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 

Rizzoli International Publications
49 W 27th St 4th FL
New York, NY 10001
United States
+1 (212) 387-3400

• Recently Published
• Future Publications
• Author Events
• Rizzoli Recommends
• Calendars
• Rizzoli Bookstore
• About Us

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

MODEST MOUSE TONIGHT ~

 

    1996

GEORGE SEFERIS ~

Selva Oscura

When I close my eyes, I find myself in an expansive darkness

the color of dawn; I sense it on your fingertips.

Forget the lie that helped you live.

Bare your feet, bare your eyes —

very few things remain when we've bared ourselves

but in the end we can see them exactly as they are.

When I close my eyes I always find myself on a path,

the yards ruined to the right and left and in the corner

the house with windowpanes beaten by the sun, empty

I thought of your fingertips beating against the panes.

I thought of your heart beating behind the panes

and the very few things that set a man apart from others

are never overcome.

You don't know anything because you looked at the sun.

Your blood dripped into the black leaves of the laurel bush.

I see the nightingale and the marbled moon of evenings past,

when I dragged your blood into the river, dyeing it red.

I ponder — when I ponder — I ponder

my veins and the mystery of your hands,

guiding carefully, descending step by step.

When I close my eyes, I find myself in an expansive garden.

                                                                                  May 1937

____________________________

George Seferis

Book of Exercises II

World Poetry 2024

Translated from the Greek by Jennifer R. Kellogg

MARIO DELL' ARCO ~

 Spiral Staircase

    In search of a bawdy shade

of blue, without the slightest wisp of cloud,

stair by stair ascend.

I've stumbled, by spiral's end,

out of this world and into heaven.

The Apple

    One last apple among the leaves

of the highest branch, the sweetest.

The pickers must've missed it.

No matter — only I

can reach that high.

Watermelon

    A man carves watermelons

beneath the green shade

of the vendor's stand.

Dozens of half-moons

    make moonlight red.

Star Hunter

    Forget about thrushes, quails,

woodcocks! I'm out hunting

stars with a butterfly net.

Undecided between Orion,

Vega, and Scorpio, I bet

on the Herdsman, Bootes.

    At dawn I return empty-handed,

net burnt to a crisp.

I Built A Wall

    It's my fault.  Stone by stone

by stone I built a wall,

walled myself off from the world.

    No way out now.

Even if I wanted to

feel your hand, one

step and I'd crack

my head on that wall.

Sunflower

    Bright yellow in a field of green,

face to face with the sky,

holding its breath, calls it a day.

    Not even the sun, for all its art,

can purge night from the sunflower's heart.

___________________________

Mario dell' Arco

Day Lasts Forever

World Poetry, 2024

translated from Romanesco by Marc Di Martino

REMEMBERING DAVID HUDDLE (1942 ~ 2025) ~

 

A   T A L K 

URSULA K. LeGUIN TONIGHT ~

 

NASSER RABAH ~

 

Rage

It wasn't you they saw on the television screen, it wasn't you

as they filmed you coming out crumbled from the rubble,

who then was applauding and clamoring for death?

This is what war makes you: it takes your skin off and gives

you a tent, and like a crumpled piece of paper, it throws

your home out with the trash—it plucks your pink heart

and plants gunpowder stones, no wheat fields gleam in

your eyes from now on, no hills of olive groves dream

to be picked, no bunch of kids play on your shoulders,

no grass of remembrance sits with you in the sunset

of the house, nothing here or there except limitless

rage, boiling over to the end of time and distance,

it was not you; it was not a stream of water, it was

a wolf snarling underneath the rubble, wanting

to rip the flesh of these tanks with its teeth.

March 13, 2024

________________________________

Nasser Rabah

Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece

Translated from the Arabic by

Ammiel Alcalay, Emna Zghal, Khaled Al-Hilli

City Lights Books, 2025

THE CHANGING WORLD OF BOOKS ~

 

R E A D   M E

    New York Review of Books

   2015

RITA OMOKHA, RESIST ~

 

    St.Martin's Press

    2024

RAY BRADBURY TONIGHT ~

 

LOST PROFILES ~

 

R E A D   M E

   City Lights, 2016

CAMILLE HOWARD ~

 

HAWK & PREZ TONIGHT ~

 

NEW! CHARLES GOODRICH ~

 

Charles Goodrich

Building Knot House: A Scrapbook

Longhouse, 2025

$12 postpaid,

payable by Paypal or check

please use our email of longhousepoetry@gmail.com

LONGHOUSE

P.O. Box 2454

West Brattleboro

Vermont

05303

SHE'S A BADASS ~

 

R E A D   M E

Backbeat Books

2023

LILIANA PONCE ~

 

I will wait in the real sand, 

the tangible form of rock,

in the conversion of fate by breath.

With words I feed the creation of time

— someone else can speak, someone else can write.

Liquid movements cycled by the marrow

of a false body.

The glass absorbs the sky.

I will wait in the sane, in the dust of the rock

—in the shadow of dryness I erase them.

Soothe me with passive thoughts.

Soothe me because I don't exist.

________________________

Liliana Ponce

Theory of the Voice and Dream

translated from the Spanish by Michael Martin Shea

World Poetry 2025

SHERPA ~

 

K A N C H H A   S H E R P A

        Jason Gulley for The New York Times

OTIS SPANN TONIGHT ~

 

 

AGOTA KRISTOF, AGAIN ~

 

Agota Kristof

R E A D   M E