unbeatable discovery. Gary Cummiskey, co-editor of Who Was Sinclair Beiles? and the publisher of Dye Hard Press, tipped me to this […]

Getting Personal, Too: ‘Being Kept by a Jackdaw’

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My staff of thousands tells me that if I post any more poems by Heathcote Williams, I will be making a mockery of this blog’s stated purpose. I’m a small “d” democrat who rules Straight Up by popular consent, so I had to admit I’ve been banging on about his poems. But — with a […]

In Bone Hebrew, the White Kaffir Speaks

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A long-awaited copy of Bone Hebrew from Cold Turkey Press showed up in my mailbox. The title is taken from Paul Celan. The cover is by Antonin Artaud. The poems are by Sinclair Beiles. Here are two of them: Asphyxiation They tried every kind of gas on him. none of them would work. nothing would […]

‘The Green Man Is a Green Terrorist’

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My blog staff of thousands didn’t have to do much to persuade me that Heathcote Williams’s newest dissident poem, a rhymed marvel of CAT-scan clarity, will be seen one day as a YouTube classic. Here are the opening lines transcribed from the video in four-line stanzas: Tangled vegetation sprouts from each orifice From his mouth, […]

Selling the Earth … ‘No Return, No Exchange’

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A poem by Heathcote Williams, narration and montage by Alan Cox. The print edition of Selling the Earth is coming soon from Cold Turkey Press. The poem begins: After someone had sold their virginity on the Internet And made a hundred thousand pounds, Another entrepreneur would decide that he’d try To put Planet Earth itself […]

Way Ahead of My Time in 1969

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Where would the blogworld be without blogger self-promotion? So indulge me. Anneke Auer, webmaster for Rotterdam-based Sea Urchin Editions, has designed a classy presentation of General Municipal Election, a “collectible” action-art book of mine. I published it in San Francisco way back in ’69 under the Nova Broadcast imprint. Ben Schot, the artist who founded […]

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