Books

Book Review: Denise Levertov — More Than a Famous Antiwar Poet

May 22, 2013
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This meticulous biography of Anglo-American poet Denise Levertov is the labor of many years and of deep reflection and care.

REVISED: Judicial Review #11: “The Great Gatsby” — A Great Opera?

May 20, 2013
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This Judicial Review deals with the Boston premiere of John Harbison’s opera version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby. Read the reactions and join the conversation.

Fuse News: The Perfect Book Review — Making Things Hot for Dan Brown’s “Inferno”

May 17, 2013
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Deadpan sarcasm perfectly pitched, absurdity of target (and publisher) punctured with a minimum of muss and fuss.

Book Review: The Fine-Spun Harmonic Furies of William Gass’s “Middle C”

May 12, 2013
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Despite “Middle C”’s relative cheeriness, the novel passes a tough sentence on the human race, so uncompromising that its protagonist has a hard time writing it down.

Book Review: A Compelling Look at the Life of Poet John Keats

May 9, 2013
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There is a steadiness about Nicholas Roe’s writing that is deceptive; the life in the Life does not jump off the page, but it accumulates during the reading so that something of what it felt like to be around John Keats remains, as things do when truly experienced.

Book Review: Vital, Phenomenal — Novelist Anthony Marra’s debut

May 8, 2013
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“A Constellation of Vital Phenomena” is spectacular.

Fuse Book Review: Inclement “Climates”

May 7, 2013
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While reading Andre Maurois’ “Climates” you feel your world narrowing in uncomfortable ways.

Short Fuse Book Review: “Harvard Square” — Precincts of a Vanished Life

May 2, 2013
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What is Harvard Square today but a shopping spree waiting to happen, a student lounge, a food court? What could a novel gain by being set in that venue?

Theater Review : “An Iliad” — War’s All Greek to Me

May 1, 2013
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Simultaneously storyteller and player, ancient character and modern respondent, Denis O’Hare’s performance of “An Iliad” elicits the kind of respect automatically granted this genre of demanding monologual performance.

Book Commentary: Two Cheers for British Poet, Book Artist, and Visionary William Blake

April 30, 2013
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Susanne M. Sklar’s study is the best exploration of William Blake’s miraculously bewildering masterpiece that I know of — thoughtful, scholarly, imaginative, and supremely sympathetic to the poet’s ornery complexity as well as his capacity to inspire wonder.

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