the tant mieux project =
one woman, 4 cameras, 2 videocameras, 2 tripods, 4 computers, a cellphone = so much better
TANT MIEUX IS NOW PART OF THE TANTMIEUX | CYRANO PROJECT
EDITORS, SADI RANSON-POLIZZOTTI & PATRICE GREANVILLE
Welcome to The Tant Mieux Project
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Tant Mieux is one of a several selected sites that are linked directly from www.bobdylan.com which is a great feat, considering we had not set out to achieve this and so we are pleased about this as we are always to have the good word spread on Dylan in any way and to have you visit the site. We are working on a book at present of collected essays through the years such as some of these on Tant Mieux - the tone of - and which are represented by Bob Silverstein, New York. You can find out more by shooting me an email through the Contact link of this site and I'll be sure it is passed on. In fact, if there is anything Dylan related that we can be of assistance with, please let us know - it's what we do - so let us know. Let me know, I ought say.
In other news, the new poetry collection is forthcoming this Spring (09) from Twilight Times & Alyscamps Press, Paris as a co-edition publication which will be available in both the US and Europe. The title of the book will be For Goodness' Sake... New Poems by Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti, so do let me know if you are interested in a copy of the book. A lot of the poems in the book are new. Some appear on this site, some are newer and do not. If you have questions, please, do ask. Again, just use the Contact link.
I, along with other Carroll writers, notably John Tufail, Sherry Ackerman, & Karoline Leach are all part of Contrariwise, The New Association for New Carroll Studies. We've also built out a Carroll area in Tant Mieux. To visit that section, click here. There, you will find out more about my forthcoming book, some ordering information, quotes and blurbs, new articles that reinvigorate Carroll and more, So please visit and if you have questions, use the Contact link. If you are likewise a Carroll scholar and would like to write for Tant Mieux or have something to contribute, don't be shy.
The goal of the Tant Mieux Project is to bring you the best commentary and content on the Web today, ranging from poetry, cultural comment, images by Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti, Carl Johnson, Owen Hartford and others. We have several distinct sections - our very popular and multimedia Bob Dylan site that has succeeded (and continues to not only succeed, but to surpass our expectations) tremendously in its area with links back from all over the states (America) as well as throughout Europe. Want to link? Use the Contact link and let us know and we'll gladly link back. With over three-hundred and fifty images, we have one of the most extensive collections of Dylan images on the Web, and from many different eras, from the get-go to the now. Click on the following link: image gallery of Bob Dylan - which is, I'm proud to say, one of the best on the Web.
The Dylan section of Tant Mieux is an important part of what we do here. It is, in many ways, the heart and soul of Tant Mieux just as much as the poetry is. We have regular contributors but are always looking for the brightest and best. If you are interested in covering a show, contact us. Have photos? Write. Opinion? Contact. You'll be in good company. In short, anything related to Dylan, we want to know about it. Most recently, we were contacted by Dylan's people (direct) to contribute to a new and improved Dylan.com as a featured writer and someone who can give valuable, we hope, insight and input into the new site. So we have been, then, officialized: Tant Mieux and nine other sites were chosen worldwide. Indeed, it's fair to say that perhaps the man himself found the site compelling. We are proud, and who wouldn't be? When we are live, we'll let you know (that is, site live), and look for us in Google News and Expectingrain.com, where we always hit.
Note too that our design has won Best of the Web and we are proud of that as well and Teleread for whom we are a regular contributor, was chosen the publisher Wiley as important part of the book Blogging Heroes. We are also taking regular contributors and will be covering the show "Tangled Up in Ore" at Ironworld and others. If you have a show in your area that you would like to cover for Bob Dylan on Tant Mieux, please use Contact and be in touch; become a contributor!
So, exciting things are happening, and we can't yet fully reveal all, but time will tell the tale. We try hard to write something original in everything we do. We even try to have a site that stands apart from the others in visual terms. We, to use Apple's phrase, Think Different. There is very little one can say or do that has not already been done, but it is all in how you do it and how you say it, One would imagine this a positive thing in any scholarship, yet this is not always so: there is always someone or some people who feel they "own" a person or subject. Bob Dylan is a perfect example - Everybody wanted a piece of Bobby, Van Ronk said. Everybody claimed a piece. Not much has changed. We don't claim to "own" Dylan because people cannot and should not be owned. I outright reject the notion. What I embrace however, are different schools of thought. There are some sites that are updated daily and they offer you something we do not. At Tant Mieux, we offer you something entirely different (no better or worse, just different): we want to bring you the introspective, the one-layer deeper, the funny, the sad, some insight that perhaps has not yet been had. Whether we succeed or not, we try to be truly original and I think sometimes, we hit.
In other news, we are now an editor of the fine journal edited by Karl Orend, Nexus, the definitive international journal about Henry Miller and Anais Nin and just contributed a piece about Jabberwhorl Cronstadt from Miller's book "Black Spring." More, we have been working with David Beamon and Richard Dupuis to form Sufficient Sunshine, which is spoken word poetry set to music, so take a listen. You can visit the Sufficient Sunshine site, and then you'll be redirected here , but it's worth visiting Sufficient Sunshine to see the lyrics as well. Our poems have also been set to music along with the likes of Plath and Yeats for Sam Sadigursky's New Amsterdam Records. More poetry news, the fine journal, Adagio Verse Quarterly, chose several new poems (warning: these are not uplifting), but you can read them here. We're pleased, more than pleased, to say that recently our work was picked up by The Adroitly Placed word (ed. John Vick) and you can read the words and listen to the audio on the site The Adroitly Placed Word.
We are also very, very pleased to say that at long last Cyrano with editor Patrice Greanville, Editors Noam Chomsky and Editor Emeritus, Gore Vidal and Tant Meiux have finally gotten together - the fusing of two great ideas. So you'll find Cyrano here and Tant Mieux on Cyrano here. I am now the Senior Cultural and Political Editor of Cyrano (if you want more about me, click there). We bring correspondents from all over the world to bring you the real news, not the shrink-wrapped television version, so check it out. And comment - whether you like it or not, we want to hear you!)
I have been writing a new work of fiction entitled "Unnaturally Close" - the story of two cousins who fall in love in childhood and never fall out of love, even as they grow older. What I have realized in the writing is that it is possible to love once, fully, and forever. That despite what others may say or do, hardships suffered, love endures. Real love is lasting, and nothing can change that. Love, real love, takes courage. Gandhi said that true love is for the realm of the brave; I couldn't agree more. Asa and Pippa are utterly defiant, and utterly unapologetic and unrepentant for their love and good for them! We do not live in a world of absolutes or by some "good book". True love tells its own tale, and therein we find the true Song of Songs.
These days, I realize how like children we are playing Fellini's Asa Nisi Masa, shadows on the wall - a child's game between cousins in his film 8.5. Things change, but they don't. The world moves, we move with it. I have stood still and yet I have fallen so very far. I have learned then that some things are irrelevant. Names are irrelevant, definitions are irrelevant. The only thing that matters in the final account is not what some fish-wife shouts at you, but that, in the final account, you can look in the mirror and know that you are Good in the Platonic sense of the word. Someone once told me that, while looking in the mirror, he saw beside him a reflection of me and all he saw and felt in that looking glass was Goodness and Innocence... some things do come with a capital letter. Lewis Carroll knew it well. As he wrote, "Last week is over. Next week will be a different thing entirely..." Or, as we say in Yiddish, Necktiger tog. And privately, I say to you, Es gefelt mir. You know who you are.
Be safe. Be good.
editorial director, the tant mieux project
summer, 2009