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If I suffered half as much from the thought that most art has been lost as I suffer every day from the recollection of departed family and friends, I would be in a mental hospital. In this sense, I found myself resisting the message of “The Melancholy Art,” to the point that I felt that the book was laying a guilt trip on me.
Part of what made “The Dream Merchant” so compelling, and at times, harrowing, a read for me are its themes: love, loss, rags and riches, to be sure, but also the theme of aging, and associated loss of power and possibility.
James Longenbach’s ear for the nuances of diction, tone, stress, and the material aspects of poetry is so good, and his grasp of context and biography so assured, one wonders why the essays so often tie themselves into semantic and logical knots.
In her groundbreaking study, Tufts University professor Alisha Rankin essentially revises the history of medicine by showing that women, presumed to be marginal in the development early modern medicine, were actually major players.
“She Kills Monsters” provides a constant stream of creative, amusing, and outrageous moments.
Ten Freedom Summers is a masterful, supple series of compositions that has the gravitas of a major work that also, from time to time, it swings dramatically.
Pianist Randy Weston and arranger Melba Liston will be honored in a celebratory concert at the New England Conservatory.
“Blancanieves” is not quite as charming as “The Artist,” but it’s less of a parlor trick, more sincerely a work of true silent cinema, 85 years after the dawn of sound.
This documentary plays like a didactic high school civics lesson. I agree totally with its politics while abhorring its unimaginative political correctness.
Moving restlessly between independence and interdependence in style and content, the lecture captures the changeling quality that Gish Jen associates with those who must creatively manage multiple cultural influences.
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