I used to write a lot about Long Island and Queens, but it’s taken me a long time to write about Brooklyn. I’ve been living here eight years now, in the neighborhood variously known as Prospect … Read the rest
“Out demons out!” I don’t know why it’s feels so cathartic to me every time I listen to the recording on the 1968 Fugs album “Tenderness Junction” of a historic event a year before, the exorcism and attempted levitation of the Pentagon in USA’s capital city by a determined group … Read the rest
I was already thinking about Columbia University, where courageous students are calling out the college administration’s support for genocide in Gaza, when I heard Paul Auster had died of cancer at the age of 77 in his home in Brooklyn. Paul Auster was widely celebrated as a Brooklyn writer from … Read the rest
Jack Kerouac was born 100 years ago today, on March 12, 1922. I wrote a poem about this.
… Read the restThe poets are coming out of the woodwork lately
Called by a voice, and our careworn restless souls
Jack Kerouac! We called you famous for a book
It was a rough day for me back in February of this year when the great Beat publisher, bookseller, pacifist and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti died at the age of 101, and I couldn’t post about it on Litkicks. I was right in the middle of migrating this entire website to … Read the rest
I’m reading Diane di Prima’s “Revolutionary Letters” this morning. The great Beat poet died this weekend. I haven’t heard many details yet – the news hit social media late last night – but since this is the morning of October 26 2020 here in USA where our Supreme Court is … Read the rest
The poet Michael McClure, who died on May 4, 2020 in his home in Oakland, California, was one of five readers at the seminal Six Gallery poetry reading in San Francisco in 1955 that kicked off the Beat Generation. I always loved his simple and organic poetic style, at once … Read the rest
I’m in a reflective mood lately. Looking within, through a glass darkly and all that. That’s my excuse for the fact that it’s March 2018 and this is my first post of the year.
I also have another excuse: I’ve been working on a really good Litkicks article about opera. … Read the rest
Because I love literature, I bristle when I hear Russia described as my country’s enemy.
Certainly Vladimir Putin is our enemy, because he is a tyrant who murders journalists. And certainly Donald Trump is our enemy, not only because he’s a racist and a sexual predator and a con-man, but … Read the rest
