Modernism seen now

RICHARD GERSTL (1883–1908), Self-Portrait in front of a Stove, 1907. Oil on canvas on board. Neue Galerie New York Modern Worlds: Austrian and German Art, 1890-1940 Renée Price (ed.), Prestel/Neue Galerie, 2021, 656pp, $75/£55 ALEXANDER ADAMS is transported to a thrilling time of artistic experimentation The Neue Galerie in New York holds one of the world’s…

John Wyndham, genius and prophet

The Wyndham Collection John Wyndham, three vols. (Day of the Triffids, The Midwich Cuckoos, The Chrysalids), Folio Society, 2022, 704 pps, £125 ALEXANDER ADAMS finds 1950s classics have troublingly modern messages The publication of a clothbound boxset containing the classic novels Day of the Triffids, The Midwich Cuckoos and The Chrysalids by John Wyndham (1903-1969)…

Seas within seas

Bucentaur at the Molo, Ascension Day, by Giovanni Antonio Canal (Canaletto) History of the Adriatic: A Sea and its Civilization Egidio Ivetic, Cambridge: Polity, 2022, hb., 352 pps, £25 DEREK TURNER wallows in warm world-historical waters The Mediterranean flows always through European awareness, Homer’s ‘wine-dark-sea’ and the Romans’ Mare Nostrum becoming ‘Our Sea’ too by…

Fifty years of Exile on Main Street

CHRISTOPHER SANDFORD remembers a basement-born, band-defining album According to most accounts of the genesis of the Rolling Stones’ iconic album Exile on Main Street, there was a richly symbolic moment early in the recording process. One of the group’s satellite members, in most versions the pianist Nicky Hopkins, reported for duty in the Stygian bunker-studio…

An older New Romantic

PHOTO BY GIORGIO ERRIQUEZCommons.Wikimedia RICHARD DOVE drops back into the Eighties with one of the era’s great singers Anthony Patrick Hadley has an MBE and a voice from the Gods. He has forged a forty-year career in the skittish world of pop music and, by last night’s (5 May) showing, is still going strong. At…

Four poems by Clarence Caddell

CLARENCE CADDELL lives with his wife and three children in western Victoria, Australia, where he works as a high school English and humanities teacher, and writes in spare time he doesn't have. His first collection of poems, The True Gods Attend You, will be published by Bonfire books in 2022.  Note. The first two poems…

The Salad Course, and The Hottest Ticket

P & J Poetics, LLC, published MIKE ALEXANDER’s first full-length collection, RETROgrade, in 2013. His most recent chapbook, We Internet in Different Voices (Modern Metrics), was released by EXOT books. His poems have appeared in Rattle, River Styx, Borderlands, Bateau, Abridged, Measure, Shit Creek Review, Raintown Review & other journals. The Salad Course Single-handed, Don Miguel clears the dinner table,…

On First Concert at the Bradley Symphony Center, Milwaukee

JACOB RIYEFF (@riyeff) is a translator, teacher, and poet. His work focuses on the Western contemplative tradition and the natural world. Jacob lives in the Upper Midwestern U.S. with his wife and three growing children.”A man’s attitude to life.” (Feb 20, 2022)O Edward Elgar, did you see our facesrapt in darkness, hearts attuned to your celloAs you lay upon your deathbed, tracesOf joy accompanying the low and mellowTones the strings invite our ears to hearAmid glissando runs to keep the mindAnd body clear? You cursed its weak premiereBut here a hundred years past you findA willing crowd to celebrate your movementsAs you lay in Worcester gasping for air‚From lyric to rondo, fulfillmentIn sonic pattern, virtuosic fare.Could you see, in your final agony,Our festival of superfluity?