Poetry
Reading List
Vito Acconci is an underrated poet. Gilbert Adair is well worth reading. Rachel Adams is well worth reading. Etel Adnan is an underrated poet.
Weekend
Art
Necessary Ambiguity: Sangram Majumdar’s Recent Work
In a media-riddled world where images rapidly circulate, moving from momentary commodity (“gone viral”) to forgotten waste, Sangram Majumdar is interested in “what stays.”
Music
Fagen's Critical Catalogue (November 2013, Part 2)
In part 2 of this month, reviews of Arcade Fire, Miley Cyrus, Omar Souleyman, and Chance the Rapper.
Art
Action at an Impasse: Esteban Vicente and the Art of Collage
ASHEVILLE, North Carolina — Esteban Vicente was a lyrical abstractionist whose work over eight decades redefines that category. A current exhibition at the Asheville Art Museum, Esteban Vicente: The Art of Interruption, takes its title from Elaine de Kooning's insight into her longtime friend's tech
Art
For the Love of Paint: Leon Kossoff Digs Deep
Leon Kossoff’s paintings can be counted among the vanishing breed of artworks whose comprehension is entirely dependent upon being in its physical presence.
Opinion
Required Reading
This week, the Detroit Institute of Arts needs to come up with money, the collector at the center of the Nazi-era art loot, Bob Dylan and Pharrell Williams push buttons, Wikipedia's problems, fact vs. opinion on American cable news, walls around the world, and more.
Opinion
Weekend Words: Law
In Germany, it was revealed this week, a 1938 law is still on the books that legalized the Nazi seizure of thousands of “degenerate” artworks.
Books
Why I Am a Member of the Ron Padgett Fan Club
One mind-stumping sensation a reader is likely to glean from Ron Padgett’s Collected Poems (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2013) is that the poems wrote themselves, and that he just happened to be in the room when they showed up. There is even a substantial section in Collected Poems that Padgett
Art
Are We Ready for the News that Peter Young Delivers Us?
In the summer of 1969, Peter Young left New York – and his studio on the Bowery – and set off for the American West, where he drifted around for nearly two years before settling down in Bisbee, Arizona, where he still resides.
Music
Fagen’s Critical Catalogue (November 2013, Part 1)
In part 1 of this month, reviews of Iceage, Parquet Courts, Sleigh Bells, and Mikal Cronin.
Interview
An Interview with a Dead Greek Poet
Alexandre Singh’s The Humans—a play inspired by the comedies of my favorite Greek poet, Aristophanes—had sold out before I got around to buying tickets. I knew what I had to do: swallow $2.50 in quarters for raft fare across the Styx, and strangle myself.
Art
Vanishing Virtuosity: Seven Artists, Seven Drawings
SUMMIT, NJ — Extended technique is a term normally applied to musical performance, but Migratory Marks, a show of seven wall works by seven artists, offers a thoughtful accounting of where extended techniques have pushed the boundary of what can be called a drawing, if there is in fact such a bounda