Music: A Subversive History

By George Grella

NOV 2019 | Music

Songs about fucking and killing—that would have also been an appropriate subtitle for this scintillating new book from Ted Gioia. He’s already written three valuable books about the place of music in society and human experience, Healing Songs (2006), Works Songs (2006), and Love Songs: The Hidden history (2015). Music: A Subversive History builds on those by digging down into the fundamental nature of music, how it is made and how it affects us.

Music of Harry Partch, Vol. 3: Sonata Dementia, Bridge Records (2019)

By Jude Thomas

NOV 2019 | Music

Beyond the accuracy of the playing, the fidelity of the recording, and the delight of hearing Partch himself interpret a rare work, the album demonstrates how Partch’s music and legacy have persisted and changed in the 45 years since his death.

Peter Markus’s Inside My Pencil: Teaching Poetry in Detroit Public Schools

By Joseph Scapellato

NOV 2017 | Books

Inside My Pencil: Teaching Poetry in Detroit Public Schools, Peter Markus’s teaching memoir, is warm, patient, and wise—an enchanting “how-to” sparkling with pedagogical gems.  The book follows Markus as he teaches poetry for InsideOut Literary Arts Project, a nonprofit program that brings arts education to inner city Detroit elementary school students.

“POETRY AS FORCES” AFTER Cecilia Vicuña

By Andrea Abi-Karam

APR 2019 | Critics Page

The "about to happen" / "poetry as forces" when Cecilia Vicuña says that the lies (the words, the language) of the Chilean dictatorship murdered & tortured thousands of people I remember the power of the word & i remember the power of poetry—"made of forces"—that holds something in the action of language