The United Nations Secretariat Building overlooks the East River in New York City. On my walks through Manhattan I sometimes stop and gaze at it to admire the impressive facade. And then I think that what I’m looking at is really a mirage. Here is one reason.
Home Again
Home again. / They were / her last words. / She never / had a home. / She slept in ditches / under bridges / near old / railroad tracks. . . .
Butterworth’s Post-Atomic Wasteland
Michael Butterworth started writing short fiction in 1966 for the British science-fiction magazine New Worlds when its editor was Michael Moorcock. He was one of the younger exponents of that New Wave of science fiction, as the movement became known, and he continued contributing to New Worlds until the editions most closely associated with Moorcock came to an end in 1979. Now he has two new books out that collect the fiction of those early years which he had thought “lost for good.”
Power Malu Shines at 2019 Ackers
The honorees at the 2019 NY Acker Awards made some terrific statements about the history of the Lower East Side and their commitment both to the community and to the arts, but a rap performance by Power Malu about the devastation in Puerto Rico, where people are still struggling to recover from Hurricane Maria and from the Trumpistan government’s failure to provide proper help, was the most notable of the evening.
‘Prisoner: Come Out!’
“In the beginning was the Word—been in You for a toolong time.I rub out the word. You in the Word and the Word in You is a word-lock like the combination of a vault or a valise. If you love your vaults, listen no further. I spin the lock on your Interior Space Kit. Prisoner: Come Out!” — Brion Gysin
City Lights: The Little Bookshop That Could
As San Francisco prepares to celebrate Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s 100th birthday on Sunday, City Lights Books will be the focus of much attention. The little paperback bookshop he launched in 1953 is now so large that it occupies an entire block of storefronts and doubles as a North Beach tourist attraction. This is what the storefront […]
2019 NY Acker Awards Held at Theater for the New City
The Acker Awards, now in their sixth year, are a tribute given to members of the avant-garde arts community who have made outstanding contributions in their discipline in defiance of convention, or else served their fellow writers and artists in outstanding ways. The award’s novelist namesake, in her life and work, exemplified the risk-taking and […]
Ferlinghetti: ‘Pity the Nation Whose Leaders Are Liars’
Lawrence Ferlinghetti must be wondering what all the fuss is about. After all, he’s only going to turn 100 on Sunday. What’s the big deal? I’m betting he would prefer that people take note of his twelve-year-old poem: “Pity the nation whose people are sheep . . .”
Patchel’s ‘Plinkout’
Keith Patchel, a New York-based composer and producer, has created a free online/mobile application called Plinkout, which he is touting as “the easiest way to teach anyone,” especially kids, how to play an instrument as well as how to learn “the core cognitive ideas of music.” He’s looking for funding to complete his project, and […]
A Silent Elegy in Motion
Have a look at this collective headstone for “the 1,337 journalists killed in the line of duty since 1992.” Watch their names coalesce on screen into the image you see here. It is a silent elegy in motion that makes it pure poetry.
Nancy & Sluggo Get Twisted
In a world where the difference between appropriation and exploitation can be hard to figure, Gary Lee-Nova’s devotion to the cartoonist Ernie Bushmiller makes all the difference. “I’m beyond being in love with his work,” says the author of these panels. “Although he passed in 1982, I feel like I’m collaborating with him.”
From ‘The White Poems’
‘This emptiness is my private lair. / It confines me like a clubman’s chair. / I am free of desire. / I don’t mind being here either.
Bombing the Culture
‘Culture, being the broad effect of art, is rotundly irrational and as such is perpetually operating against the economic workaday structure of society. The economic structure works towards stasis centered around static needs. It is centripetal. Culture forces change centered around changing appetites. It is centrifugal.’ — Jeff Nuttall
Beckett’s ‘Rockaby’ Set by William Osborne
In William Osborne’s setting of ‘Rockaby’ we hear the whispered thoughts of an old woman during the last twenty-five minutes of her life accompanied by the dirge of four distant trombones. “Those arms at last…”
Far Out Wasn’t Far Enough
The artist Tomi Ungerer has died at the age of 87. He was “a lifelong activist who protested against racial segregation, the Vietnam war and the election of US President Donald Trump . . .” Speaking about himself as an artist, Ungerer said, “I have the full respect of a piece of white paper, which I then shall rape with my drawing or my writing. When I draw, it’s the real me.”
‘Beyond the Vanishing Points …’
This old cartoon strip by Gary Lee-Nova has a black Sluggo, and it’s a form of appropriation art. Will that cause a storm of viral outrage?
Catching Up to the Past
“Buckle your seatbelt and fire up your time machine. You are about to blast yourself back nearly fifty years to a simpler time when America was at war, the country was polarized, a crazed and despised president of the United States was in charge, cops were considered racist pigs, cannabis was omnipresent, and young radicals […]