The Brooklyn Rail

Guest Critic

A Tree With Roots

By Raymond Foye

When Phong Bui asked me to edit the Critics Page of the Brooklyn Rail I felt I could not refuse, since it’s the only art magazine I read anymore. Ezra Pound said culture is news that stays news, and for me the Brooklyn Rail is the news.

In Conversation

CHARLES STEIN with Raymond Foye

Poet Charles Stein teaches art writing at the MFA program of the School of Visual Arts, New York. His work comprises a complexly integrated field of poems, philosophy, art theory, mathematics, translations from ancient Greek, drawings, photographs, lectures, conversations and music performances. Born in 1944 in New York City, he is the author of fourteen books of poetry. He holds a Ph.D. in literature from the University of Connecticut at Storrs.

Portrait of a Room

By Raymond Foye

For almost sixty years Jordan Belson lived in the same charming corner of San Francisco, the bohemian enclave known as North Beach, named after the region of Italy from where the locals emigrated—the Gulf of Trieste. Rents were cheap and neighbors tolerant.

In Conversation

THOMAS KOVACHEVICH with Raymond Foye

“I’m exploring the world at large and my interior dialogues at the same time.”

In Conversation

Michael Snow with Raymond Foye

Raymond Foye speaks with Michael Snow about his pioneering work as an artist and filmmaker.

In Conversation

GERD STERN with Raymond Foye

Gerd Stern is a poet, painter, sculptor, and media artist. His oral history, From Beat Scene Poet to Psychedelic Multimedia Artist: 1948–1978, was published by The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

In Conversation

Peter Lamborn Wilson with Lucía Hinojosa, Diego Gerard, Raymond Foye, and Anne Waldman

We talked for hours—surrounded by his books and objects—about language and its origins, about technology, US-Mexican politics, and primordial societies, themes we were pursuing in the translation of his texts.

In Conversation

TAMARA GONZALES
with Raymond Foye and Peter Lamborn Wilson

You want to keep the classical, as one root, and have respect for the beauty of that particular cultural contribution. But then, I support not freezing a culture, especially if it’s not mine, in some attempt to keep it pure.

IN MEMORIAM
Rene Ricard
(1946 – 2014)

By Raymond Foye

Growing up in Lowell, Mass., I often took the train to Boston to visit Gordon Cairnie’s Grolier Poetry Bookshop in Harvard Square, hoping to encounter an authentic poet.

Introducing Eric Walker

By Raymond Foye

Raised in the redwood forests of Northern California, Eric Walker turned up in San Francisco at the age of 15, his poetic identity very much intact. He believed he was the reincarnation of Arthur Rimbaud—hard to deny when confronted with the astonishing flow of words and images, not to mention his stunning physical beauty.

In Conversation

RIDE IT, OR GO UNDER
HENRY THREADGILL AND JASON MORAN with George Grella and Raymond Foye

Jazz, at its best and most essential, is a way of making music that is embodied in the musicians, in what they are imagining and playing in the moment. A fundamentally oral tradition, and one of the most sophisticated of its kind, jazz is far less ably served by written and recorded documents than almost any other kind of creative human activity. Jazz is the players; know jazz by following them, seeing them, hearing them.

“It’s a glorious thing if you don’t expect an explanation.”
Jordan Belson on his Art

By Raymond Foye and Jordan Belson

When I lived in San Francisco (1977 – 79) the person I most wanted to meet (after Bob Kaufman) was Jordan Belson. But he had already become quite a famous recluse and all attempts were rebuffed.

Bob Dylan’s The Philosophy of Modern Song

By Raymond Foye

With Dylan, a few words go a long way. Nothing is belabored. When you are discussing songwriting, and you are arguably the finest songwriter of your era, it needn't be. I wouldn't call it shop-speak, it's more insider knowledge.

CLINTON HEYLIN with Raymond Foye

Whenever I am asked which Dylan biography one should read (if you are only going to read one) my answer is always Clinton Heylin's Behind the Shades Revisited, the 2001 revised second edition of his probing and provocative 1991 classic.

In Conversation

Enlightened Aesthetics: LOUISE LANDES LEVI with Raymond Foye

Poet, musician, and translator, Louise Landes Levi was an original member of Daniel Moore’s fusion orchestra and experimental theater troupe the Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company in Berkeley, in the late 1960s, where she played alongside Angus MacLise and Terry Riley in outdoor productions that included Balinese gamelan, Tibetan ceremonial instruments, actors, puppets, and chant. Four decades later, Levi continues to practice this tradition in her own way.

Bob Dylan In The Bardo

By Raymond Foye

Hard to sum up the Dylan show last week, but in short it was great, for all the reasons big music shows are usually not. It was layer upon layer of weirdness, a sense of dramatics somewhere between kabuki and Artaud's Theater of Cruelty. It was definitely a performance, but it was also terribly real.