Perhaps what makes bill Knott’s poetry so addictive is his uncanny ability to turn language inside out.
American
Film Review: “Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead”—The Rise and Fall of the National Lampoon
Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead is mostly a straight-ahead telling of the vivid life of the National Lampoon.
Commentary/CD Reviews: Recent Symphonic Recordings From Boston Orchestras
A series of new and recent recordings by Boston orchestras demonstrate that, in the right hands, symphonic music since 1945 remains alive and well, still powerful, fresh, and vibrant.
Fuse Theater Review: “Mothers & Sons” — Surveying, With Understanding, the Battles Ahead
Mothers & Sons raises important questions about struggle, acceptance, and love, dramatizing battles that are still being waged.
Fuse Theater Commentary/Review: On American Stages — No Politics, Please
In 1939, Clifford Odets wrote that ‘we are living at a time when new art works should shoot bullets.” Fat chance of any shots coming from our voluntarily disarmed theaters.
Book Review: Merritt Tierce’s Smart and Ruthless “Love Me Back” — The Way We Live Now
So much of what this novel has to say feels bracing and necessary. This is where a good part of America lives—dangling over a chasm.
Visual Arts Review: “Quilts and Color” — Far From Folk and Perhaps Beyond Art
Far from being the cool, detached, and cerebral creations of the color field artists, these quilts, imagined in their intended context, are deeply personal, sensuous, and alive.
Book Review: “The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.” — Brooklyn Fiction That is a Breed Apart
The moral urgency and the humane distribution of Adelle Waldman’s authorial sympathy are evident everywhere in “The Love Affair of Nathaniel P.”
Book Review: “The Woman Who Lost Her Soul” — A Lengthy Tale of Innocence Betrayed
Despite his weakness for overwriting, Bob Shacochis has a good and sad story to tell, and he gets through it with a degree of mastery.
Book Review: Denise Levertov — More Than a Famous Antiwar Poet
This meticulous biography of Anglo-American poet Denise Levertov is the labor of many years and of deep reflection and care.