But he was much more than that: Bold spirit, world traveler, street-smart Chicago kid, precinct worker, union organizer, auto worker. Soldier, leftist, Hollywood agent, target of the McCarthy Red Scare. Journalist, novelist, winner of the National Book Award for his memoir, “Going Away.” Screenwriter of “Frida,” about the painter Frida Kahlo. Lover of Nobel laureate Doris Lessing who depicted him in her most significant novel, “The Golden Notebook.”
Against the Death Penalty
Death Row Prisoner’s Statement:
« I do deserve to be executed, bottom line
I ain’t goin’ t’candy coat it
I deserve to be executed
by the law of the State of Indiana
I deserve to be executed. »
Poetry and Music at the Palace
Florian Vetsch reads with Jan Heller Levi & Jan Herman on April 1, 2025, in St. Gallen, Switzerland. Vetsch has translated poems by both into German. During the evening, poems will be recited bilingually by the writers, and their backgrounds will be discussed. DJ Soulsonic (aka Mr. Wempe) will play music selected by the speakers. Special guest poet Clemens Umbricht will perform his translation of Jan Heller Levi’s poem “I Lost My Best Friend to Music” as well as his own New York poem.
They Live and Breathe Outside the Academy
A strong new issue of Beat Scene has just arrived from the U.K. Although the magazine is primarily devoted to the leading lights of the Beat Generation writers, the magazine covers many who were contemporaneous but not really part of their circle, as well as others who preceded them. Nor does it stint on writers who have followed in their wake. The unifying element that draws the magazine’s interest seems to be that they lived and breathed and created their work outside the academy. And while many of their books have now been accepted into the canon, they are hardly academic.
Music / Words / Images
‘Cabinet I-III’ — A Steff Signer Combo
Electric Guitar Inventions by Chanan Hanspal
Text & Poetry Inventions by Florian Vetsch
Poetry Recitation by Jaswant Hanspal
Flugelhorn & Cornet Inventions by Markus Breuss
Photographic Inventions by Mario Baronchelli
Making a Living as a Writer Was Never Easy, But …
When I was a salaried reporter, I did pretty well over the course of more than two decades at three major metro dailies in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. It always helped to get freelance work, however.
If the Revolution Fails…
Weaving Words and Images Together
Jeff Ball, collector extraordinaire, sent this page from the little mimeo mag Ginger Snaps. It brings back memories.
Patagonia as Metaphor: Expressing the Off-Beat
Presiding writers, for their part, bequeath journeys.
Homer to Ithaca. Basho to Deep North Honshu.
Coleridge to Xanadu. Yeats to Byzantium.
Journeys full of imagining.
If You Believe in Auguries . . .
. . . the double rainbow over New York City on 9/11/2023 was a good sign. Even if you don’t believe in them, this was wondrous to see. My amateur video was taken from Manhattan overlooking the East River, the 59th Street bridge (since renamed, but never mind), and Roosevelt Island. Too bad the colors are washed out. The real thing was much more impressive. I’ve searched the daily NY newspapers to see whether they ran a photo or a video. Only the NY Post took note here with a video less complete than this one. Another amateur video appeared on TikTok and racked up 6 million views. Television broadcasts also took note. I can’t believe a professional photographer somewhere in the city didn’t capture this in what used to be called “living color.”
Anselm Kiefer’s Large ‘Winter Forest’ Up Close
A mere detail from the central panel of the painting is overwhelming.
Avoid the Obvious
Miles Davis to Herbie Hancock: ‘Don’t play the butter notes’
‘Sometimes our creativity can be flowing. But I’m sure that many of us have experienced periods when there has been some kind of blockage to our imagination.’ — Herbie Hancock
Stadlichter Presse Small Animals Now Published in Bilingual Edition
‘Great beauty from great despair unbends the mind. Achieved or not, that is every poet’s goal.’ Click to enlarge. From the publisher: The author has called his sonnets “wounds that have scabbed over.” They are his rare worldly goods, bringing personal ghosts to life on the page. The poetry critic of the London-based MÜ Magazine, David […]
A Libertarian Penchant for BS
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.”
American Presidents
A Dirge for Their ‘Greatest’ Racist Hits
“One shocking, grotesque, and racist revelation after another reveals a history of the bigotry of American presidents and how complicit they were in legitimizing American racism.” — Randy Burman
A World of Trouble
Cityscape East River NYC (9-20-2021)
A pair of NYPD patrol boats were stationed in the East River at the approach to the 59th Street Bridge. Each was fitted out with a manned, high-caliber machine gun. There was no boat traffic as there usually is — no barges going upriver, no tug boats churning heavy wakes behind them, no sail boats moving lazily with the current, no speedboats — all apparently prohibited due to the opening session of the U.N. located nearby on the Manhattan bank of the river. Many streets in the surrounding neighborthood were cordoned corral-style into single-file walk lanes. Cops were everywhere, and life was calm and complacent and inconvenient in a world of trouble.
Ivan Turgenev on Aging
‘He Did Not Picture Life’s Sea as the Poets Depict It’
“He fell to thinking . . . slowly, listlessly, wrathfully. He thought of the vanity, the uselessness, the vulgar falsity of all things human. All the stages of man’s life passed in order before his mental gaze (he had himself lately reached his fifty-second year), and not one found grace in his eyes.” — Ivan Turgenev, from THE TORRENTS OF SPRING
Out of the Past
Journalism as the Poetry of Fact
Kay Boyle regarded journalism, when it was written well about something important, as “the poetry of fact.”