A Website of the Radical Imagination
Hillary Clinton’s shot and a beer in Scranton reminded me of that old X song “The Have-Nots” — “How does it feel to have your own bottle of booze behind the bar, how does it feel?” Hillary, the $109 million dollar woman, doesn’t want to know yet she’s once again fabulating a felt connection with … Read more
Jesus taught me to love the hell out of my enemies. –Jeremiah Wright It takes an extraordinary faith in Barack Obama to believe, in early April of 2008, that Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president is somehow doomed. We can recite primary results and rattle off probable scenarios all we like, but the truth is that … Read more
What follows are remembrances of Amiri Baraka by First writers and readers (new and old). While there’s nothing official about this tribute, everyone who contributed hopes it might serve as a comfort and/or calmative to Baraka’s wife Amina and his sons and daughters. Baraka was a brick for the bunch who started First of the … Read more
Don’t play around the course he got the took the rook the crook the snook all were pasted upon him like a long vicious learning there is all of Africa all of night all the every trace of sweet hurt distilled like cobalt turned into night the distant moon a door to where no one … Read more
The NBA playoffs—from the high drama of the early series to divine low-downs of Charles Barkley—show what happens when African Americans get to compete on equal terms. But the sweetness of their play shouldn’t be an excuse for the treacle of that State Farm ad set in the 1920s(?) where Chris Paul’s proprietorial “twin” pitches … Read more
There’s a lot to delight in “The Opening of the Field”—the exhibition on the art of Jess, Robert Duncan and their circle now at American University in D.C. after a run at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery. Thomas Evans’s review here offers a pro’s eye on the show. A painting by Jess of Pauline Kael and … Read more
Exploring the art and coteries of the artist Jess (1923–2004) and the poet Robert Duncan (1919–1988), An Opening of the Field celebrates the vibrant household of two extraordinary men who lived together as lovers and collaborators at the epicenter of the San Francisco Bay Area’s glory years of artistic ferment. For Jess and Duncan, the … Read more