Angier on Blue + Poem: Robert Frost

Bluebird (Credit: Anthony Mercieca/Getty Images)Today when I read Natalie Angier's New York Times article, "True Blue Stands Out in an Earthy Crowd," and viewed the related slideshow on the color blue and its increasing appeal to scientists, and read her comment that "Blue is sea and sky, a pocket-size vacation," I thought immediately of Robert Frost's "Fragmentary Blue," one of my favorites of his poems, which celebrates...

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Pierrot Lunaire Turns 100

It was 100 years ago yesterday that Arnold Schoenberg's almost-unclassifiable, remarkable pantonal piece Pierrot Lunaire débuted at the Berlin Choralien-Saal, with Albertine Zehme as the solo vocalist.  A century later, despite all the developments, changes and shifts in music, and the assimilation even of Schoenberg's later 12-note compositional style by musicians working in rock, jazz, and other genres and idioms, the Pierrot Lunaire has not lost its freshness, strangeness or edge. Schoenberg based his Dreimal sieben Gedichte...

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Quote: Mordechai Noah

"Wall-Street is a kind of commercial barometer, and I always observe the countenances of men of business in passing through this bustling street. Very lately I was stopped by a commercial quidnunc, who informed me that Mr. A, B, C, D, E and F, had failed within three days; that times were uncommonly bad and prospects very gloomy, and the result could not be foreseen. Independent of the hazards of commerce, I could account for these failures. These...

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Rutgers-Newark Reading at Dodge Poetry Festival

Established in 1986 and formerly taking place in suburban Morristown, New Jersey, the biennial Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival has moved to Newark, with most of the festival events occuring at the New Jersey Center for the Performing Arts (NJPAC). I have not been able to attend since the late 1990s, but now that I'm back in the area I did attend one of the events yesterday, a reading by some of the graduate student poets in Rutgers-Newark's...

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Seeing Serrano

Andres Serrano: "The Interpretation of Dreams (White Man's Burden)" (2002), "Nomads (Mary)" (1990), and "Nomads (Lucas") (1990), all Cibachrome prints, silicone, acrylic, wood frame, 60 x 50 inches, limited editions, Edward Tyler Nahem GalleryBecause of the hype and the news reports about the exhibit's opening week, I was bracing for a bit of craziness at the Edward Tyler Nahem galleries, where artist Andres Serrano's exhibit, Body and...

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Domesticating Columbus

Marcus Yan for the New York Times"Only in New York City." That's how one of the guards at the base of Tatzu Nishi's Discovering Columbus public art installation summed up the remarkable creation now open for visitors until November 18, 2012 in New York's Columbus Circle. He was correct. Though Nishi has created similar conceptual pieces elsewhere, and New York is hardly starved for spectacles, there is only one statue of Genoa's favored...

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How Nobel

Haruki Murakami at MIT, in 2005 (Wikipedia)Almost every year since I've been blogging here I present a short brief on the imminent Nobel Prize in Literature, arguably the world's most important literary award. Only once have I accurately named one of the writers who ended up winning, and then only in passing: Harold Pinter, the late, highly original British playwright, screenwriter, actor, and political activist, and 2005 recipient. Among the...

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Juan Rodríguez, NY's First Immigrant

Charles Lilly Painting, courtesy of the Schomburg Centerfor Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library Thanks to Monaga's blog, where I first saw it late last week, I was able to start my undergraduate literature class this afternoon with a recent news snippet that was directly relevant to our readings and discussions. It turns out that the first non-indigenous immigrant to what is now New York City--and thus New York State--was,...

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Debate Debacle in Denver

Governor Mitt Romney & President Barack Obama (Salon.com)What was he thinking? President Barack Obama, I mean. What was he thinking last night, and what was he doing beyond showing up, in Denver, at the University of Denver, to stand just a few feet away from Republican presidential nominee and his chief opponent, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, and mouth a highly abstracted, jargon-thick passionless account of his policies...

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Translations: Poetry: Francisco Alvim

Francisco Alvim (Photo: Bel Pedroso)Recently I was reading poet Francisco Alvim's (b. Araxá, Brazil, 1938-) Poemas (1968-2000) (São Paulo: Cosac & Naify, 2004), a volume that showcases this deceptively straightforward, playful, gifted writer at his best, and thought that I would post a few of his poems, both in the original Portuguese and in English, to give J's Theater readers a sense of his work.Also known as Chico Alvim,...

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