What Lies Beneath

Local

It was a hot day in July 1996 when Dorothy Swick started smelling chemicals in the basement of her Greenpoint home. She scoured the sheetrock walls and barren concrete floor for clues, but found nothing.

Imperial Wasteland

Express

Like the tightly knit group of imperialists who provoked a “splendid little war” with Spain in 1898 to “establish the supremacy of the American republic throughout the East till the end of time,” the neo-imperialist power elites that crystallized in and around the Bush administration imagined when they invaded Iraq that the world was finally theirs.

Michael Brenson with David Levi Strauss and Phong Bui

Art

One Saturday afternoon in February, Rail publisher Phong Bui drove up the Hudson Valley to High Falls, New York to visit our consulting editor David Levi Strauss in his library, where they both sat down to talk to art critic Michael Brenson about his life and work.

Karin Davie with Joan Waltemath

Art

On the occasion of her traveling mini-survey featuring 41 paintings, drawings, and sculptures, which began last month on February 23rd at the Albright-Knox Museum in Buffalo, Rail contributing editor Joan Waltemath visited Karin Davie’s Lower East Side studio to discuss her life and work.

Irving Petlin with John Yau

Art

Irving Petlin discusses the Peace Tower with John Yau.

A Time for Talk and...Action

The Muslim world erupts in reaction to the juvenile provocations of a reactionary Danish newspaper. The Vice President fills a hunting partner full of buckshot and then makes Harry take the fall. The Democrats take a hard line on the United Arab Emirates but have no position on the war in Iraq. It is indeed a cartoonish moment in world affairs.

The King of Boredom

Books

A great big book of graphical scores, sound poems and experimental performative texts arrived in my mailbox recently. Doings by Jackson Mac Low (1922-2004) is a massive—and massively important—tome for anyone interested in the history of 20th innovative poetry.

Giorgio Morandi: The Art of Silence

Books

In the 20th century pantheon of modernist European painters, Giorgio Morandi’s image of formal purity, and his reputation of personal asceticism has been second to none, except, perhaps, for Alberto Giacometti.

Of Community & Constants: Two Decades of Evidence

Dance

In its 20th anniversary run at the Joyce Theater, Ronald K. Brown/Evidence presented six works whose most resonant effects stem from the performers’ precision and strength.

A Selection of the Kenny G. Letters

Poetry

Presented here are some of my very favorite Kenny G fan letters.

I AM DYING, MEESTER?

LastWords

Panama clung to our bodies—Probably cut—Anything made this dream—It has consumed the customers of fossil orgasm—Ran into my old friend Jones—So badly off, forgotten, coughing in 1920 movie…