Book
There’s Never Been A Better Time To Die
Bernard Meisler
Sensitive Skin Books is proud to present THERE'S NEVER BEEN A BETTER TIME TO DIE, a noir/mystery/crime novel/comedy/satire of late-stage capitalism, as seen through the eyes of a real estate agent in Marin County, who accidentally becomes a hard-boiled detective.
The novel takes place in Marin County, CA, 2008, just before the bubble burst. Once the home to the Grateful Dead, Gary Snyder and Sam Shepard, the newer demographic tends toward hedge fund managers, dotcom millionaires and trophy wives, where people, without any sense of irony, paste "Keep Tahoe Blue" bumper stickers on their gigantic SUVs. Despite widespread affluence, conspicuous consumption and a massive sense of entitlement, there is an undercurrent of fear among the residents—of a downturn causing them to lose it all, their kids drinking or taking drugs (or murdering an Italian policeman while on vacation in Europe), of falling behind their neighbors, of getting foun...
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Book
The Last Poet of the Village
Sergei Yesenin
Sensitive Skin is proud to present The Last Poet of the Village, a bilingual (Russian/English) edition of selected poems by the perhaps the greatest 20th-century Russian poet, Sergei Yesenin, translated by acclaimed Russian-American poet Anton Yakovlev, with prefaces by Yakovlev and Donald Zirilli.
Sergei Yesenin (1895-1925), whose distinctive lyricism and lush rural imagery have indelibly imprinted themselves into the Russian consciousness, is second in popularity among Russian speakers only to Alexander Pushkin. Sadly, Yesenin has received surprisingly little attention abroad, where he is best known for his brief marriage to Isadora Duncan. This bilingual edition (original Russian side-by-side with translation by Anton Yakovlev) is an attempt to rectify the relative scarcity of Yesenin’s English translations and to introduce English speakers to many of his most beloved and iconic poems.
Four sample poems from the book are now ...
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Poem
Four New Translations of Sergei Yesenin – translated by Anton Yakovlev
Anton Yakovlev
Please enjoy these four poems from The Last Poet of the Village: Selected Poems of Sergei Yesenin Translated by Anton Yakovlev, now available in print and Kindle format from Amazon. Or ask for it from your local bookstore or...
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Podcasts
S02E01 – Anton Yakovlev
Bernard Meisler
Anton Yakovlev in conversation with Bernard Meisler.
Welcome to season 2 of the Sensitive Skin magazine podcast! We discuss Anton's growing up in Moscow, during the final years of the Soviet Union, his emigration to t...
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Book
Sensitive Skin Selected Writing 2016-2018
The Editors
Sensitive Skin Books is proud to present our first writing anthology, Sensitive Skin Selected Writing: 2016-2018, Our (once print, now online only) magazine has been described as "The New Yorker on acid," and "almost underground." For almost 30 years, it has featured writing, art and music by artists famous, infamous, unknown and breaking, everybody from William S. Burroughs to Richard Hell to John Lurie to Alex Katz to Eileen Myles to Gary Indiana.
For many (mostly obvious reasons), our final print issue was released in early 2016. But we thought it would be a valuable resource to collect some of our favorite writing from 2016 to 2018, because print, though more and more difficult to justify producing, is still - well, great.
This 306-page anthology, edited by Bernard Meisler, collects selected stories, poems and essays, published online between 2016 and 2018, so you can finally enjoy them in physical book (and Kindle - we ma...
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Writing
John Giorno, RIP
B. Kold
The great poet/performer John Giorno has left this earthly plane. Here's a piece we published by him way back in 1994, an excerpt from his book, You've Got To Burn To Shine.
John Giorno The Movie of Andy Warhol's Sleep ...
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Podcasts
Season 2 Episode 0
Bernard Meisler
A season-opening mini-episode of the Sensitive Skin podcast featuring your host, Bernard Meisler.
I discuss some of last season's 20 podcasts, what I learned, and the new upcoming season of another 20. Our first guest wil...
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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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