Still on the Road
Although I faithfully followed the bardic path for more than 40 years, I waited a long time to hit the road as a poet. There were so many other things to do along the way, and I did them all. I had directed the Detroit Artists Workshop, the Allied Artists Association, Jazz Research Institute and…
Read MoreReview of Keith Richards (and James Fox), Life
Did it start with Bowie, or was it Gary Glitter—that vast mid-1970s dumbing down that glam rock initiated and then perfected? “Outrageous” outfits, the androgyny fix, retro Space fantasies, and at the fringes the desiccated meth freaks for whom the Velvet Underground was alpha and omega. The Stones, Yardbirds, Animals and even purist Eric Clapton;…
Read MoreThe Clogged Capillaries of the Peruvian Amazon
When one decides to take the trip into the jungle city of Iquitos – the largest city in the world inaccessible by road – there are two options. The first is a flight by one of Peru’s many domestic airlines, 5 to 10 times per day, with a flight time of approximately 2 hours. This…
Read MoreInterview with Anne Waldman: On All Kinds of Roads
Anne Waldman is a poet, performance artist, and author of dozens of literary works as well as the editor of important volumes on the beats and other subjects. Waldman’s latest book is The Iovis Trilogy: Colors in the Mechanism of Concealment (Coffee House Press, 2011) She is a cofounder, with Allen Ginsberg, of the Jack Kerouac…
Read MoreDavid Price’s Weaponizing Anthropology: Social Science in the Service of the Militarized State.
In December 2006, several months before the completion of my dissertation fieldwork in Istanbul, I offered a preliminary presentation of my research on civil Islamic foundations and secularism at the American Research Institute in Turkey, which had partially funded my research. Although I had alerted several Turkish friends and colleagues of my talk, I was…
Read MoreModernism Revisited: Artistic Works, Academic Disciplines, Divided Minds
“If you believe in improvement you must weep, for the attained perfection must end in darkness, cold, and silence… Life knows us not and we do not know life—we don’t know even our own thoughts. Half the words we use have no meaning whatever and of the other half each man understands each word after…
Read MoreConor McCabe, Sins of the Father – Tracing the Decisions that Shaped the Irish Economy and Peadar Kirby and Mary P. Murphy: Towards a Second Republic – Irish politics after the Celtic Tiger. London: Pluto Press
On a sweltering summer’s evening the crowd packed into Connolly Books, Dublin’s last radical bookshop, heard Conor McCabe’s book presented as “an examination of the house itself and not just of the broken furniture” that could become a “weapon.” The house and the furniture are seriously dilapidated. Following several years of steady growth in the…
Read MoreThe Sovereign
The Arab Spring, it seems, has turned into a winter of discontent. In virtually all nations that witnessed a democratic awakening – Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Mali, Syria, Tunisia – either state violence or conflict among competing religious/secular, ethnic, or tribal constituencies dominates the political landscape. Many in the West consider such turbulence an Oriental or…
Read MorePlato’s Gospel
“I become holy by initiation. The Lord [Jesus] reveals the Mysteries. He marks the worshipper with His seal …” Clement of Alexandria, from The Protreptikos (Exhortation to the Greeks), ca 190 AD. Here in America, Darwin is on the ropes again. After winning round after round since the Scopes “Monkey” Trial in 1925, he’s facing…
Read MoreFrank Dikötter, Mao’s Great Famine
When Mao Tse-Tung was alive he was cast alternately as bandit, communist leader, ruthless dictator, elder statesman, and mass murderer. Since his death the characterization is less ambivalent: hedonistic despot, reckless utopian, unbridled monster. The change is anchored in the twists and turns of history. The unfettering of capitalism in the wake of the collapse…
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