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ERIC LARSEN, FOUNDER & PUBLISHER
ADAM ENGEL, ASSOCIATE EDITOR
"The Nation's Last Truly Independent Press" | |
STILL IN SUPPORT OF OWS,
OLIVER ABHORS POLICE ACTION, DESTRUCTION OF BOOKS | |
As everyone now knows, near one o'clock in the morning on November 15th, 2011, spokesman for and shepherd of the people Mayor Michael Bloomberg commanded his militarized riot police to "clear" Zuccotti Park of the many dangerous people who had been living there for two months in the principled, passionate, humane, and idealistic protest known as "Occupy Wall Street."
The good mayor wisely closed airspace over New York City during the blunt physical removal of the protesters--thus making it impossible for news people in helicopters to observe and report on the vulgar and thuggish pro-criminality activities taking place on the ground below.
The belongings, clothing, food, and other possessions of the protesters were in many if not most cases thrown into garbage dumpsters that had been assembled for the purpose. This instant transformation of personal effects into garbage is more reminiscent of hob nails and thuggery than it is the exercise of Constitutional rights in a free republic. Back on September 24th, Oliver donated thirty or so copies of various books to the Zucotti Park library of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Between September 24th and the morning of the raid, that library was said to have grown to approximately 7,000 volumes. After the raid, seven hundred were either left behind or recaptured in any kind of usable condition. Thus nine out of every ten were destroyed.
What are books? At their best, books are knowledge; thought; learning; exploration of spirit, mind, intellect, feeling, and the world; they are the serious products of free expression of numberless kinds. The ninety-percent destruction of such things as these is a fine achievement to see taking place in a free republic--or in a world-class city under the leadership of an especially humane and enlightened mayor.
The books donated by The Oliver Arts & Open Press were the following. Where they are now is anyone's guess:
THE BLUE RENTAL by Barbara Mor
CELLA FANTASTIK by Adam Engel
THE SKULL OF YORICK by Eric Larsen
ABLONG by Alan Salant
I HOPE MY CORPSE GIVES YOU THE PLAGUE by Adam Engel
FROM COMPLICITY TO CONTEMPT by Tim Gatto
A NATION GONE BLIND by Eric Larsen
KIMCHEE DAYS by Tim Gatto
TOPIARY by Adam Engel
HOMER FOR REAL by Eric Larsen
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HAN GLASSMAN PUBLISHES POETRY CELEBRATING THE HUMAN FAMILY:
AUTUMN LAMP IN RAIN |
In some books--and some writers--the relation between art and autobiography is much more visible and, you might say, more necessary than in others. This is the case with Han Glassman. Her poems almost always touch on her life story in some unexpected and subtle yet distinct way--touching on a long life that has been devoted to things good in a world that seems bent on ruining good and replacing it with evil.
Han was born in 1930, in Korea. As a young girl, she lived through the criminality, oppression, and horror of the Japanese occupation in World War II. Not much later, she lived through the ruinous trials of what we call the "Korean War." And, after all of that, she lived through the universally-known difficulties and hardships of making a new life in an entirely new and foreign culture.
For all her life, Han has been a reader of poetry, and for all her life she has been a writer of it. For her, writing poetry is an almost religious act, a way of seeking protection, a life-long invoking of such small images of calm and safety as can be found in a brute world of titanic danger, threat, calamity, pain, cold, and darkness. For her, the arts are absolutely real: They are the actual doing of something, the taking of action to help protect life, inwardness, meaning, and animal well-being. Consider the powerful simplicity of these lines, for example:
A window with lamps inside.
The old typewriter is still working.
A tavern violin, hanging on the wall
Is ready to play for
the safe return of the gypsy
from the snow storm.
One would like to go in behind the window
and relax in the beauty of an old place,
waiting to hear the violin
play again for the
return of the gypsy
from darkness and snow.
Of AUTUMN LAMP IN RAIN, someone said that "with its deft hand and unfailing delicacy of image, it is reminiscent of haiku." In fact, the entirety of Han Glassman's mind, and the entirety of her spirit, are themselves also very much like haiku. For Han, poetry is inextricably woven together with family. With that fact in mind, consider her words, thoughts, and images from the prologue to Autumn Lamp. "Family ," she writes, "means home, work and peace. The rest is not in our hands. We cautiously hold each other trying to cross a reed bridge."
This quiet and powerful book looks straight down, unflinchingly, at the vast abyss that yawns below us. Han Glassman's small book has the delicacy and frailty, and yet also the enormous strength, of the simple reed bridge that supports us, and, somehow, gets us across to the other side.
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STILL AVAILABLE:
ALEN SILVA'S AFGHANISTAN: A WINDOW ON THE TRAGEDGY |
AFTER PRODUCTION DELAYS, ALEN SILVA'S PHOTOGRAPHIC AFGHANISTAN: A WINDOW ON THE TRAGEDY, IS NOW STILL AVAILABLE. READ MORE ABOUT THIS NOTABLE BOOK AND
BUY YOUR COPY HERE.
Thirty-seven-year-old Basque-born Alen Silva is a photographer for newspapers in his native Basque Country, Spain. Beyond doing that work, he has also, over the past fourteen years, travelled widely throughout Latin America and Asia. In fact, he is now planning a return to Asia to make a documentary film about the Afghan refugee camps near Peshawar in Pakistan.
Twice, Silva travelled across a desperately war-torn Afghanistan, going into areas where few foreigners would even think of daring to venture. As a result, Silva brings us this extraordinary book, with its soul-searing photographs of a devastated land. Through Silva's unblinking and often very beautiful images, the viewer can see-among the ruins of Kabul and of the Bamiyan Buddhas, in the wreckage of Soviet tanks, in the sad ruin of Afghan society itself-that the hope for peace still lights the weary faces of the Afghan people, a people who readily welcomed Silva to their homeland.
Well-known actor, writer, and dedicated activist Mike Farrell writes:
"Alen Silva's window on the tragedy of Afghanistan is a wondrous demonstration of the value art can bring to life. His work vividly depicts the history, the haunting beauty, the glory and the horror of Afghanistan. This book rips at the conscience while it begs for a future for this ravaged land."
CLICK HERE TO BUY AFGHANISTAN: A WINDOW ON THE TRAGEDY |
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COMING NEXT FROM
THE OLIVER ARTS & OPEN PRESS |
LISTENING TO THE THUNDER, poetry by Helen Tzagoloff
THE EXPEDITION SETS OUT, poetry by Alan Salant
THE END OF THE 19TH CENTURY, a novel by Eric Larsen
DANCE WITHOUT STEPS, prose narrative by Paul Bendix
TRANSPARENCIES, poetry by Gregory Marszal
OFF THE TRAIL, poetry by Douglas Valentine
AND MORE. . .
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IN THE MEANWHILE. . .
A NOTE:
Working without assets, endowment, or reserves, The Oliver Arts & Open Press aims to publish works of high merit and significance that are ignored or suppressed by mainstream publishing. If you care about this cause and are able or would like to help with it, we at Oliver would be enormously grateful, as would the authors whose work we seek to celebrate and make known.
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