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.
Together Again: Back for More Stupid
Musk and Hegseth to make war music.
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.
‘Tribute in Light’
Phantom Presence of the Missing Twin Towers
It first appeared six months after 9/11 as a public art installation and has appeared every year since. It is presented from dusk of Sept. 11 to dawn of Sept. 12. It’s the most striking memorial to be seen, especially in person.
The Day the Twin Towers Vanished in a Shroud of Ash
My report grew longer by the minute. It ran, updated in real time, as MSNBC.com’s cover story. The lede kept changing throughout the day. … It was the scene of a nightmare … people on fire jumping in terror from the towers … the buildings collapsing … splinters of debris falling from the sky like confetti … deadly smoke blackening the air … an exodus of thousands of New Yorkers coated in white ash streaming on foot for hours across the city’s bridges.
Visions of ‘Ground Zero’ That Fell by the Wayside
“I have seen the future and it is B-I-G. It is also tall, fantastical, memorial, ecological, symbolical, cultural, commercial, skyward, subterranean, park-like, Lego-like and — what seems most certain — futuristic, as in a long way off.”
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.