Yes, Zurich. If this is Eurotrash, I’m all for it. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
Damning Account of ‘Rough Justice’ at Guantanamo
!['The Terror Courts' by Jess Bravin [Yale University Press, 2013]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/TERRORCOURTS-e1361300992861.jpg)
Jess Bravin has a new book out, The Terror Courts: Rough Justice at Guantanamo Bay, just published by Yale University Press. Kirkus Reviews calls it “a damning, brave book by an author who is legitimately outraged by what he uncovered.” Here’s an excerpt from the Prologue: November 24, 2001. Around Noon. Checkpoints were common as […]
Three ‘Not Poems’ by Stephen Schneck
!['The Nightclerk' by Stephen Schneck [Grove Press, 1965]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/THE-NIGHTCLERK-GROVE200.jpg)
I remember meeting Stephen Schneck in San Francisco at City Lights Bookstore, where I was clerking at the time. He had published The Nightclerk, which won the International Formentor Prize, and I was starting a “little” magazine. He offered three “Not Poems” for the first issue. His novel, translated into 12 languages but banned in […]
Unbeatable Sinclair Beiles Tells It As It Was
He talks about William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Tangiers, the Villa Deliria, the Thousand and One Nights, Naked Lunch, cut-ups, Minutes to Go, the Beat Hotel, Jean Fanchette, Ian Sommerville, the Dream Machine. It’s an unbeatable discovery. Gary Cummiskey, co-editor of Who Was Sinclair Beiles? and the publisher of Dye Hard Press, tipped me to this […]
Don’t Forget to Give a Box of Chocolates
There’s the Valentine Victorian. And then there’s the Valentine Mustillian. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
Getting Personal, Too: ‘Being Kept by a Jackdaw’
![Jack Daw and the Poet [Photo: Jacquetta Eliot]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/HW-and-Jack-Daw-300.jpg)
My staff of thousands tells me that if I post any more poems by Heathcote Williams, I will be making a mockery of this blog’s stated purpose. I’m a small “d” democrat who rules Straight Up by popular consent, so I had to admit I’ve been banging on about his poems. But — with a […]
In Bone Hebrew, the White Kaffir Speaks
A long-awaited copy of Bone Hebrew from Cold Turkey Press showed up in my mailbox. The title is taken from Paul Celan. The cover is by Antonin Artaud. The poems are by Sinclair Beiles. Here are two of them: Asphyxiation They tried every kind of gas on him. none of them would work. nothing would […]
They Called Him ‘Mister Mooch’
An elegy on film for Carl Weissner … … by Signe Mähler and Cody Maher. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
‘The Green Man Is a Green Terrorist’
My blog staff of thousands didn’t have to do much to persuade me that Heathcote Williams’s newest dissident poem, a rhymed marvel of CAT-scan clarity, will be seen one day as a YouTube classic. Here are the opening lines transcribed from the video in four-line stanzas: Tangled vegetation sprouts from each orifice From his mouth, […]
‘Throws Up Words’
These two stenciled texts by Gerard Bellaart are from a series of more than 500 created in 2005. Bellaart is a Dutch artist and writer, now living in France. He creates etchings, drawings, paintings and monotypes of figures, landscapes, and still lifes, as well as works strictly from the imagination. He notes that he employs […]
Selling the Earth … ‘No Return, No Exchange’
A poem by Heathcote Williams, narration and montage by Alan Cox. The print edition of Selling the Earth is coming soon from Cold Turkey Press. The poem begins: After someone had sold their virginity on the Internet And made a hundred thousand pounds, Another entrepreneur would decide that he’d try To put Planet Earth itself […]
Way Ahead of My Time in 1969
Where would the blogworld be without blogger self-promotion? So indulge me. Anneke Auer, webmaster for Rotterdam-based Sea Urchin Editions, has designed a classy presentation of General Municipal Election, a “collectible” action-art book of mine. I published it in San Francisco way back in ’69 under the Nova Broadcast imprint. Ben Schot, the artist who founded […]
Carl Weissner, Cherished by Friends & Colleagues
It was a year ago today that I began posting tributes to Carl Weissner (1940-2012), whose unexpected death last January came as a shock. My own words went up with a photo and funeral announcement by the filmmaker Signe Mähler, another of his friends. The poet and performance artist William Cody Maher, the journalist and […]
Algren on Learning to Write by Way of Academia
I noticed an ad in the current issue of The New Yorker for the Yale Writers’ Conference to be held this coming June. Since a bunch of us have been talking about Nelson Algren, the ad couldn’t help reminding me of his essay “Hand in Hand Through the Greenery,” published in The Last Carousel back […]
The Algren I Knew Was No Loser
Taking nothing away from the brilliance of Colin Asher’s biographical essay on Nelson Algren, or my admiration for it, I have a mild but serious objection. I intended to post this earlier but didnt have the time. Now I do. The subhead on the essay calls Algren “the type of loser this country just can’t […]
‘tric trac du ciel’
This is a stenciled text by Gerard Bellaart, from a series of more than 500 created in 2005. Bellaart is a Dutch artist and writer, now living in France. He creates etchings, drawings, paintings and monotypes of figures, landscapes, and still lifes, as well as works strictly from the imagination. He notes that he employs […]
Algren Gets What He Deserves from Colin Asher
I’m happy to report that Colin Asher’s smart biographical essay on Nelson Algren in The Believer is the best I’ve ever read. I’m also glad I made an unacknowledged contribution, one nearly verbatim. Though small, it reminds me that words have a life of their own, regardless of who wrote them. Postscript: I finally found […]