Category Archives: jazz
Faulkner’s Harlem Renaissance
November 20, 2013 This past week I was teaching Nella Larsen’s Quicksand and Passing. I’d never assigned them before, but they couldn’t have been better — for my “Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner” class. How else to contextualize Light in August? Not … Continue reading
Suzan-Lori Parks, Diane Paulus, Deidre Murray : Three Women Collaborating
October 9, 2014 It won the 2012 Tony for the best musical revival, but the New York Times didn’t much like it, missing Gershwin’s full operatic scores in this “thinned-out” and “heavily-cut” version. Having no deep connection to the original, … Continue reading
Bono on Seamus Heaney
September 4, 2013 He was there at the funeral, of course, with Adam Clayton, and also wrote this short piece in the Guardian: “Every meeting I’ve ever had since I began full-time advocacy, I have brought with me a book … Continue reading
Robert Pinsky, Ginza Samba
July 24, 2013 For years I hadn’t gone much beyond his translation of the Inferno. I’d noticed a couple of things I didn’t like (might even have gone looking for them), and just stopped there, his own poetry getting all … Continue reading
Langston Hughes’s Children Literature
May 31, 2013 My class, “Regional, National, Global,” has no special focus on children’s literature, but it does seem to come up a lot. I think it’s because of Langston Hughes — the uncertain borders of his poetry, holding a … Continue reading
Shankar, Coltrane, Whitman: Within You, Without You
December 12, 2012 2012 is full of deaths at the year’s end. Dave Brubeck last week; this week, Ravi Shankar. Shankar was half an American musician (the fractions don’t have to add up to a zero-sum game). Since 1970 he … Continue reading
Olaudah Equiano, Dave Brubeck: à la Turk
December 5, 2012 Equiano liked Turkey. He had gone there from Italy in 1769, and greatly admired the grapes and pomegranates in the ancient city of Smyrna, “the richest and largest I ever tasted.” He also liked the fact that … Continue reading
Ishmael Reed, Grateful Dead: Egypt
November 28, 2012 Ishmael Reed gets away with it. He is “a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra,” he says in the poem of that title. And he gets to do thisbecause Sonny Rollins has already set an example: Sonny … Continue reading