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Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

David Erdos: ‘Under Sea and Sky’

June 22, 2023 by Jan Herman

Offered in tribute to the crew fighting for their lives in the depths of the Atlantic.

William Cody Maher
‘If you don’t have a present, you always have a past’

May 31, 2023 by Jan Herman

‘A man is looking into his past. Let’s see what he finds there.’ — William Cody Maher, poet / writer / performance artist

Homage to Heine (and a Tribute to Martin Amis)

May 21, 2023 by Jan Herman

DANG MUSE

Dead silence from that hustler.
Perhaps she’s on a ghost ship
circling the moon.
If ever she lands
back here on earth, I’ll tell you.

Too Funny to Forget
Christopher Hitchens Would Be Chortling

May 8, 2023 by Jan Herman

And the staff here hopes, so will you.

At the Château Palettes in Bordeaux

April 30, 2023 by Jan Herman

An exhibition of paintings and drawings by Gerard Bellaart and a screening of three films by Fred Worden.

When the Computer Was Not Quite King

April 16, 2023 by Jan Herman

Back in the 1960s, Norman O. Mustill worked with a razor blade. But it’s not his technical skill, brilliant as it was, that makes these images so remarkable.

Nancy Peters Saved City Lights Books, Yes!

March 20, 2023 by Jan Herman

“While Lawrence Ferlinghetti certainly deserves all of the accolades he’s received, the fact of the matter is there would literally be no City Lights without Nancy Peters. Beyond shepherding City Lights through various fiscal crises and providing the steady anchor that allowed Ferlinghetti to travel the world as a poet and activist, Nancy’s vision as an editor and acumen as a publisher were a vital key to the success and longevity of City Lights Publishers.”

Jamie MacGillivray: The Renegade’s Journey 
John Sayles Talks About His New Novel and a Lot More

March 14, 2023 by Jan Herman

Earlier this month he was at The Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale, Arizona. Next stop Wednesday, March 15, in Salisbury, Connecticut. 

Malanga to Make a Rare Combo Poetry-Film Appearance

March 11, 2023 by Jan Herman

Anyone who has seen the 1954 movie “Friendly Persuasion” might wonder if Gerard Malanga was the precocious child actor cast for comic relief with a pet goose that keeps chasing him around the family farm.

Of course he wasn’t. That was Richard Eyer. Malanga is the noted poet and photographer who once was part of Andy Warhol’s inner circle.

And Now . . . for a Lively Change of Pace

February 8, 2023 by Jan Herman

Nine years ago William Osborne posted this trailer for Cybeline, a multimedia music theater work performed by Abbie Conant with music by Osborne. The staff finds it remarkable at how fresh it remains.

The Complete Poems: 1965-2020
Michael Butterworth’s Radical Legacy in Verse

January 28, 2023 by Jan Herman

For more than half a century the dissident British author, editor, and underground publisher Michael Butterworth has been “a quiet unobtrusive voice in poetry, with roots both in the small press poetry journals of the 1960s and ’70s and New Wave science fiction.”

‘Benevolent Loitering’
‘Unheard and Unseen’ in Istanbul

January 9, 2023 by Jan Herman

Having never been to Istanbul, I’ve done the next best thing — or so it feels upon reading ‘The Pleasures of Empty Lots’ by Efe Murad, poet, translator, and scholar extraordinaire. “This humble chapbook,” he writes, “is a record of the unheard and the unseen, which can only be experienced by those who find pleasure in ephemeral escapades. It is a longing for a clean slate, a tribute to benevolent loitering.” It is also more than that. It is in the most vivid, personal terms a manifesto for artistic freedom and — necessarily — social and political liberty.

A Libertarian Penchant for BS

December 7, 2022 by Jan Herman

This video sounds sane, but ‘tiz not my cuppa. As one of S/U’s indefatigable staff of thousands says, “Slickish until it’s obvious what the agenda is.”

Defsons for Mustill

November 30, 2022 by Jan Herman

Norman O. Mustill

We bloom only once
and some of us never bloom —
not even once. You were perennial.

A Straight Up Thanksgiving — It’s a Tradition

November 23, 2022 by Jan Herman

Our Thanksgiving team of William S. Burroughs and Norman O. Mustill
has been a happy pairing since 2012. It still is. So here they are again, sweetened by Heathcote Williams’s words in a narration-cum-montage by Alan Cox. It’s all so delish.

Designers Pushing the Envelope . . . ?

November 14, 2022 by Jan Herman

The New York Times Magazine used to have a nameplate. It still does. Most of the time it’s all there. Sometimes you have to search for it. How come? The designers are: a) being avant-garde, b) reinforcing a theme, c) too clever by half, d) all three, or maybe e) just having fun.

A Something Else Reader
Newly Discovered, It Was Hidden Away for 50 Years

October 31, 2022 by Jan Herman

” ‘A Something Else Reader’ is a previously unpublished anthology edited by Dick Higgins in 1972 to celebrate Something Else Press, the publishing house he founded in 1963, and to showcase Fluxus and other experimental artistic and literary forms. … He assembled the table of contents and an introduction into a proposal, which went into his archive, where it was found by scholar and curator Alice Centamore, who compiled the works and assembled it.” — Primary Information

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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...]

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