For more than half a century the dissident British author, editor, and underground publisher Michael Butterworth has been “a quiet unobtrusive voice in poetry, with roots both in the small press poetry journals of the 1960s and ’70s and New Wave science fiction.”
Archives for January 2023
The Complete Poems: 1965-2020
‘Shall we be lighthearted . . .’
‘Or shall we / bite our elbows / to the bone?’
A Great One Died 11 Years Ago Today
And there he was in a dream. We are in some restaurant, a San Francisco dream. He gives me a manuscript to read on elegant Mary Beach / Claude Pélieu stationery with raised black lettering in delicate type. He’s terminal. We both know it. He’s being objective about it. He indicates, somehow without words, not to get worked up about it. Take it as it comes. Happens to all. End of dream.
Are We Past Those Pandemic Ghosts?
A pub directly across the street from the main branch of the New York Public Library has replaced the pub that was shuttered there during the pandemic. Doorway artwork now invites the “thirsty” in for a drink, replacing the two ghostly figures seen there previously.
Éditions Béringuer
Newly Released Bellaart Drawings Connect the Centuries
A graphic narrative with a vocabulary of influences from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first.
‘Benevolent Loitering’
‘Unheard and Unseen’ in Istanbul
Having never been to Istanbul, I’ve done the next best thing — or so it feels upon reading ‘The Pleasures of Empty Lots’ by Efe Murad, poet, translator, and scholar extraordinaire. “This humble chapbook,” he writes, “is a record of the unheard and the unseen, which can only be experienced by those who find pleasure in ephemeral escapades. It is a longing for a clean slate, a tribute to benevolent loitering.” It is also more than that. It is in the most vivid, personal terms a manifesto for artistic freedom and — necessarily — social and political liberty.
Is 2023 the Year of Anti-Nihilist Gen Z?
The British magazine Prospect has just published an article making the case —making the claim is perhaps a better way to put it — that “2023 could finally hold a salve to the dark, glittery tunnel we’re living inside.” Mixed metaphor aside, good luck with that.