When a book such as this comes across the transom, my staff of thousands urges me to post a notice, even though I am far from an informed reviewer of graphic books. What I can do is extract some of the images to offer an impression of the artwork. The entire book dazzles the eye, while the story documents the life.
If I Could But See It
TIME TRAVELS: New and Old
My day suddenly veered into a collection of new and old poems by A. Robert Lee. I didn’t know what to expect. It turned out to be nothing less than a curriculum for life and learning, for pleasure, and for the intellect.
Untamed Pledge for the 2026 Elections
An article in the French newspaper Le Monde about untamed literature, Cut Up or Shut Up, and “the ‘Cut-Up’ movement,” drew a pledge 54 years later from S/U’s Staff of Thousands.
What Is Poetry? ‘A glimpse of sun.’ — Jim Harrison
I met Jim Harrison only once, in 1968, when we were on a “little magazine” panel with Russell Banks, Anne Waldman, and Charles Newman. Even then Harrison was a “character,” a voluble personality who cut quite a figure.—wore a rakish straw hat, a black patch on his blind left eye, and sported a hand-carved walking stick.
Myles & Waldman
Performance Poets Together Again
They go back a long way to the 1970s in New York, most notably to their participation in, and leadership of, The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
Cicero Sez
My two years of high school Latin got me to Julius Caesar’s account of his exploits in the Gallic war, written in a straightforward, rather simple style. Unfortunately, I never took third-year Latin, which would have got me to Cicero, whose style was more sophisticated, more complex, and thus more difficult. But I have read Cicero in English and his words of wisdom are eminently clear.
The war made a quick mess of the family.
I.B. Singer Tells the Bloody, Cold-Blooded Truth
I had never really read him . . . a few tales here and there, the novel ‘Enemies’ . . . until I opened a volume of his ‘Collected Short Stories’ not long ago. It has kept me riveted.
Early Reviews Are In
Book Launched in Brooklyn: ‘The Midnight Special’
UPDATED:
Colin Asher is “a calm and sophisticated storyteller who picks you up and sets you back down in places you didn’t anticipate,” NY Times book critic Dwight Garner writes. He calls “The Midnight Special” “a fog-piercing down-bound train of a book” that “underlines sheer human resiliency.” The Observer says Asher’s new book will “transform” the way you see art. Booklist calls it “mesmerizing.” Publisher’s Weekly likes it; Alex Gershman dives deep into the book on his YouTube Channel; Maurice Chammah drills down on Ike White, one of the book’s featured musicians, in a discussion with Asher at The Marshall Project.
New from Moloko TRAVEL PAINTING
A. Robert Lee’s Omnibus Edition Is Here to Go
UPDATED
The author won’t need a headstone . . . This monumental omnibus will do . . . Five hundred and eight-six gorgeous pages of verbal pleasure . . . Intimate collaborations with esteemed artists . . . Landscapes of descriptive simplicity . . . Pure thought objectified . . .
David Hockney Liked to Draw by Other Means
David Hockney’s departure has drawn obituaries from across the art world and the popular press, which is testimony to his eminence whether his paintings and drawings are considered a simple pleasure to look at or regressive to contemplate. Whatever it comes down to, he loved to experiment.
Stadtlichter Presse Makes My Heart Beat Stronger
It’s a wonder that the most intriguing publisher of American poets of the Beat Generation happens to be a German publisher, Stadtlichter Presse. Its “Heartbeat” series features not only the most notable — Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Corso, and Ferlinghetti — in bilingual editions, but also dozens of less famous Beats and Beat-era or Beat-related poets.
New From Moloko
Taking a Trip with A. Robert Lee’s Travel Painting
UPDATED
Verse and vignette. New and selected writings. The title phrase belongs to the great haiku master Matsuo Bashō
Awaiting an Uncrackable Code
If poetry make nothing happen, as W.H. Auden once wrote, it sometimes uncannily anticipates what will.
The Bard Died 410 Years Ago Today. His Poems Live On
Sometimes he rewrote them. See an example and decide which you prefer: the early or the later version.
THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL is coming soon . . .
It Probes the Secret Prison History of American Music
Colin Asher, author of the critically acclaimed biography of Nelson Algren “Never a Lovely So Real,” now focuses on five emblematic figures — Huddle Ledbetter, Elmo Hope, Johnny Cash, Ike White, and Tupac Shakur — as he explores the influence of incarceration on blues artists, jazz musicians, country singers, rock’n’rollers, and hip-hop creators.
We Bloviate Therefore We Are
You have to go behind the billboards to understand what’s happening in America. So said the novelist Nelson Algren, who was as sharp a social critic as H.L. Mencken ever was. Seems to me that the British author A. Robert Lee would agree with Algren. But Lee has taken it upon himself to cite the billboards themselves as diagnostic proof.
Days of Judgment
Poems and Drawings That Speak for Themselves
New from Moloko Print — ‘Days of Judgment’ by Mark Terrill with drawings by Gerard Bellaart.