Wednesday, October 26 2011
Tough Guys Recite: The 5 Best Poetry Spittin’ TV Characters
Every generic hero on TV can finish a poetic quotation or identify a poignant quatrain (down to the line numbers). But few can spit Tennyson or Yeats with such venom as these guys.
Monday, October 17 2011
Evangelista: In Animal Tongue
In Animal Tongue is not for everyone, and will likely only find its audience among those who are willing to join the artist on her journey of cobbling disparate sounds and images together.
Thursday, August 4 2011
Matana Roberts: COIN COIN Chapter One: Gens de Couleur Libres
Roberts gives eloquent voice to the fractured nature of identity, the way conflicting identifications jostle for prominence in our psyches, the multiple consciousness of modern hybridity.
Friday, May 27 2011
Nicholas Urie: My Garden
Like Bukowski, the gloomy laureate whose work is re-sounded here, Nichloas Urie is not afraid to walk on the dark side. He's also able to find fragments of beauty in the gloom.
Tuesday, March 8 2011
Gil Scott-Heron & Jamie xx: We’re New Here
The sly luxury of the xx's debut is present here, but it’s fortified by a full-bodied, slo-mo, nigh-on-backwards, skank.
Tuesday, January 4 2011
Deciphering the Jay-Z Code
He's got 99 problems but a book ain't one. Jay-Z's nonlinear memoir illuminates rap as personal narrative, lyric poetry, and transformative medium.
Thursday, November 18 2010
Hip-Hop’s Laboratory of Language
What do William Wordsworth, Robert Frost, Ice Cube, and Ghostface Killah have in common? Finally, they all appear in anthologies.
Thursday, October 14 2010
‘Howl: A Graphic Novel’ Wails Brilliantly Into the 21st Century
Eric Drooker expands his artistic interpretation of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl", as featured in Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's feature film of the same name, resulting in an inspired graphic interpretation of the influential poem
Monday, May 3 2010
The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson by Jerome Charyn
Freely mixing fact with fiction, Jerome Charyn's Emily Dickinson lusts after a handyman while boarding at Holyoke, visits rum resorts with her huge dog Carlo, and still finds time to bake a great loaf of bread.
Tuesday, March 30 2010
The Ticking is the Bomb by Nick Flynn
Flynn’s obsessive nature may force his locomotive mind off the rails, but he dutifully and beautifully records what’s illuminated by the sparks.
