Books

Book Review: Denis Johnson’s Plays in Verse — The Art of Talking with the Devil

October 18, 2012
Posted in ,

One answer to the question of “Why two plays in verse?” might be that Denis Johnson is a writer relentlessly in pursuit of new forms, and new formal challenges—a literary daredevil always looking for a new vehicle to take for a thrill ride.

Book Review: An Admirable Look at the Art of Robert Frost

October 12, 2012
Posted in ,

THE ART OF ROBERT FROST helped me get closer to the poems and in doing so helped me get closer to the poet.

Book Review: The Overthrow of Pessimism — Sherman Alexie’s Song of Redemption

October 3, 2012
Posted in ,

Grappling with one’s identity — complicated by the relationships between tradition and modernism, cultural history and the process of assimilation — is central to most of Sherman Alexie’s stories, and his exploration of these complexities is compelling and illuminating.

Book Review: Per Petterson’s “It’s Fine By Me” — A Sensitive Tale of a Lost Boy

October 1, 2012
Posted in , ,

“It’s Fine By Me” is the story of so many lost boys in literature, who run, who rebel, who are crushed, or luckily find their way.

Book Review: Steve Stern’s Fabulous “Book of Mischief”

September 27, 2012
Posted in ,

Here is a writer whose vision and generous spirit cannot be ignored. And that Steve Stern writes a prose as fine as anyone could wish must be emphasized, as well.

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

September 26, 2012
Posted in , ,

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

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

September 25, 2012
Posted in , ,

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.

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

September 23, 2012
Posted in ,

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.

Coming Attractions in Jazz: September 2012

September 19, 2012
Posted in , , , ,

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.

Book Review: Summer Reading Retrospective — Vanishing Is The Thing

September 16, 2012
Posted in ,

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

Recent Posts

Popular Posts

Categories

Archives