Gide’s Looking Glass
Harris Wheless reviews Damion Searls’ new translation of André Gide’s “Marshlands.”
Yesiyu Zhao’s ‘Journey to the West’ at David Castillo Gallery
Suzy V reviews Yesiyu Zhao's show "Journey to the West” at David Castillo Gallery in Miami.
Old News at the New Museum
It is full of work convinced that the world as we know it is doddering towards its end, but gives little consideration to the possibility that it is this old New Museum and old new media art, not the world around it, that has run its course.
Sofia Gubaidulina: Der Zorn Gottes (2019)
If society no longer reliably yields a consistent aesthetic framework, and if even the immediate sensations of our own minds can no longer be trusted, how can we hope to reach the inner truth of an artwork?
Louise Lawler “LIGHTS OFF, AFTER HOURS, IN THE DARK” at Metro Pictures
It took the formula of one species of conceptualism to capture the swan song of another.
John Currin “Memorial” at Gagosian
They’re explicit pictures, and in a world so entirely scrubbed clean of transgression, any sense of naughtiness is its own form of pleasure. Dainty feet and hands poke out in flirty little kicks, one appendage in front of the trompe l'œil frame, the other receding behind. The effect is not unlike a peep show.
“With eyes like ripening fruit”: Manoucher Yektai at Karma
It’s not true that the world is ending — if anything, it already has. And yet life continues, alive in its death. These thoughts — speculations — give a perfunctory account of the work of the late painter and poet Manoucher Yektai, a member of the New York School whose first solo show in the city since 1984 opened at Karma two weeks ago.
“Root-Bound” by JPW3 at Night Gallery
There is a richness in color and fullness of form in these works that drew me into them immediately, and held me there. Within them, colors and shapes seem to crumble and grind together, the complexions plow through each other and themselves.
Kanye West: Donda
In the world of Donda, West wants to treat pop culture as a religion, a place where sinners (abusers, lawbreakers, and killers) have the opportunity for redemption if they want it.
Correspondence with James Berger
I loved Kent's ability to use the poetic art form to criticize not poetry itself, but the popular trends that muddy and obscure poetry by forcing all of us to dig through the garbage to find actual substance.
Discipline and Poetics: On Kent Johnson’s “From One Hundred Poems from the Chinese”
“From One Hundred Poems from the Chinese” doesn’t aspire to the brevity and concision of classical Chinese poetry. They’re relatively long, jumping between themes and styles, and always very funny.
Guy Fawkes Day in The Poetry World
Not since Ed Dorn have we had such scathing satire on the state of the arts, and not since Alexander Pope, I don’t think, have we had someone willing to take on the establishment with such vigor — and in rhymed couplets, yet!
Amanda Gorman, The Typescript, and Big Houses
The ostensible cause was Kent’s Emily Post-Avant piece critiquing Amanda Gorman’s poem for the Biden inauguration, which an editor at The Typescript said was “antithetical to our values.” I’ve sometimes disagreed with Kent, both in private exchanges and on the pages of Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, but I see nothing particularly offensive about the Gorman column, with the possible exception of calling Lady Gaga a “narcissistic bitch.”
On Because of Poetry…
Johnson’s work is distinguishable for its international breadth and for its pugilism.
Though I was often confused about the heated arguments
He has a cause and he has devoted himself to it. I can’t say God bless him but I can say Poets bless him.
“All Because of Poetry”: The Sincerity of Kent Johnson’s Satire
“It sucks being a famous poet. / All your time gets taken up on / the phone or in answering emails / from people looking for a blurb, / and stuff. It’s totally tiresome!”