Joey, a guy I knew, used to call every month or so. He hardly ever had an agenda. No, “Can we…” or “What do you think about….” or anything like that. It was just to talk for a while, checking in, letting me and maybe himself know that he was still around.
Bruce Jackson
Emily Rose
This photo graces the cover of Bruce Jackson’s new book of essays, Ephemera 1995-2022. Don’t be fooled by the self-diminishing title. Jackson’s dog earned her paper monument…
The Andy Warhol Diaries
In March 2022, Netflix aired a six-part series, The Andy Warhol Diaries, based upon Pat Hackett’s 1989 book of the same title. Each episode was a hodge-podge of archival footage and photographs, current comments from people who were close to Warhol or who knew someone who was, recreated scenes, repeated current shots of places mentioned (such as Warhol’s house), and, throughout, an AI-generated version of Warhol’s voice, saying lines that almost never went beyond banal and trivial. Many also seemed familiar. I remembered that I’d read Hackett’s book when it came out and then had reviewed it for the Buffalo News (July 2, 1989). It was one of those pieces I did and promptly forgot, in part because the News arts editor mangled it, especially the ending, which he cut off after the first sentence of the final paragraph, so the piece just stopped rather than ended. I found the manuscript, which restores what I actually wrote.
Time and Skyline in Scorsese’s Stoic Epic
Framing the battle
The long narrative core of Martin Scorsese’s 166-minute epic Gangs of New York (2002) is bracketed by two highly stylized sequences — the first, a dystopian “once upon a time” inside a huge ill-lighted building, and the second, a cinematic dissolution of time in a Brooklyn cemetery.
Ginsberg Listening
Every time I saw Allen Ginsberg, he picked up our conversation where we’d left it last time, no matter how much time had intervened.
Addio Alle Armi
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.
Corso’s Shirt (Poverty & Poetry)
What follows is a brief excerpt from Robert Creeley on the Poet’s Work, in conversation with & photographs by Bruce Jackson–a new book documenting a Q&A between Jackson and Creeley that took place in 2001. In the passage below, Jackson’s prompts are bolded.
Encountering Steiner
I first met literary critic and philosopher George Steiner, who died February 3, in early 1964.
Liner Notes
A folklore professor from the Ivy League was scowling when he came up to me at the 1969 meeting of the American Folklore Society. He stabbed a finger in my direction and, without a hello, said, “There’s one thing I can never forgive you for.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“You wrote the liner notes for Phil Ochs’ album.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“That’s not authentic folk music,” he said.
“Who cares?” I said.
The Beat Goes On
Thursday, September 12, 2019
James Card: Bright Light in Darkened Rooms
In the wake of Jonas Mekas’ death, First is reposting Bruce Jackson’s tribute to the great film preservationist James Card.