Last January, Charlie White launched The Enemy, a new online journal published thrice annually that “invites writers, artists, academics, and activists to present essays and projects outside the mainstreams of their practices and disciplines.”
The Enemy has arrived
Re-launched Poetry Archive
The Poetry Archive re-launched a week ago, which is great news for anyone who wants to browse through recordings of poets reading their work.
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Florida’s Poet Laureate
David Axelrod makes the case for Florida to establish a four-year, renewable position as state poet laureate. With any luck, the program could begin by June 1. Florida has been absent a state poet since Edmund Skellings passed away in August, 2012
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The Long Goodbye to Maxwell’s
As Maxwell’s prepares for its last couple days of existence, New York Magazine brought together the place’s original founder, it’s current co-owner, and a huge number of musicians to provide an oral history of Hoboken’s best concert venue. You might recall my piece from last month on the institution’s demise.
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Murakami on the Stage
A surreal theater production of Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore, directed by Yukio Ninagawa, premiered at the Lincoln Center Festival in July. Ian Buruma writes for the NYRB about the marriage of tradition and modernity, and Western and Eastern references in the play. As he puts it, "even without traditional references, the production—perhaps more than Murakami’s novel—is still unmistakably Japanese: stylized, poetic, comical, violent, full of spectacular effects, and often exquisitely beautiful to look at. The setting jumps at lightning speed from a bus station, to a library, to a sleazy bar area. Various characters emerge and disappear, like memories or scenes from a dream, in an assortment of moving transparent boxes."
Flexible Cinderella
On the persistent popularity and flexibility of Cinderella, from old folktales featuring talking gourds all the way to the upcoming Disney version, from NPR.
Whitman Passes Away
George Whitman, owner of the storied Parisian English-language bookstore Shakespeare & Company, died this week at the age of 98.
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