Review
Beat Scrapbook by Gerald Nicosia – Review
Jim Feast
Gerald Nicosia, Beat Scrapbook (Brooklyn: Coolgrove Press, 2020) 113 pages, $19.95
Gerald Nicosia has dedicated all his nonfiction books to describing those who, through whatever means, fought for the underdogs. His biography of Kerouac, the finest we have, Memory Babe, describes how the Beat author, himself from the lower class, in all his writings showed his sympathy for the downtrodden, whether it be city hustlers, Mexican street walkers or those who rode the boxcars with him as he traveled the country. In fact, one of the most developed points in Memory Babe is Nicosia’s bringing out that Kerouac’s greatness as a writer is closely tied to his far-reaching humanity. Then Nicosia turned to the Vietnam vets. In his Home to War, he left indelible portraits of activists, such as Ron Kovic, who denounced the war and the shabby treatment of vets, particularly, in later years, by battling the VA and the government who long denied t...
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Review
Anne Waldman: the Poet vs. the Warring God
John Pietaro
This is my vision…days on earth/Days when the weather changed course
When we lost our minds/When leaders failed us/ There was no wisdom.
From the opening strains of “Extinction Aria”, the lead selection on Anne Wa...
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Review
RAY BY RAY: A Daughter’s Take on the Legend of Nicholas Ray – Review
Marc Olmsted
RAY BY RAY: A Daughter's Take on the Legend of Nicholas Ray
by Nicca Ray
Three Rooms Press
$20.00
If you really want to know about Nick Ray's films, track down Nicholas Ray: An American Journey by Bernard Eisenschitz, ...
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Review
TRICKS OF LIGHT – Selected Poems by Thaddeus Rutkowski – Review
Amy Ouzoonian
TRICKS OF LIGHT
Selected Poems by Thaddeus Rutkowski
100 pages, Great Weather For Media
I am one of those people who can find connections and associations between concepts and coincidences in just about any situation. I’ll be thinking about someone and then they call me or send me a message. I love connecting the dots of current events with astrological shifts and I have blamed mercury retrograde for unfortunate events as many times as I have thanked my lucky stars for good fortune.
I started reading Thaddeus Rutkowski’s book of poetry, Tricks of Light, in the first week of April. At that time the Governor of Arizona, (where I live) had announced that we were to observe “shelter in place” to help “flatten the curve” and reduce cases of COVID-19.
The speaker in Tricks of Light makes simple philosophical observations and engages with people on a limited basis, but for the most part, one could imagine him being ...
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Review
SOUTH AMERICAN JOURNALS January – July 1960 by Allen Ginsberg – review
Marc Olmsted
SOUTH AMERICAN JOURNALS
January - July 1960
by Allen Ginsberg
edited by Michael Schumacher
University of Minnesota Press
$29.95
First, I was immediately struck by how much unpublished poetry or early drafts (such as "Aether" and "Magic Psalm") are contained in this volume - far beyond any previous journal publications of Allen Ginsberg. In fact, he mostly wrote his journal as poetry during this period. Granted much is not A-list material, as Allen correctly understood in not publishing a lot of it. But for earnest scholars and fans, it is a gold mine. There are also amazing little notations of events, such as seeing Montgomery Clift's "Raintree County" ("he too looks sad" - in fact, Monty's face-rearranging car crash occurred in the middle of filming that picture). Likewise a long dream about Marlon Brando, who imitates Jack Kerouac's voice at one point(!) and includes a dream discussion of how great Orson Welles' Magn...
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Review
Among the Boat People – A Memoir of Vietnam – Review
Martha King
Among the Boat People - A Memoir of Vietnam
Nhi Mahn Chung
Autonomedia, 2019
Nhi Chung has been working on this book off and on for over twenty years. A few portions have been published, mostly "earlier versions" since rewritten -- but none of them in terms of readability, literary conventions, story-telling principals -- none of them WORK. Just the same, a comprehensive new edition from Autonomedia was launched at BlueStockings Bookshop on Friday, January 17. Why?
The lack of consistent timeline, the disjointed pacing, the flattened emotions, actually make Ms. Chung's book an amazing document and finally a deeply moving one.
Her book through its many changes, quotations from the work of others and evidence of rewriting "help", remains utterly artless. I know that word has a sweet definition. It can be taken to mean charm. Without guile or artifice. But at bottom "artless" means exactly what it says: Without art. ...
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Review
Uncle Skallywag by Shiv Mirabito – Review
Andy Clausen & Pamela Twining
The poet carries the Universe on his shoulders (p 20).
Thus, Shiv Mirabito, in his beautiful and provocative new book, Uncle Skallywag, published by Shivastan Press in Kathmandu, Nepal, on handmade paper, leaps bravely into the fray - outsider art, renegade artists, poems and poets gone before, Ginsberg, Ira Cohen, Janine Pommy Vega, Corso, and many others.
This book is a nifty sweep of poetry influenced by Whitman, the Beats, Buddhism, Anthropological travel, thousands of movies, and rock n roll. Let’s peruse some of them.
AMERICAN VALUES, sharply satirical, is all about freedom becoming synonymous with amassing money and adoration of Self.
“I know I am the crown of creation
I have dominion over all that I see
I am totally sure
because I saw it on TV” (p13)
The eponymous UNCLE SKALLYWAG defines, outlines, and reinforces the fiercely compassionate persona of Skallywag, the friendly Outsider, the goodhear...
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Review
Max Sees Red by Martha King – Review
Jim Feast
Martha King, Max Sees Red (New York: Spuyten Duvvil, 2019)
One of the greatest mysteries of Martha King’s brilliant new novel Max Sees Red does not appear in the narrative itself but in the author’s bio at the end. It reads, “Martha King has never lived in the Hudson Valley or in Soho where this story takes place.”
The mystery is that this story, set in those two locales in 1978, paints such a vivid and detailed portrait, one with the ring of authenticity, so that until hitting this end note the reader thinks the author is using materials drawn from her own life. For instance, look at this this sharply etched description of the changing face of Hudson Valley:
As Max turned the car from the parkway … he noticed the contrast between the first two houses [he saw]. The nearest … was roofed with rusted tin. Its wooden sides were faced with odd sections of black tar paper, and shiny greenish vinyl. .. The next ho...
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Review
COLLECTED POEMS OF BOB KAUFMAN – review
Marc Olmsted
COLLECTED POEMS OF BOB KAUFMAN
edited by Neeli Cherkovski, Raymond Foye and Tate Swindell
City Lights Books
$19.95
The surrealism of Bob Kaufman is a true American surrealism, because Kaufman brings the blues, jazz and being a black man in the United States to his subconscious visions. He still remains, in my estimation, America's unequaled surrealist. Just as Beat's other most famous black poet, Amiri Baraka, spawned the Last Poets and the eventual rise of rap, Kaufman's influence is not only present today in Will Alexander and transmale Blackfoot poet Max Wolf Valerio, but in Bob Dylan. It was Amiri Baraka himself who coined the term Afrosurreal Expressionism in 1974 to discussing the work of Henry Dumas, and was later expanded in the Afrosurreal Manifesto by D. Scott Miller. Afrosurrealism is now considered a very active movement, with a wide pantheon that now considers Ted Joans and Samuel R. Delany among its members. ...
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Review
ON VALENCIA STREET – Jack Micheline – Review
Marc Olmsted
ON VALENCIA STREET
Jack Micheline
Edited by Tate Swindell
Introduction by Eric Mingus
Lithic Press
$20.00
Jack Micheline is not so much an unsung but undersung member of the Beat Generation, a fixture on the San Fra...
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Review
Kerouac: The Last Quarter Century by Gerald Nicosia – Review
Jim Feast
Kerouac: The Last Quarter Century
Gerald Nicosia
Corte Madera, CA: Noodlebrain Press, 2019
Gerald Nicosia's Kerouac: The Last Quarter Century is an absorbing and crucial book, laying out repeatedly how commerce triumphed over art and any real literary values in Kerouac's story. That story culminates with the scandal of auctioning off the roll manuscript of On the Road to a sports franchise owner, who obviously could not care less about the literary qualities of the text and knows it only as the work of a cult author, which may appreciate in value. It is also the story of the inheritance battle scandal which arises around will-tampering and high-priced lawyers.
Putting aside that Kerouac died nearly penniless and now others are making millions off his legacy, the real crime is the fact that the values he espoused in On the Road and other texts, the importance of spirituality, comradeship, adventuring and giving zero atten...
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Review
The Criminal: The Invisibility of Parallel Forces by Max Wolf Valerio – Review
Marc Olmsted
The Criminal: The Invisibility of Parallel Forces
by Max Wolf Valerio
Eoagh Books, $20.00
Reviewed By Marc Olmsted
MAX WOLF VALERIO said, “Before I transitioned, I was 19 and showed Allen Ginsberg a poem of mine ...
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Review
Something’s Happening But You Don’t Know What It Is
Vincent Zangrillo
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese
Reviewed by Vincent Zangrillo
I’ll tell you my own Bob Dylan story. Or maybe two or three. I can guarantee you that these are the god’s honest truth, ...
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Review
Birds of Passage – Review
Franklin Mount
The indigenous people of the Guajira Peninsula of Colombia, the Wayuu, are the stars of Birds of Passage. Their resilience and pride (they were never conquered by the Spanish) is evident in everything they do. The Wayuu hold...
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