{"id":37195,"date":"2019-12-18T16:41:49","date_gmt":"2019-12-18T21:41:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/?p=37195"},"modified":"2020-01-06T17:58:58","modified_gmt":"2020-01-06T22:58:58","slug":"review-captivating-teasing-spare-seductive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2019\/12\/review-captivating-teasing-spare-seductive.html","title":{"rendered":"Review: ‘Captivating … Teasing … Spare … Seductive’<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

“This captivating collection gets rolling with: ‘… the cold glitter \/ of the winter stars \/ like milestones along the road …’ I was struck by poems made of lines that are poems all on their own\u2014even as they unstack into melodic steps from top to bottom . . . Some are as spare as Chinese widsom. In Herman’s poems you know you are certainly ‘somewhere’ but maybe it’s somewhere only in atavistic memory, the realm of dreams. He writes with what Lavinia Greenlaw<\/a> called ‘unsettled language,’ which brings less obvious aspects of imagination or observation to the fore . . . teasing, holding attention by where they might be heading. A doubtful adventure? A seductive noire? An obscene history lesson? And of course, mortality raises its knowing head more than once. . . . The poems are accompanied throughout by the finely crafted and imaginative collages of Norman O. Mustill, a sadly neglected master of visual socio-political invective. His work was best known in the late 1960s when he collaborated with Herman on a number of fabled underground publications. It’s remarkable how specifically the collages complement the poems although they were created independently and many years apart.” \u2014 Jay Jones<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To order in the U.S.<\/a>; Canada<\/a>; the U.K.<\/a>; Germany<\/a>; France<\/a>; Spain<\/a>; Italy<\/a>; and Japan<\/a>. Read the whole review:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And this came from Charles Plymell<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI was struck by poems made of lines that are poems all on their own\u2014even as they unstack into melodic steps from top to bottom . . . Some are as spare as Chinese widsom. In Herman\u2019s poems you know you are certainly \u2018somewhere\u2019 but maybe it\u2019s somewhere only in atavistic memory, the realm of dreams. He writes with what Lavinia Greenlaw called \u2018unsettled language,\u2019 which brings less obvious aspects of imagination or observation to the fore . . . teasing, holding attention by where they might be heading. A doubtful adventure? A seductive noire? An obscene history lesson? And of course, mortality raises its knowing head more than once.” \u2014 Jay Jones<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":37261,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19,26,18,4,20,23,17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-37195","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-art","8":"category-books","9":"category-literature","10":"category-main","11":"category-media","12":"category-news","13":"category-political-culture","14":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Jan_Herman_YOUR_OBITUARY_IS_WAITING_cover-razor-750-enh.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-9FV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37195"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37757,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37195\/revisions\/37757"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}