Great beauty from great despair unbends the mind. In a pointless hostile universe that is every poet’s goal.
Archives for July 2021
Here and Now
The morning light takes its time
coming through the bedroom window.
It wakes me properly in the here and now.
‘Writer Directory’ Offers More Than Information
Few books have come my way as generous and wise about writers and writing as this one. The title takes as its model the phonebooks of long ago. But forget that. Remember this: The author, A. Robert Lee, is a British-born, globe-trotting, retired professor now living in Spain, whose heavyweight academic credentials disguise a common touch so light that reading him feels as charmed as floating on air.
On Propaganda
Milton Glaser ♥ Information, Not Persuasion
The late graphic designer, most famous for creating the I LOVE NY logo, had a strong dose of advice more than a decade ago for the propagandists among us — the marketers, advertisers, public-relations spinners and, yes, journalists — along with citizens-at-large facing an onslaught of political campaigns.
Alexa Poems Must Be a Genre By Now
Why am I getting that ad on my device? / Alexa, I want a divorce. Did you hear me? / I can’t spell it out for you. No, don’t thank me. / Don’t wipe my nose. I can brush my own teeth. … If I were paranoid, I would spin bold tales / of grand conspiracies. I love those fantasies. / But they’re not my thing, though in fact / they’re not unreal. Please Alexa, do shut up. / Please disappear. You are unwanted here.
‘Water Stone Words’
This short movie evokes the rich heritage of humankind’s creative responses to the natural environment over millennia. The creators of “water stone words” — filmmaker Ed O’Donnelly, sculptor Kenny Munro, and writer/poet Malcolm Ritchie — made the movie over a period of six days.
Bellaart on Kandinsky: ‘Cornered by his white’
From one painter to another:
‘Short nights
short of long days
For distant hours
Open to foul tide
And so he wanders
Between dawn & shifty sky …’
Paris Conference: Total Assault on the Culture
Scholars, poets, writers, translators, and artists to celebrate the works of Claude Pélieu and Mary Beach. Featuring Benoît Delaune, Jacques Donguy, Franca Belarsi, Matthieu Perrot, Bruno Sourdin, James Horton, Pierre Joris, Gérard-Georges Lemaire, Peggy Pacini, Pamela Beach-Plymell, Antonio Bonome, and Raphael Haudidier.
A Great One Died Four Years Ago Today
![Heathcote Williams [Photo: JH, 2013]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/heathcote-williams-photo-copy-200x200.png)
“He was the Shelley of his age and more.” —Gerard Bellaart
“As you sat In your dotage, fountain pen / Pouring futures onto the calligraphied page / With such ease, That every political pose / And every social Shift achieved scansion, / rhyming under you, the verse surgeon whose / equal vision and zeal cured disease.” — David Erdos