... to "the runaway slave" in his most famous poem, "Song of Myself," which first appeared untitled in his self-published collection Leaves of Grass, in 1855.
https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2024/09/underground-railroad-walt-whitman-bears-witness.html
By popular demand, here's another letter from Nelson Algren, this time a big fat gossipy one apparently in reply to questions that Roger Groening must have posed.
https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2024/09/one-more-missive-from-the-department-of-letters.html
Cleaning out one of my desk drawers, I came across a long-forgotten file folder containing a ream of letters from Nelson Algren to Roger Groening. They are a motherlode of humor, wit, and edifyi...
https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2024/09/not-a-bad-way-to-start-the-week.html
THE HAPPY GIRL The glide begins, direction down, the happy girl has gone to hell. She lies in bed, her mouth an O, her breath a whisper of dissent.
https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2024/08/the-glide-begins-direction-down.html
WHISPERS the face that launched a thousand ships has sailed and not in beauty
https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2024/08/they-come-at-night.html
"Thought this would give you a smile," he wrote. "Look whose book shows up in the first pic of this article." It appears from the photo that my biography of the Hollywood director William Wyler,...
https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2024/07/tipped-by-a-friend-and-glad-to-know.html
From the podcast IN THE DARK: "On November 19, 2005, a small group of U.S. Marines killed 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq. The case against them would become one of the most high-profile war-crime...
The other day I took a drive over to Toby Pond and looked in at the house where I'd spent six months during the Covid lockdown. My favorite room there was a little library. It had two steep book...
https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2024/07/d-h-lawrence-on-the-bitch-goddess-of-success.html
Three excerpts from the recently published edition of ‘The Letters of Gustave Flaubert,’ edited and translated by Francis Steegmullers, seem to me an apt commentary on our own time.
https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2024/07/leave-it-to-flaubert-to-tell-it-as-it-is.html
Not helped by late disasters and no idea of what to do but write these lines and think of better times.
https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2024/07/malaise-in-the-middle-of-nowhere.html
America's top shitholer goes whole hog at the public trough, and never mind the rest of us, because that is the hog's nature. ...
https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2024/07/just-in-time-for-independence-day.html
About Brion Gysin, Paul Bowles, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassidy and Anne Murphy, Charles Bukowski, Herbert Huncke, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Ed Sanders, Tuli Kupferberg, Milto...
On a visit to Paul Zelevansky's studio in Manhattan, I took some pictures of the works he had there on display. These are some of the ones I photographed. I post them here without commentary oth...
https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2024/06/pictures-at-an-artists-studio.html
Suddenly I felt while massaging my skin the skeleton within. ...
https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2024/06/with-apologies-to-gogol.html
Glad I got to the Met for a glimpse before it becomes hotter 'n hell. Although the museum was jammed, the show itself was comfortable. It was also much larger than I expected. I hadn't realize...
https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2024/06/artists-of-harlem-renaissance-at-metropolitan-museum.html
Finally got to see this intimate, brooding retrospective.
https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2024/06/kathe-kollwitz-at-moma.html
"... is not to make us laugh or cry, nor to arouse our lust or rage, but to do what nature does — that is, to set us dreaming. The most beautiful words have this quality. ... They are as motio...
https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2024/06/the-highest-and-most-difficult-achievement-of-art.html
Huge crowds turned out for two boffo evenings of concert excerpts from Puccini's operas. It was part of Bryant Park's free, summer Picnic Performances. Music was provided by New York City Opera,...
'... but still preposthumous, which I prefer to post mortem.' — jh That is Brion Gysin pictured on the cover of BEAT SCENE magazine.
https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2024/05/tucked-among-the-illustrious-dead.html
Plymell has as much in depth to say about death as Hemingway did and a lot more to say about it in terms of the present generation stillborn into a world that can offer nothing. — William S. B...
https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2024/05/charles-plymell-takes-stage-for-new-selected-poems.html