Coming on June 16th: “Death in Marseille,” the last words of Arthur Rimbaud as imagined by Carl Weissner. To be published in a limited handmade edition designed by Gerard Bellaart, and translated and edited from the German by Keith Seward & Jan Herman.
Memento Mori
snow again today / and the wind / came like a freight train / then blue sky
On Zen Arse-Wiping in the Shitstorm
A friend writes from Scotland: “As to Zen arse-wipes. While I was up in a Zen temple in the mountains around Takayama, it fell to me to be the one who had to clean the shit off the wooden slipway that carried the fecal prayers of monks into a dark and forbidding hole (not unlike […]
TLS Review: Brion Gysin Let the Mice In (and More)
‘Brion Gysin Let the Mice In’ is a key collaborative work. it represents those late 1950s to early 1960s years when Beat writing met European experimentalism. The most sophisticated intelligence of the Beat Generation was permanently affect.
Gysin is a lucid and witty writer. He gives glimpses of Burroughs at the moment when ‘Naked Lunch’ was being edited for Olympia Press — as he “ranted through the gargantuan roles of Doc Benway, A.J., Clem & Jody,” or as a drug addict, “through the shadows from one pharmacia to another, hugging a bottle of paregoric … his raincoat glinting like the underbelly of a shark.”
It’s That Time of Year . . .
. . . when it seems that everybody is looking back over their shoulder more with nostalgia than disgust. I am not immune. Scrolling through some old emails, I came across this one called “from NELSON ALGREN’S LETTERS TO RAJAH.” Rajah was Roger Groening, a friend of Nelson’s and later of mine. Roger died in 2015. I think of him often. He and Nelson became friends, initially by mail, when Roger wrote him a fan letter. They remained friends for some 20 years until Nelson’s death, in 1981.
Do Brits Love Obituaries or Poetry—or What?
Hard to believe, but there it is, Your Obituary Is Waiting, listed at #10 this morning in Amazon UK’s top-seller ranking of obituary books. Which goes to show that Amazon’s rankings are, among other things, ridiculous. My “deformed sonnets” are poems not obituaries. But if British readers don’t complain, why should I? The book is also listed at #272 in its “American poetry” ranking. Which might indicate that Amazon UK hasn’t gone totally nuts—except that when I consider the lack of sales of even one copy of the book in either category both lists make as much sense as Donald Trump.
Drugs. Guns. Sex. Religion. Politics. Wealth. Fame.
It’s hard to believe that whoever pasted up these posters did not also rip them up. Hats off to the artist. Found dé-collage in midtown Manhattan. Photographed on the northwest corner of East 47th Street and Third Avenue.
Poetry Beyond Words
Words are at the heart and soul of poetry . . . They give a poem shape & substance. . . . So what is poetry beyond words?
‘If I Die Ahead of Time . . .
Nelson Algren died 38 years ago today. The staff here hasn’t forgot. Hi, Nelson.
A Silent Elegy in Motion
Have a look at this collective headstone for “the 1,337 journalists killed in the line of duty since 1992.” Watch their names coalesce on screen into the image you see here. It is a silent elegy in motion that makes it pure poetry.
Far Out Wasn’t Far Enough
The artist Tomi Ungerer has died at the age of 87. He was “a lifelong activist who protested against racial segregation, the Vietnam war and the election of US President Donald Trump . . .” Speaking about himself as an artist, Ungerer said, “I have the full respect of a piece of white paper, which I then shall rape with my drawing or my writing. When I draw, it’s the real me.”
Reality as a Metaphysical Construct
It is a rare thing when a book comes along that looks as magnificent as Flesh Film and reads like an hallucination. To be clear, Jürgen Ploog is an author who does not write for everyone. The “story” he tells in Flesh Film has the pulpy tone of science fiction, a narrator who sounds like a globe-trotting private […]
The Z Collection at Printed Matter in NYC
Finally, you can buy it in the States without paying the exorbitant cost of international postage. The Z Collection is an illustrated memoir in the form of personal essays about Nelson Algren, William Burroughs, Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, E.L. Doctorow, William Styron, Abbie Hoffman, among others, and about the literary underground of the 1960s. “Herman, a […]
Tribute to John Bryan from Cold Turkey Press
John Bryan published so many underground papers and magazines over three decades — beginning in 1962 with renaissance, a San Francisco literary journal inspired by Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception (which John said he read “half a dozen times,” and which turned him onto LSD) — that Warren Hinckle called him “the Peter Zenger of […]
Goodbye to a Depressing Year
The image is a detail from a drawing by Paul Klee. The poem owes a debt to George Grosz and Gerard Bellaart. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
Back to Reality: Torma on Michelangelo’s Art
“Colossal as his works were, he saw them still too much as garlands and sought some immoderation wherewith to botch them. He was so successful that he left everything unfinished. Never push things.” EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
Carly Fiorina, Untethered Gasbag’s Economic Adviser
Here’s a blast from the past … so relevant today. Oh, and by the way: Fiorina Says, ‘I Received Only A $21 Million Severance Package — Not $42 Million’ EmailFacebookTwitterReddit