Grammy glamour
I don’t watch the Grammys; I just don’t like the way popular music is going these days. And what I just said about the music could go double for the fashions connected with the music. However, sometimes I click on … Continue reading →
Category Archives: Arts
Not just…
…another pretty face.
Continue reading →We may have just learned a little bit about Obama’s college transcripts
And he probably didn’t take art history. By the way, I took a few courses in art history in college, although I was definitely not an art history major, and I can tell you that art history is hard. At … Continue reading →
Leonard Cohen and “Going Home”: a brief elaboration
Last night I was listening to Leonard Cohen’s “Going Home.” In that song he’s his usual lugubrious, hypnotic, philosophical, mystical self. The lyric could only have been written by a writer who’s no longer young. You may think the song … Continue reading →
Pete Seeger: dead at 94
Ah, I see that Pete Seeger, troubadour of my youth, has died. My feelings about Seeger are mixed, to say the least. First, the bad: he was an activist Communist, and even a Stalinist back in the day. Let’s not … Continue reading →
Michelle Obama’s Mirror thinks that Madonna…
…is beginning to resemble Marlene Dietrich in her later years. Well, Dietrich did wear suits, including white ones: Here Dietrich (who was apparently bisexual) is again in a suit, older this time: But for the Madonna comparison, I’m thinking that, … Continue reading →
Robert Frost: a living voice
The following passage is from the book Robert Frost: A Living Voice, edited by Reginald L. Cook. It’s from a talk Frost gave at Bread Loaf in July 27, 1960, when he was in his 80s. He starts by describing … Continue reading →
Another child opera singer
The proliferation of TV programs that feature amateur singing competitions has brought out a swarm of child singers. Some of them even sing opera with remarkable maturity, something that usually is reserved for the grownups among us, and a select … Continue reading →
If you read just one biography of Robert Frost…
…I think it should be this one by Jay Parini. I’ve read quite a few, and Jay Parini’s is the only one that seems to capture the Frost I sense from Frost’s poetry and his other writings. Plus, Parini’s book … Continue reading →
Trompe l’oeil
A cardboard box of money isn’t always what it seems: People are amazing, aren’t they?
Continue reading →Edgar Allan Poe had a cottage…
…in the Bronx.* And it’s still standing, although it’s been relocated a few hundred feet, and a little park built around it. At the time Poe moved there, the Bronx was not a city. His young wife was dying of … Continue reading →
Robert Frost on “the science is settled”
No, the poet Robert Frost didn’t write anything about the believers versus the deniers of anthropogenic global warming. After all, he died in 1963. When I started this blog (lo about nine long years ago!), I had some idea of … Continue reading →