• Home
  • About
    • Straight Up
    • Jan Herman
    • Contact
  • AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal

Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

Not Witty Enough

May 1, 2018 by Jan Herman

A promo from The Paris Review: Withering maybe, but hardly a quip. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Art Shay, Man With a Camera, R.I.P.

April 29, 2018 by Jan Herman

Art Shay [Photo by Steve and Dick Shay]

He was 94. His classic book of photographs, Nelson Algren’s Chicago, was published three decades after shooting them for Life during the height of Algren’s fame in the 1950s. The magazine never used them. Shay was kind enough to sign a copy of the book for me. According to Shay’s obit in the Chicago Tribune […]

‘Peculiar Shortcomings’

April 22, 2018 by Jan Herman

A word of warning from a century ago … Now one word to my own people and their peculiar shortcomings. Anglo-Saxon domineering is the greatest danger to Humanity in the world today. Americans are proud of having blotted out the red Indian and stolen his possessions and of burning and torturing negroes in the sacred […]

‘Officially Verboten’

April 20, 2018 by Jan Herman

Monster Nor'easter NYC (March 20, 2018)

U.S. cities with the fastest-growing wealth gaps. Monster Nor’easter The first day of spring a blinding white curtain kidnapped the cit​y. It was a true blast of winter. We solemn jurors braved the monster nor’easter and did our solemn duty at forty dollars a day, the price of a shovel. Like heavily falling snow white […]

C.L.R. James: Cricket Shaped Him

April 19, 2018 by Jan Herman

I know nothing about cricket. My only sense of the game came from Frank Harris’s portrait of H.G. Wells. But now that I’ve read The Young C.L.R. James: A Graphic Novelette (PM Press Pamphlet), which traces the early development of the Pan-Africanist writer and Trotskyite revolutionary who was a cricket star as a young man […]

Filthy Rotten T.S. Eliot, the Mofo

April 15, 2018 by Jan Herman

When my staff of thousands sent me this book cover, APRIL IS A MOTHERFUCKER, by none other than T.S. Eliot, it put me in mind of Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909-1917, which includes Eliot’s fithy rotten early poems. They are so much fun, despite their sometime racism, that they naturally give the P.C. […]

What Would Daumier Make of Trump?

April 5, 2018 by Jan Herman

Lithograph by Honoré Daumier [1831]

Here’s the perfect hint: A mocking depiction of King Louis-Philippe as the Rabelais character Gargantua. The caricature might as well be Trump. He feeds on bundles of swag delivered by his obsequious minions and, from his outhouse throne, he shits out appointments, titles, and other rewards for the privileged class. Not incidentally, Honoré Daumier went […]

Once Upon a Time in India . . .

March 18, 2018 by Jan Herman

There was a mimeo magazine called ppHOO69 *Intercontinental*1969. It was edited by Pradip Choudhuri and published by Subhas Ghose, with a front cover by Alejandro Jodorowsky and a back cover by Claude Pélieu. The poems and prose were divided into two sections, one in Tamil and one in English (with some French). CLICK THE IMAGES […]

Spike, Smalls, and Mezzrow

March 13, 2018 by Jan Herman

Spike Wilner

Spike Wilner is a ragtime jazz pianist with an unusual background. He’s also the major domo of not one but two great jazz clubs across the street from each other in Manhattan. As a tireless partisan for music of all kinds, especially for the kind that keeps audiences coming back to Smalls and Mezzrow every […]

Speaking for Myself

March 11, 2018 by Jan Herman

Death comes in all sizes / — sequoia, oak, and elm / maple, birch, fir, and pine, / elephants and whales / bumble bees and snails, / the Jews in the ovens, / Armenians slaughtered, / all the genocides before / and since. I am also dead . . . EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Fourteen: Deformed Sonnets

March 5, 2018 by Jan Herman

A bilingual edition [2017]English - German

What I’m saying here is not, I agree, poetry, As poems should be written rarely and reluctantly, Under unbearable duress and only with the hope That good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument. — Czeslaw Milosz IV I was there in asphalt in ozone dreams. I was waiting for a cool stare […]

‘Righteous Poles’ Make an Appeal

March 3, 2018 by Jan Herman

Following Ronald S. Lauder’s open letter (“It’s Time to Dial Back the Rhetoric”) about the Holocaust and recent anti-Semitic developments in Poland, another open letter has appeared (also in The New York Times). This one is signed by 50 Polish citizens, “the remaining living Righteous representing the 6,850 Righteous Poles” who have been recognized by […]

Poland Dials the Wrong Number

February 27, 2018 by Jan Herman

An open letter from Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, took up a full page yesterday in The New York Times. The heading was “It’s Time to Dial Back the Rhetoric in Poland.” I have no expertise in the matter, but I couldn’t help recalling Tuvye Tenenbom‘s take on the situation of […]

A Burroughs-Gysin ‘Motherlode’

February 21, 2018 by Jan Herman

William Burroughs and Brion Gysin writings / Black Book 1963-1964 (at the Smithsonian Institute)

SEE UPDATE BELOW My staff of thousands informs me that the Smithsonian Institute has posted scans of three notebooks by William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin dating from 1963 to 1973, and 1977. It was described to me as “a motherlode” of writings and collages. And indeed it is. Have a look by clicking the […]

R. Crumb Classic Portraits

February 20, 2018 by Jan Herman

Portrait of Charles Plymell © by R. Crumb [2018]

Charles Plymell writes: I sent Robert some old political cartoons on crumbling paper from 20’s-30’s & some extra sheets of the plain parchment which had beautiful tan sheen like I ran the first ZAP on. I had remembered the old comics I found in Lawrence of Andy Gump & another one of The Katzenjammer Kids […]

Thinking of Auden . . .

February 15, 2018 by Jan Herman

Portrait of Auden © by Feliks Topolski

Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives. — W.H. Auden EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

‘Aletheia’ to Tour Northeastern U.S.

February 12, 2018 by Jan Herman

'Aletheia,' a chamber music theater work performed by Abbie Conant, with a score by William Osborne.

Composed by William Osborne for singer-instrumentalist, computer-controlled piano, and quadraphonic electronics, “Aletheia” is a music theater work featuring the solo performance of Abbie Conant as the title character. Osborne writes, “Aletheia is an opera singer who is delighted that she has been asked to perform for an opera gala. She only needs to go down […]

« Previous Page
Next Page »

Jan Herman

When not listening to Bach or Cuban jazz pianist Chucho Valdes, or dancing to salsa, I like to play jazz piano -- but only in the privacy of my own mind.
Another strange fact... Read More…

About

My Books

Several books of poems have been published in recent years by Moloko Print, Statdlichter Presse, Phantom Outlaw Editions, and Cold Turkey … [Read More...]

Straight Up

The agenda is just what it says: news of arts, media & culture delivered with attitude. Or as Rock Hudson once said in a movie: "Man is the only … [Read More...]

Contact me

We're cutting down on spam. Please fill in this form. … [Read More...]

Archives

Blogroll

Abstract City
AC Institute
ACKER AWARDS New York
All Things Allen Ginsberg
Antiwar.com
arkivmusic.com
Artbook&
Arts & Letters Daily

Befunky
Bellaart
Blogcritics
Booknotes
Bright Lights Film Journal

C-SPAN
Noam Chomsky
Consortium News
Cost of War
Council on Foreign Relations
Crooks and Liars
Cultural Daily

The Daily Howler
Dark Roasted Blend
DCReport
Deep L
Democracy Now!

Tim Ellis: Comedy
Eschaton

Film Threat
Robert Fisk
Flixnosh (David Elliott’s movie menu)
Fluxlist Europe

Good Reads
The Guardian
GUERNICA: A Magazine of Art & Politics

Herman (Literary) Archive, Northwestern Univ. Library
The Huffington Post

Inter Press Service News Agency
The Intercept
Internet Archive (WayBackMachine)
Internet Movie Database (IMDb)
Doug Ireland
IT: International Times, The Magazine of Resistance

Jacketmagazine
Clive James

Kanopy (stream free movies, via participating library or university)
Henry Kisor
Paul Krugman

Lannan Foundation
Los Angeles Times

Metacritic
Mimeo Mimeo
Moloko Print
Movie Geeks United (MGU)
MGU: The Kubrick Series

National Security Archive
The New York Times
NO!art

Osborne & Conant
The Overgrown Path

Poets House
Political Irony
Poynter

Quanta Magazine

Rain Taxi
The Raw Story
RealityStudio.org
Bill Reed
Rhizome
Rwanda Project

Salon
Senses of Cinema
Seven Stories Press
Slate
Stadtlichter Presse
Studs Terkel
The Synergic Theater

Talking Points Memo (TPM)
TalkLeft
The 3rd Page
Third Mind Books
Times Square Cam
The Tin Man
t r u t h o u t

Ubu Web

Vox

The Wall Street Journal
Wikigate
Wikipedia
The Washington Post
The Wayback Machine (Internet Archive)
World Catalogue
World Newspapers, Magazines & News Sites

The XD Agency

Share on email
Email
Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on reddit
Reddit
This blog published under a Creative Commons license

an ArtsJournal blog

Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

 

Loading Comments...