Some of the jokes in “2 Pianos 4 Hands” reach fairly deep into an understanding of how classical music works and is taught; other jokes will be recognizable to anyone who has taken piano lessons or raised a child to do so.
Theater Review: “Say Goodnight Gracie” — Comedic Comfort Food For Aging Palates
“Say Goodnight Gracie” revels in familiarity and age. It travels on creaky wheels of recognition rather than on rockets of revelation.
Poetry Review: Lapidary Ends — “Cut These Words Into My Stone”
This anthology, made up of Michael Wolfe’s superb translations of ancient Greek epitaphs, begins in prehistory and ends in the sixth century C.E.
Book Review: Meet Mikhail Kuzmin —The Oscar Wilde of Russian Literature
Poet Mikhail Kuzmin, born in the 1870s into a family of Russian Old Believers, was a passionate exponent of gay literature in the early twentieth century.
Poetry Review: Poet Henrik Nordbrandt — Hovering Between Banality and Revelation
“Henrik Nordbrandt now holds a unique place in his homeland as its most celebrated national poet, who happens to have spent most of his adult life outside Denmark.”
Poetry Introduction: Handle With Readerly Care – “The Porcupine of Mind”
Consider these few notes my handing The Porcupine of Mind off to you — you read it, you write about it, then we’ll come back and talk.
Poetry Review: Flowers for the Motherland — “A Bouquet of Czech Folktales”
In 1853, the Czech scholar Karol Jaromír Erben published “A Bouquet of Folk Tales,” which became a source-book for artists and composers, and “one of the three foundational texts of Czech literature.”
Poetry Review: Yvan Goll’s “Dreamweed” — Visions of a Shape-shifter
Yvan Goll may be the great shape-shifter, the Zelig, of twentieth-century poetry.
Theater Review: “Rounding Third” — A Funny But Predictable Turn at Bat
“Rounding Third” flounders most when it tries to get serious. Luckily, it doesn’t try very hard, and delivers considerable amusement.
Poetry Review: Jane Shore’s “That Said” — Early and Late
If the poems in “That Said: New and Selected Poems” had been ordered differently, the volume would have made more of its virtues.