Review
ON VALENCIA STREET – Jack Micheline – Review
Marc Olmsted
ON VALENCIA STREET
Jack Micheline
Edited by Tate Swindell
Introduction by Eric Mingus
Lithic Press
$20.00
Jack Micheline is not so much an unsung but undersung member of the Beat Generation, a fixture on the San Fra...
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Writing
Philosophers on Laughter
Andrei Codrescu
There is nothing to laugh at.
Plato advised keeping it in: no laughter.
What are you laughing at?
Plato said Homer shouldn't have said the gods laugh.
They laugh, you won't.
He was right on the money on that.
What are ...
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Review
Kerouac: The Last Quarter Century by Gerald Nicosia – Review
Jim Feast
Kerouac: The Last Quarter Century
Gerald Nicosia
Corte Madera, CA: Noodlebrain Press, 2019
Gerald Nicosia's Kerouac: The Last Quarter Century is an absorbing and crucial book, laying out repeatedly how commerce triumphed over art and any real literary values in Kerouac's story. That story culminates with the scandal of auctioning off the roll manuscript of On the Road to a sports franchise owner, who obviously could not care less about the literary qualities of the text and knows it only as the work of a cult author, which may appreciate in value. It is also the story of the inheritance battle scandal which arises around will-tampering and high-priced lawyers.
Putting aside that Kerouac died nearly penniless and now others are making millions off his legacy, the real crime is the fact that the values he espoused in On the Road and other texts, the importance of spirituality, comradeship, adventuring and giving zero atten...
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Poem
Four Poems by Johanna Domonkos
Johanna Domonkos
blooming and decomposing moments absorbing inside me
touching and my face shared in everything blooming decomposing
absorbing inside me to recognize why I came to the intersecting line of
something or another to make me ...
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Story
Problem Child
Ron Kolm
It all started with a big bang -- the sound of something heavy smashing against a wall, and it came from the apartment directly below mine. I headed out into the hallway to see what had happened, and was greeted by the secon...
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Review
The Criminal: The Invisibility of Parallel Forces by Max Wolf Valerio – Review
Marc Olmsted
The Criminal: The Invisibility of Parallel Forces
by Max Wolf Valerio
Eoagh Books, $20.00
Reviewed By Marc Olmsted
MAX WOLF VALERIO said, “Before I transitioned, I was 19 and showed Allen Ginsberg a poem of mine ...
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Writing
Poems from Hungary by Gabor G. Gyukics
Gabor G Gyukics
they’re not afraid
a paper lampshade swayed
illuminating a well laid table
as the guests
shuffled around the stove’s mouth
that let the soot fall back down in
from the brick chimney
the host
knock...
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Essay
Mike Golden: The Unbearable Beatnik of Lite – & Dark
bart plantenga
I come from a long line of people who drank rat poison. They got headaches every time because they thought the skull & crossbones over the instructions was just a cool logo.
Mike Golden [RIP], bless and rest his littl...
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Poem
madly in love love you madly
Amy Ouzoonian
for Steve Cannon
I keep wanting to call you up and say
Steve, can you believe this shit?
And you’d laugh
and say I’m hip!
I’m throwing some shit in the game.
600,000 VA patients died because of Hospital negl...
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Story
East of Bowery & The Circus Life
Drew Hubner
East of Bowery was what my mother called the place where we lived when I was a kid, and this is the way our family lived: when my mom wasn’t completely drunk yet, and if my dad got high in time, he might come in and Diz, m...
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Review
Something’s Happening But You Don’t Know What It Is
Vincent Zangrillo
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese
Reviewed by Vincent Zangrillo
I’ll tell you my own Bob Dylan story. Or maybe two or three. I can guarantee you that these are the god’s honest truth, ...
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Essay
First Thought, Best Thought
Richard Modiano
The expression “first thought, best thought” is usually attributed to Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg indeed popularized the phrase but it was actually coined by his Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Further, there is ...
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Poem
Michael Herr Once Asked Me…
Peter Marti
Michael Herr Once Asked Me...
“How do you write about Buddhism?” and looked around
where we stood, eating our ritual potluck rice and stew after
evening puja—our Teacher sat huddled with the other
Tibetans la...
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