Review

Poetry Review: “Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth” — Yusef Komunyakaa, A Poet Who Expresses the World

April 6, 2021
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It is always a pleasure to read the poems of a writer who has an ear for language and an eye for form, a voice of their own, and an interest in a world beyond the reach of their own person.

Book Review: “Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape, and Home”

April 6, 2021
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Endpapers is an invaluable gift to literature, mainly but not only for the quotations, details, and beguilingly written scenes of publisher Kurt Wolff’s life scattered throughout

Book Review: “Last Chance Texaco” — Rickie Lee Jones Remembers

April 5, 2021
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Of all the biographies of female musicians I’ve read in the past year, Last Chance Texaco is the most transparent about the vagaries of fame.

Opera CD Review: Two Splendid World-Premiere Recordings Rediscover an Exotic Master of Song — Reynaldo Hahn

April 5, 2021
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Attention is being paid today to talented composers who have been sidelined or disdained because of their race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation. Reynaldo Hahn qualifies on several counts.

Film Review: “Violation” – Rethinking Revenge

April 3, 2021
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Violation utilizes extreme violence not to revel in a revenge fantasy but to deconstruct the genre’s militantly feminist appeal — “kill your rapist” — as a self-destructive endeavor offering no catharsis whatsoever.

Classical CD Review: Antoine Tamestit, Cédric Tiberghien, and Matthias Goerne play/sing Brahms

April 3, 2021
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One might risk hyperbole by saying so, but in this instance such recklessness is worth it: this album sounds like Brahms as he ought to be played and sung.

Film Review: “Lapsis” — A Satirical Sci-Fi Send-Up of the Gig Economy

April 2, 2021
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This new satirical sci-fi fable is perfect for home streaming to channel (or perhaps exacerbate) your gnawing anxieties at a world slipping into anti-human automation and free-market desperation.

Book Review: “Klara and the Sun” — Dystopia Yes, But There’s Hope

April 2, 2021
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Klara and the Sun is a dystopian novel worth recommending: it is a thought-provoking joy to read.

Watch Closely: “Tell Me Your Secrets” Is a Deft, Well-Acted Thriller

April 2, 2021
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This series taps into the inevitable horror we would all feel if we learned that we had once loved a monster — or that the monster we fear might be inside of us.

Book Review: Alex Ross’s Dizzying, Engrossing, and Sometimes Overwhelming Exploration of Wagnerism

April 2, 2021
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For Alex Ross, Wagnerism is as profound and far-reaching an aesthetic ideology – for good, ill, and all degrees in between – as any.

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