Books

Poetry Review: Translucent Translations — “Wheel with a Single Spoke”

September 26, 2012
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Nichita Stănescu is one of the poets who broke through the socialist-realism sound barrier and propelled Romanian poetry into new spheres.

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Book Interview: Novelist and Short-Story Writer Nathan Englander Is Happy to Go Back to Basics

September 25, 2012
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Nathan Englander’s first play, “The Twenty-Seventh Man,” opens at the Public Theater in New York tonight. Fuse Editor Bill Marx spoke to the acclaimed, best-selling writer about the script and the production when Englander visited Wellesley College recently.

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Poetry Review: A “Memorial” Written in a Voice That Does Not Break

September 23, 2012
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Alice Oswald’s “Memorial” begins with a list of 214 names, a bare, sorrowful cousin to the ship’s roll. If you know the old stories, you’ll begin to recognize some names, and then start to look forward to others.

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Coming Attractions in Jazz: September 2012

September 19, 2012
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Updated Sept. 19. Performances tonight and tomorrow evening by the Fred Hersch Trio and the Jeremy Pelt Quintet at Scullers have been cancelled due to a power outage at the DoubleTree hotel. Also, a late addition to the schedule: poet Robert Pinsky and pianist Laurence Hobgood at Club Oberon; plus, a reminder that Brazilian guitarist Rogerio Souza is at Ryles tonight. (For details, see below.) As autumn approaches, Berklee celebrates Ray Charles, NEC kicks off 40th anniversary festivities for its Contemporary Improvisation department, and New England jazz boasts a series of spectacular duo performances, Brazilian music in a variety of flavors, release events for new CDs, and some all-star quintets.

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Book Review: Summer Reading Retrospective — Vanishing Is The Thing

September 16, 2012
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The big theme in fiction this summer was the resonance of disappearance — seen as satire, as melodrama, and as tragedy.

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Theater Interview: “The Kite Runner” — Adapting an Epic Story to the Stage

September 15, 2012
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“There aren’t a lot of roles for Middle Eastern actors in the United States. And it does mean something to me to be able to create roles like this.”

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Theater Review: “Hand in Hand Together” — The Perils of Political Theater in Translation

September 15, 2012
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Many historical dramas are content to use the past as a lens through which to view the present, but “Hand in Hand Together” does more than explore how conflicting ideologies influenced the creation of modern Israel. Dramatist A. B. Yehoshua explores the other possible routes history may have taken.

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Coming Attractions in Jazz: Autumn Festivals 2012

September 14, 2012
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From the Berkshires to Cape Cod, and with a major stop in Beantown, Massachusetts is the place to be for the autumn jazz festival season.

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Book Review: “The Greatcoat” – A Great Ghost Story?

September 12, 2012
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I can say, without equivocation, that Helen Dunmore’s novel “The Greatcoat” is no “The Turn of the Screw.”

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Book Commentary/Review: Imagine There Are No Negative Reviews — It’s Not So Easy If You Try

September 10, 2012
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Who has taken criticism out of the hands of the “true critics”? Is someone making me read rancid Amazon reader reviews? Where do we look for the “true critics”?

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