Books

Poetry Review: Valerio Magrelli’s “Vanishing Points”

March 19, 2011
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Magrelli’s is a reserved, critical intelligence, and his poems do not issue from a position of knowledge, but rather from a doubt that stands, and dances, slowly on a profound respect for ambiguity.

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Coming Attractions in Jazz: Late March 2011

March 18, 2011
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UpdatedA celebratory month: Pianist Nando Michelin honors one of his native Uruguay’s greatest poets, a legendary Ethiopian vocalist rejoins the Either/Orchestra, a stellar Jazz Piano Summit comes to Connecticut, and much, much more.

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Book Review: Exploring “The Memory of Love” in postwar Sierra Leone

March 17, 2011
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In her second novel, Aminatta Forna gives us a moving story of the toll that the terrible civil war in Sierra Leone has taken and is still taking, years after it supposedly ended.

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Book Review: The Greatest Horror Novel of the 20th Century

March 16, 2011
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German author Ernst Weiss’s nightmarish vision of science gone mad in his 1931 novel Georg Letham is not rote Freudian; it is firmly in the social critique/ apocalyptic Darwinian mode.

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Theater Review: Prometheus Bound — Bound for Glory (Revised 1X)

March 14, 2011
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Bare chested and sweating up a storm, singer Gavin Creel as Prometheus makes for a rock rebel with lots of snarly attitude, defying Zeus’s tyranny by flexing his abs.

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Fuse Theater/Book Review: An Inspiring Defense Of Why Theater is Necessary

March 12, 2011
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In The Necessity of Theater, author Paul Woodruff makes way for wisdom as theater’s final gift. In his view, theater’s wisdom lies in its use of the mask, and that mask is the sine qua non of meaning. The mask must conceal, if only to reveal.   The Necessity of Theater: The Art of Watching…

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Book Review: Of “Moondogs” and Evil Green Roosters

March 5, 2011
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Moondogs comes of as an entirely fun jaunt through a foreign land that nevertheless hoped to do a bit more. Still, the promise of Alexander Yates’s first novel more than justifies picking up his second, even if it lacks villains, superheroes, and evil green roosters. Moondogs by Alexander Yates. Doubleday, 352 pages, $25.95. By Tommy…

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Book Review: Poetry, Prose, and Politics — Elizabeth Bishop at 100

March 3, 2011
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No new edition of Bishop’s poetry, which she created with such loving-care and sent to publishers with such restraint, not to say stinginess, could advance her current reputation. She is America’s flagship, 20th-century poet, leaving the straight men (Eliot, Frost, Stevens, and Lowell) in her wake. (Expect a Bishop backlash by 2020.) Yet many poetry…

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Visual Arts Review: Edward Gorey @ the Boston Athenaeum

March 3, 2011
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No one is safe in the world of Edward Gorey: “From Number Nine, Penwiper Mews, There is really abominable news:/ They’ve discovered a head/ In the box for the bread, / But nobody seems to know whose.” Elegant Enigmas: The Art of Edward Gorey (1925–2000) will be at the Boston Athenaeum (10 1/2 Beacon St.…

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Book Review: The Préversities of Jacques Prévert — Enthusiastically Translated

February 20, 2011
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Norman Shapiro’s enthusiasm as a translator is felt not only in the versions themselves but also in his introduction and notes. He relishes finding equivalents for Jacques Prévert’s rhyming, which induces him to take some justifiable liberties in regard to the original. The volume is a true labor of love. Préversities: A Jacques Prévert Sampler…

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