“After going to see the Villa Seurat, where Henry Miller lived when he wrote ‘Tropic of Cancer,’ we stopped at the Café Zeyer for drinks. The Zeyer, which he described as ‘a gaudy place with red plush and mirrors and polished brass,’ was where Miller often took a ‘fine à l’eau’ and argued metaphysics with friends.” — Supervert
Archives for May 2022
‘Wish You Hadn’t Said That’
Long before Qanon conspiracy theories took hold, the poet Janine Pommy Vega was accused of channeling the devil. This was her reply.
Late Light Verse: Song Lyrics by William Burroughs
Written in 1995, “Pantapon Rose” refers to an uptown prostitute in Manhattan who sometimes sold the opium alkaloid Pantapon to junkies in need of a fix. Burroughs put her in “Naked Lunch.”
Shooting From the Lip
Having Read Your Email, ‘I will not reply / to yours …’ per Wislawa Szymborska.
‘Dread’ by Florian Vetsch
A poem changes with each reading. This one was not written about the catastrophe in Ukraine. But it could have been. It is translated from the German original and extracted from the book ‘Tanger Trance,’ which was published in 2010 in four languages.
Preview: The Many Ghosts of Ultrazone
William Burroughs is not around anymore. He died in 1997. But his ghost definitely is. It has returned to Tangier in “Ultrazone,” a moody yet drole forthcoming novel.
Annette Gordon-Reed on the Art of Biography
The distiguished historian is slated to give this year’s Annual Leon Levy Biography Lecture on Wednesday (May 4 at 6 p.m. ET), in a free, online presentation open to the public. Her investigative, multigenerational biography “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family” won both the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in History and the National Book Award.