World

New Directions: Aram Saroyan’s Q&A with Gerald Hausman

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After meeting Gerald Hausman as a fellow poet and colleague in the Poet-in-the-Schools program in Massachusetts in the early 1970s, I soon admired his poetry. The work seemed to me a fresh incarnation of a tradition I identified with Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen and Lew Welch. Uniquely, looking into those early chapbooks today, the work continues to hold its charge.  Over the years, while we stayed in touch and exchanged books, it was only recently, with the publication of two new books, Little Miracles and Mystic Times with Noel Coward in Jamaica, both of which might be characterized as nonfiction novels, that I recognized he’d in the meantime emerged in a way I never could have imagined. In his prose the same ease and accuracy remain, and a deceptive modesty in the tone, but the explorations have expanded and magnified in all directions. I haven’t read anything that has affected me so powerfully in years. A.S.

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It’s Tricky: Thinking Through “Dear Comrades”

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When Putin was re-elected in 2018, Andrei Konchalovsky, director of Dear Comrades—the acclaimed historical drama about an atrocity erased from history during the Soviet era—spoke on RT of his “extraordinary joy” (though he sounded dutiful rather than giddy). Putin’s win, per Konchalovsky, was proof Russia was “going the right way.” I didn’t see his election spin on RT until after I’d watched Dear Comrades so it was a shock to hear him express disdain for the “fuss” made by Putin’s “paranoiac” critics since his film about the 1962 Novocherkassk massacre limns what happens in a country where no-one’s allowed to disturb powers-that-be.

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Addio Alle Armi

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Bruce Jackson wrote this reflection on an Italian cultural festival, lessons of Attica and a perfect night in Piacenza a few years ago, but it’s still on time. 

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Papi Don’t Preach: Pedro Lemebel’s Anti-Macho Metaphysics of Love

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Pedro Lemebel, queer artist and radical provocateur, was acknowledged to be an “essential figure of Chile” in his own country when he died in 2015. His work and life–“more than a writer; he was a free man” (per Wikipedia!)–are now becoming better known in El Norte. A documentary film, Lemebel, came out last year and Lemebel’s book Loco afán: crónicas de sidario (Crazy Desire: chronicles of the AIDS ward) has just been translated into English. What follows is a swatch from that report on gay life and death in a Latin American city of night.

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On Verra Ca: Balla Sidibe R.I.P. & Orchestra Baobab’s Legacy

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Balla Sidibe—one of the original front men of the legendary afro-pop band Orchestra Baobab—has gone to see what’s coming for all of us. You can watch the late Sidibe sing lead (and dance) here as Baobab does a charming version of a song that dates back to the 70s, “On Verra Ca.” 2020 is the 50th anniversary year of the band’s founding.

This next song is another Baobab classic. It’s the track that got me on board their train to heaven.

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Homage to Spanish Anarchism

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Stephen Schwartz, co-author of Spanish Marxism versus Soviet Communism: A History of the P.O.U.M. in the Spanish Civil War, has linked a number of his associates to the film below (which is available on Youtube). Your editor, in turn, passed the link on to another distinguished author of a recent book on the Spanish Civil War, Adam Hochschild, who was wowed: “Amazing. I’ve seen lots of still photos from this time—which must have been in the first month or two after the beginning of Franco’s coup—but didn’t know there was film.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVv6ampdPeY

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Inequality & Two Cheers for Capitalism

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In these days of pandemic isolation, as the world reels from one gut punch to the next, the future looks anything but rosy.  While the monied float on their yachts and in their two million dollar isolation rentals in the Hampton’s, the rest of us live in fear and anxiety.

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Coronavirus in China: Challenges to Authority

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Le Wenliang Li Wenliang

“In this world there are no heroes descended from heaven, there are only ordinary people who come forward.”

During the lockdown in China prompted by Coronavirus, folk musical and ritual activities have been on hold—but some brave local performers have been reflecting the outbreak in online songs criticizing the Party’s handling of the crisis.[1]

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