Blog Archives
City Lights at 60
When Gutenberg created the printing press humanity took a massive leap in literacy, social equality and political democracy. It’s hard to imagine in this day of tablet phones and digital literature, but after World War II the American paperback created a revolution of its own: it made books available for cheap and made publishing possible [...]
The Legend of Dylan Thomas
Nowadays, it’s hard to remember a time when poetry really mattered. I still love to read poetry and write poetry, and I occasionally get out to read my words in a bar or a coffeehouse in Nashville where other poets gather to share their words, but it’s almost always a case of singing to the [...]
Celebrating Ginsberg
Following last month’s release of The Essential Ginsberg and the author’s June 3 birthday, here is the impressionistic biography An Elegy for Allen Ginsberg which tells the story of the Allen Ginsberg’s life from the point of view of his final days… Stay Awake! Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos [...]
V Turns X
This year we celebrate the tenth birthday of the film V for Vendetta, based on the classic graphic novel by Alan Moore. Moore is more than cantankerous when addressing the cinematic adaptations of his work, and movies like Watchmen, From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen explain his ill-temper. That said, for me, V [...]
Beiles And The Beats
Continuing our celebration of National Poetry Month, here are some words about South African poet Sinclair Beiles: Beiles was associated at-a-distance with the Beat Generation, but you have to get a little deeper into their mythology before you find his mark. Beiles was primarily a surrealist poet who was also known for his collaborations with [...]
Yeats and the Faeries Yeats and the Faeries
Continuing our focus on National Poetry Month, here’s an interesting presentation about the great Irish poet W.B. Yeats and his preoccupations with the occult and the folk mythology of Ireland. R F Foster is a renowned Yeats expert. He’s the author of Words Alone: Yeats and his Inheritances. In this video Foster touches upon Yeats’s [...]
Basketball Diarist
April in America is National Poetry Month. Reminded of this today, I immediately thought of Jim Carroll – a prodigy of verse whose hybrid poetic memoirs are required reading for anyone interested in punk era New York city and the decades that followed before Carroll’s death in 2009. Carroll’s musical releases are well-worth a listen, [...]
Kerouac’s Crash
Dennis McNally is the author of my favorite Jack Kerouac biography, Desolation Angel. I love the book because it places Kerouac’s story in the context of a creative movement that saw artists of every stripe striving for their authentic, original, individual voices. McNally invokes Monk, Cassavetes, Dean, Pollock and Brando into his universe, demonstrating that [...]
Lost Lion
Philip Levine, poet and son of Detroit, died on Valentine’s Day. He was an accomplished man who’d lived a long life, but anytime we lose a voice like his the silence it leaves behind is a roaring one. Levine’s poetry reached back to William Carlos Williams’ confrontations with the blunt facts of reality, and the [...]
