CONTEMPORARY POETICS "Redefining the Boundaries of Contemporary Poetics, in Theory & Practice, for the Twenty-First Century" Edited by Louis Armand ISBN 0-8101-2359-2 (paperback). 384pp. Publisher: Northwestern University Press, Evanston. http://nupress.northwestern.edu Exploring the boundaries of one of the most contested fields of literary study--a field that in fact shares territory...
In just a few short days, the postmark deadline for the search on which I am serving will have passed, and all of the applications will be in. I have been reading them as they come in so as not to collapse under the weight of the whole stack or to suffer from total application fatigue trying to do them all in one or two sittings. I think this has been wise on my part, as we already have close to 100....
“get rid of meaning, Your mind is a nightmare that has been eating you: now eat your mind” Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in Highschool Tamara Straus Sunday, October 5, 2008 In this first documentary film to access the literary and countercultural legacy of writer and performance artist Kathy Acker (1947-1997), director Barbara Casper gives us a mostly adulatory picture of the experiments...
I ain't got no day job I write my poems over 40 years and counting picking up cans off the highway for the deposit with the same hand I shook Bukowski's with Tim Leary's with Buckwheat Zydeco's with Wild Bill Everson's with Kathy Acker's with Art Blakey's with Wild Man Fischer's with Bob Kaufman's with Elvin Bishop's with Mr. Burroughs' with Gary Snyder's with Cedar Walton's with Jim Carroll's with...
Ralph Steadman and Tim Robbins in studio, recording for upcoming production of Paris Records' The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved, 2009. Photo courtesy Paris Records Ethan Persoff wrote an article in the Evergreen Review this month about Paris Records, which, he says, has "produced some of the more interesting records of the last 25 years," including William Burroughs' Dead City Radio,...
The Commissioner Of Sewers Lights Up. London, 1964. Left: Second U.S. paperback edition. Right: First U.K. paperback edition . Burroughs bubblegum card from WFMU, I wrote the other side. Burroughs inscription on my Ace paperback. The last time I saw William Burroughs was in November of '96, around ten months before he died. There was an opening for a show of his paintings at the University of Kansas...
Spoofs of literature always amuse, whether it's Shamela, a cartoon take on Lord of the Flies or Sarah Palin's 'poetry' Lampooning literature has always amused wits and wags with time on, and a pen in, their hands. And still today literary spoofs can brighten up the most tedious in-tray of the most desk-locked literary lover. For instance, just as I was despondently searching through the coffee-singed...
TALKING POINTS 1. I was surprised to not have remembered this, but on re-reading Kathy Acker’s Don Quixote , suddenly Catullus appears. Right in the beginning of the second section, which is performed under the umbrella statement that Don Quixote is dead, has no speech, and, having been born into a male world, all she could do was “read male texts which weren’t hers.” And indeed,...
I can't think of any other book people have asked me about at the library this summer more than Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies . The idea is captivating---in a perverse stare-at-the-car-wreck-as-you-drive-by kind of way. I'm sure I'm being asked because I've become known as the horror guy at work, but this book has received a shocking level of press, both good and bad. And I have...
People painted before language They painted on cave walls when they got language (an instrument) (a technology) they started writing poetry and history. Then came plays. Then came novels thousands of years after starting in the 1400s really. Painting is dead How did painting die? Did painting die? People still liked looking at paintings in the 1800s and pretty much to Picasso. An artist could experiment...
A stimulating piece in the New Statesman on William S Burroughs' Naked Lunch to mark the novel's 50th birthday. By Duncan Fallowell, natch. Click here . He writes: "At a time when gay people are very visible but homosexuality has been ring-fenced, Burroughs’s erotic explosions still wrong-foot many of his so-called fans." My favourite bit of the book, which I now feel I once read before...
William S. Burroughs discusses art, writing and consciousness with Kathy Acker in this insightful interview, posted in its YouTubed entirety by Renegade Futurist. I had the good fortune to see Burroughs and Acker onstage together in the mid-90s, the former in his customary suit and Acker decked out in intimidating leather and sporting dark hair. Although I hadn't yet seen it, both had appeared in a...
Shotgun and Paintbrush: Acker interviews Burroughs Coilhouse by David Forbes Here is one of the holy grails of interviews, with visionary writer Kathy Acker quizzing the legendary William Burroughs. They talk about many things: Word as Virus, Scientology, Jesus and the legion of apocryphal stories that followed Burroughs around like carrion crows. This took place in the late ’80s, and both had...
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