These drawings, which appear in “di Umbris,” a dossier of Gerard Bellaart drawings just published by Moloko, were not intended as commentary on current events. But I can’t shake the sensation that they are.
Will the ‘Four Freedoms’ Go the Way of the Dodo Bird?
The Bible gave us the Ten Commandments. The Constitution gave us the first 10 amendments, our Bill of Rights. Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave us the ‘Four Freedoms,’ chiseled in stone at the tip of Roosevelt Island as a monumental reminder of his legacy. Will the monument be all that’s left of his legacy?
Human Figuration as an Expression of Ideas
These drawings move across centuries, from the Middle Ages to our blighted times in an unflinching rawness that gives no comfort. Nothing is omitted. You will find the sexual inscribed like watermarks of passion and anguish. The demonic appears in equal measure with the angelic. Most of all, not unlike cave drawings of prehistoric times, they are an existential record of a particular creature, Bellaart by name.
Lionel Ziprin: ‘One of the Secret Heroes of Our Time’
“I am not an artist. I am not an
outsider. I am a citizen of the
republic and I have remained
anonymous all the time by choice.”
I Guess It Had to Happen
Julian Peters has done Poe, Rimbaud, Frost, Keats, Dylan Thomas, Wordsworth, Oscar Wilde, Villon, Yeats, Sassoon, and plenty of others — and they’re all damn well done — so why not T.S. Eliot?
They Come at Night
WHISPERS
the face
that launched
a thousand ships
has sailed
and not in beauty
War Crime Outcomes —
Two Coverups in the Slaughterhouse of War
From the podcast IN THE DARK: “On November 19, 2005, a small group of U.S. Marines killed 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq. The case against them would become one of the most high-profile war-crimes prosecutions in American history, and then it would all fall apart. … No one was held accountable.” Why not?
On March 16, 1968, more than 500 Vietnamese men, women, and children in the village of Mi Lai were slaughtered by a platoon of U.S. soldiers. It became known as the Mi Lai massacre. The soldiers were led by Lieutenant William Calley. He was later court-martialed and convicted of murder after an Army cover-up.
Malaise . . . In the Middle of Nowhere
Not helped
by late disasters
and no idea
of what to do
but write these lines
and think of better times.
BEAT SCENE No. 110
Latest Issue Filled With Rich Tales
About Brion Gysin, Paul Bowles, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassidy and Anne Murphy, Charles Bukowski, Herbert Huncke, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Ed Sanders, Tuli Kupferberg, Milton Klonsky, Alice Notley, Bernard Kops, Neeli Cherkovski, Emmett Grogan and the Diggers, Martin Bax, the influence of Gertrude Stein, the death of Joan Volmer, and more …
Whimsy and Philosophy: Pictures at an Artist’s Studio
On a visit to Paul Zelevansky’s studio in Manhattan, I took some pictures of the works he had there on display. These are some of the ones I photographed. I post them here without commentary other than their titles for you to decide how they strike you.
With Apologies to Gogol
Suddenly I felt
while massaging my skin
the skeleton within. …
Artists of ‘Harlem Renaissance’ at Metropolitan Museum
Glad I got to the Met for a glimpse before it becomes hotter ‘n hell. Although the museum was jammed, the show itself was comfortable. It was also much larger than I expected. I hadn’t realized how many accomplished painters there were among the Harlem group. For example, I had never heard of Archibald Motley Jr. who I thought pretty much sets the exquisite tone of the show, though by no means exclusively.
Käthe Kollwitz at MoMA
Finally got to see this intimate, brooding retrospective.
‘Tucked among the illustrious dead . . .’
‘… but still preposthumous, which I prefer to post mortem.’ — jh
That is Brion Gysin pictured on the cover of BEAT SCENE magazine.
Charles Plymell Takes Stage for New and Selected Poems
Plymell has as much in depth to say about death as Hemingway did and a lot more to say about it in terms of the present generation stillborn into a world that can offer nothing. — William S. Burroughs Plymell and his friends inventing the Wichita Vortex contribute to a tradition stretching back from Lamantia […]
Here to Entertain You
My staff of thousands is curious to know whether the music is actually being played or dubbed.
‘There he was in a dream . . .’
“He gives me a manuscript
on elegant stationery
with a letterhead of
raised black lettering
in typeface rare & delicate.
He’s terminal. We both
know it. …”