JAMES SCHUYLER ~

 

R E A D   M E

Farrar, Straus, Giroux

2025

TOMAS TRANSTROMER ~

 

BACK ROAD CHALKIE

HALLOWEEN 2025

JACK KEROUAC TONIGHT ~

 

J.HOBERMAN: EVERYTHING IS NOW ~

R E A D   M E

CHICAGO BLUES TONIGHT ~

 

   Chess Records

   1990

RECKONING ~

 

Reckoning: Protest. Defiance. Resilience.

Foreword by Kevin Young, Contributions by Aaron Bryant and Amy Sherald and Tuliza Fleming and Bisa Butler and Deborah Willis, Edited by Michelle D. Commander

Explores the powerful ways in which visual art has long provided its own rich outlet for protest, commentary, escape, and perspective for African Americans.

This important book showcases the potent role of visual art in African American history and culture. Featuring Black artists working in a range of media, from photography to sculpture to painting—including Amy Sherald, Benny Andrews, Sheila Pree Bright, Bisa Butler, Charles Alston, Elizabeth Catlett, Shaun Leonardo, and David Hammons, to name just a few—the book considers art that exemplifies resilience in times of conflict, as well as the ritual of creation, and the defiant pleasure of healing.

Reckoning, based on the exhibition of the same name at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), explores the ongoing struggles Black Americans have faced in their pursuit to enjoy the fundamental rights and freedoms promised in the Constitution to citizens of the United States. Drawn from the museum’s permanent collection, the featured works respond to the dual crises of Covid-19 and systemic racism that shaped 2020, a period that has been called one of reckoning, as the world witnessed the killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other African Americans, leading to some of the largest protests in US history.

About The Author

Kevin Young is Andrew W. Mellon Director of the NMAAHC. Aaron Bryantis curator of photography at the NMAAHC. Bisa Butler is a textile artist. Michelle D. Commander is deputy director at the NMAAHC. Tuliza Fleming is curator of visual arts at the NMAAHC. Amy Sherald is a painter and portraitist. Deborah Willis is University Professor and chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts.

• Publish Date: September 03, 2024
• Format: Hardcover
• Category: Art - American - African American & Black
• Publisher: Rizzoli Electa
• Trim Size: 9-1/4 x 11-3/4
• Pages: 224
• US Price: $55.00
• CDN Price: $75.00
• ISBN: 978-0-8478-3669-7

Reviews

"Drawn from the permanent collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the paintings, sculptures and photographs in this book depict resistance and hope in Black America since 2020." — NYT BOOK REVIEW

"The visual art inside this new book is gorgeous, moving, and powerful! Indeed art has always been important as a vehicle for protest, commentary, escape, and perspective for African Americans." — HELLO LOVELY STUDIO 

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ESTHER LIN ~

The Ghost Wife

Who, after years

with her husband,

years of rearing

their strapping boy,

is scorched by an eye.

She was gathering laundry.

The sun stuttered

from the clouds.

The rice bubbled

on the stove. Her hands

and face bubbled

too. She did not

cry out. She did not

speak. She was hurried

indoors. What to do?

The neighbors. The talk.

The thing to do was

lay her in a coffin

upstairs

and close the lid.

______________________

Esther Lin

Cold Thief Place

Alice James Books, 2025

JACK DeJOHNETTE ( 1942 ~ 2025 ) ~

 

J A C K    D e J O H N E T T E

       Arden Wray for The New York Times

BERNADETTE MAYER ~

 

Essay

I guess it’s too late to live on the farm I guess it’s too late to move to a farm I guess it’s too late to start farming I guess it’s too late to begin farming I guess we’ll never have a farm I guess we’re too old to do farming I guess we couldn’t afford to buy a farm anyway I guess we’re not suited to being farmers I guess we’ll never have a farm now I guess farming is not in the cards now I guess Lewis wouldn’t make a good farmer I guess I can’t expect we’ll ever have a farm now I guess I’ll have to give up all my dreams of being a farmer I guess I’ll never be a farmer now We couldn’t get a farm anyway though Allen Ginsberg got one late in life Maybe someday I’ll have a big garden I guess farming is really out Feeding the pigs and the chickens, walking between miles of rows of crops I guess farming is just too difficult We’ll never have a farm Too much work and still to be poets Who are the farmer poets Was there ever a poet who had a self-sufficient farm Flannery O’Connor raised peacocks And Wendell Berry has a farm Faulkner may have farmed a little And Robert Frost had farmland And someone told me Samuel Beckett farmed Very few poets are real farmers If William Carlos Williams could be a doctor and Charlie Vermont too, Why not a poet who was also a farmer Of course there was Brook Farm And Virgil raised bees Perhaps some poets of the past were overseers of farmers I guess poets tend to live more momentarily Than life on a farm would allow You could never leave the farm to give a reading Or to go to a lecture by Emerson in Concord I don’t want to be a farmer but my mother was right I should never have tried to rise out of the proletariat Unless I can convince myself as Satan argues with Eve That we are among a proletariat of poets of all the classes Each ill-paid and surviving on nothing Or on as little as one needs to survive Steadfast as any farmer and fixed as the stars Tenants of a vision we rent out endlessly

____________________

Bernadette Mayer

The Golden Book of Words

New Directions 2025

originally published by Angel Hair Books, 1978

LEONARD COHEN TONIGHT ~

 

HARALD VOETMANN ~

 

R E A D   M E

  New Directions

2021