How maddening to our friend the mollusk subjected every day to that most callous of clichés haunting a bi-valve’s life. Happy as… Each time the bitter oath was uttered, our friend the mollusk shrunk inward, as if he could escape the narrative of fate. If they only knew, he thought. No one should...
Your righteous race to accumulate Good Karma Requires making love And opposing hate This noble social justice quest cannot carve out exceptions To the covenant Between your values and yourself You cannot advocate for the homeless While cheerleading for the Wall Street Banks that put people out of homes You cannot advocate for Peace While...
The pianist Laurence Hobgood, celebrated for decades as one of the world’s finest accompanist of singers, currently is stepping out into the light, leading his own trio. Of superstars. On drums, Kendrick Scott. On bass, John Pattitucci. Their album, “Honor Thy Fathers,” dedicated to the musical titans who inspired Hobgood’s virtuosity, contains several cover songs,...
Garden paradox: no February blossoms without climate change.
Bedroom window open to the night breezes, and the morning call to prayers, when the children arrive wearing newly purchased clothes memorialized by high-volume mothers with fancy phones. On the first day of school hidden hopes soar to their improbable zenith, touching the underside of the fine line between delusion and ambition. Anything is...
We don’t author our biographies. We sculpt them, chipping and chiseling, peeling back the onionskin strata accretions of time, calcified history. The layers of remaindered remnants. What’s been piled on previous to our arrival taunts just beyond our reach, like the inscrutable object of desire who can’t and will not ever requite our boundless love....
If you’re the kind of chappie who believes in predestination, a Calvinist narrative to be unspooled one frame at a time, this poem is not for you. If you are the kind of lassie who believes in free will, a steadfastly laissez-faire Locked fantasy to be imagined and enlivened one moment at a time, this...
Sitting on a bench beside a Scottish canal, watching the locks rising and the Lochs glowing he crossed his legs and placed his hands upon worn corduroy wales that had seen much of the civilized world. “It’s a beautiful world,” he said, smiling, an eternal boy peering from behind octogenarian eye-creases. “It’s a beautiful world....
“House Hour” is the second installment in the landmark “PoemJazz” collaboration between poet Robert Pinsky and pianist Laurence Hobgood. Everything that was good in the debut is even better here. Pinsky has mastered his instrument, transforming his voice from “peculiar” to “unique.” Hobgood’s musicality and virtuosity dazzles. And the production — the mix, the equalization, the...
The powerless feel invisible. A ghostly cipher jigs and shimmies, sending up flares, announcing the Annunciation. The powerful seek invisibility. A malevolent cloud overhangs and shrouds, secreted in cracks, hidden from the light. We evaporate and expectorate and obviate. No one sees everything.
Hope RekindledThis past week has given us more hope for our diseased republic than any other time in 50+ years of paying attention. Observing and participating in a long-overdue peaceful uprising, occupying the streets, feeling the righteous energy of people of all ages, colors, faiths, and wealth (or lack thereof), has…
Alien invasion! Earth occupied by creatures far smarter than humans! Thousands of years of civilization rendered irrelevant! Cory Finley’s movie adaptation of M.T. Anderson’s novel Landscape with Invisible Hand accomplishes the impressive feat of being simultaneously incisive/critical/instructive and entertaining/funny/touching. While the film is ultimately a scathing indictment of colonialism, capitalism, and artificial intelligence, the action...
