Posted inOpinion

David Byrne’s Bad Advice to Columbia’s Visual Arts MFA Grads

On the second track of David Byrne’s last album with the Talking Heads, he told the story of Mr. Jones, a pyrotechnic jack-of-all trades, “everybody’s friend,” straddling the creative universe of “rock stars” and the hum-drum of “conventioneers.” But when Byrne took to the stage last week, all wire-rimmed spectacles and club collars, to deliver Columbia’s Visual Arts MFA commencement speech, it wasn’t exactly yesteryear’s “big day for Mr. Jones” for the attending graduates.

Posted inBooks

Bern Porter’s Found Poems

Nightboat Books is, according to its website, “a nonprofit publishing company dedicated to printing original books of poetry and prose, and bringing out-of-print treasures back to life.” Bern Porter’s Found Poems, a collection previously published in 1972 by Dick Higgins’ Something Else Press, is surely one of those treasures, and we are fortunate now to have easy access to such a singular text.