I know that I’m depressed, sensitive, and selfish. I’m just determined to do this thing, which is paint in solitude, and I will burn bridges to do it, including relationships.
—
Celeste Dupuy-Spencer
Jazz by Jasiri
- Gilles Peress by Carole Kismaric
- Matthew Ritchie by Jenifer Berman
- Tim Roth by Gary M. Kramer & Steve Buscemi
- Amy Hempel by Suzan Sherman
- Kendall Thomas by Lynne Tillman
- Christian Wolff by Damon Krukowski
- Emmylou Harris by Lucinda Williams
- George Walker by Stephen Haff
- Wallace Shawn by Patrick McGrath
Interviews
- Wolf Kahn by Stanley Moss
Artists on Artists
- Bruiser by Richard House
- Untimely Meditations by Saul Williams
- Brothers Keep Me Up by Suheir Hammad
- Jupiter by T'Kalla
- Two Poems by Tai Allen
- Memory of Loss by Amanda Means
- Wolf Soup by Vijay Seshadri
- Brooklyn Moon Cafe Poets by Zoë Anglesey
- Two Poems by Connie Deanovich
- Nosotros Necesitamos Zapatos Para Zapatistas by Federico Perez
- Van Gogh’s Bad Café by Frederic Tuten
- Sid by Jah'ni
- Jazz by Jasiri
- The Sweetest Revolutionary by Jessica Care Moore
- Kill Kill Faster Faster by Joel Rose
- Requiem by Kathy Acker
- The Keepsake by Kirsty Gunn
- Two Poems by Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie
First Proof
- Vikram Chandra’s Love and Longing in Bombay by Betsy Sussler
- Cédric Klapisch’s When the Cat’s Away by Liza Béar
- Patrick McGrath’s Asylum by Betsy Sussler
- Linda Yablonsky’s The Story of Junk by Lynne Tillman
- Rick Moody’s Purple America by Betsy Sussler
- Fernanda Eberstadt’s When the Sons of Heaven Meet the Daughters of Earth by Anney Bonney
- Robert Antoni’s Blessed is the Fruit by Jenifer Berman
- Yannick Murphy’s Sea of Trees by Suzan Sherman
- Kula Shaker: Retroculture by Lynn Geller
- Brad Mehldau by Zoë Anglesey
- Carolee Schneemann: Like a Cat on a Fish by Darryl Turner
- Judith Belzer by Jack Stephens
- Ingrid Calame by David Pagel
- Don Gast’s When We Were Kings by Jenifer Berman
- John Singleton’s Rosewood by Susan Shacter
- David Lehman’s Valentine Place by Robert Polito
- Bradford Morrow’s Giovanni’s Gift by Jim Lewis
Editor's Choice
1.
I’m the next coming to suffering, but I remember my birth
When I first brought pain to the table as an offering to my people
It was accepted and passed down; I give it rhythm … .
The horn played the time my wife left, when Daniel died,
when Nigger was a noun and boy was my last name.
2.
Lives are expensive
It cost me power to take one
with no promises but a come around
All my ends never filled the hole
3.
May power respect my ritual
May my body have head to see the villain at my table
May it affect me
May we agree
May it be true that if I hurt you, then I meant it
May apologies reach my right side before my left hand
May instructions hold me till my word works and my face is enough
May I love this when I meet me
Hope we still cool
Related
A 1971 photograph by Jan van Raay shows artist Cliff Joseph leading a group of artist-activists—members of the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC)—in the dead of winter protesting the Whitney Museum’s controversial exhibition Contemporary Black Artists in America (months before its opening on April 7, 1971).
“I can’t distill it all,” Evie Shockley confesses in her contribution to this vital and multifarious print offshoot of Claudia Rankine’s online Open Letter Project.
I met Claudia Rankine in a parking lot after a reading, where I said crazy fan things like, “I think we see the same thing.”
Originally published in
BOMB 59,
Spring 1997
Featuring interviews with Tim Roth, Amy Hempel, Emmylou Harris, Matthew Ritchie, Wallace Shawn, Christian Wolff, Gilles Peress, Kendall Thomas, and George Walker.
