The Arts Fuse Newsletter, June 19
Onward, SPRING APPEAL! Coming Attractions, The Not-So-Great "Gatsby" at the A.R.T., The Cool Queer Life of Thom Gunn, and the Latin Jazz Album of the Year
From The Editor's Desk:
Thanks to all who have contributed to the Arts Fuse’s Spring Appeal. We made our match challenge! But our books still need balancing. Please support an independent online magazine that prides itself on posting — at a time local arts commentary has become fangless — cultural coverage with critical bite. Baudelaire summed up the magazine’s attitude perfectly: "Criticism should be partial, passionate, and political, that is to say, written from an exclusive point of view but from a point of view which opens up to the widest horizons" Please help us push our horizons further and wider. To keep The Fuse aflame, please donate here. Or click on one of the “keep the fuse lit!” icons below. Thanks so much for your support.
Not many poets praise critics, but Frederick Seidel, in his latest verse collection So What, includes a moving poem about his friend, Richard Poirier, who was born in Gloucester, MA in 1925 and died in New York City in 2009. Poirier was one of the foremost critics of American literature during the postwar period, an over-the-top disciple of Emerson, editor of the literary journal Raritan, and chairman of the board of the Library of America. Among my favorites of his books: The Performing Self, The Comic Sense of Henry James, A World Elsewhere, and Trying it Out in America, a superb essay collection that’s dedicated to Seidel. Poirier was a critic in the Baudelairian mode, iconoclastic and unbounded, who demanded active engagement rather than consumption: “A work of art is not a monument, not an invitation to reverence; it is an inducement to some equivalent work on our part, of combination, imagination, recognition.”
Seidel dedicated a typically wicked and cheeky poem, “One Last Kick for Dick”, to Poirier the year he died from injuries suffered in a fall in his home,: “Old age is not for sissies but death is just disgusting./ It’s a dog covering a bitch, looking so serious, looking ridiculous, thrusting.” “Midnight Sky With Stars” is a superior effort because, rather than register the grotesque shock of death, Seidel poignantly dramatizes a desire that the dead were alive. The poet addresses the critic’s ghost. He wishes Poirier was around in his “roaring mode” to denounce Trump; he testifies that the critic was “sweet on life, you were meat and life.” Seidel’s habitual tart sarcasm is present: “And loved the Library of America/ that embalms America on Bible paper.” But the poem concludes with a deftly moving, if despairing, testament to the ephemeral illumination of art — and critics: “Emerson, Frost, Eliot, Shakespeare, Henry James./ Flashbulbs blinding the dark./ All that blinding light, all the lovely talk/Burst apart on the sidewalk.”
—Bill Marx, Editor-in-Chief
Theater Review: The A.R.T.’s Not-So-Great “Gatsby”
By Martin B. Copenhaver
The creators of Gatsby have come up with some inventive ways to make the story more contemporary. None of that, however, seems enough to justify the enormous amount of energy and talent that was expended in this production.
Coming Attractions: June 16 through July 2 -- What Will Light Your Fire
Compiled by Arts Fuse Editor
Our expert critics supply a guide to film, dance, visual art, theater, author readings, and music. More offerings will be added as they come in.
Book Review: “Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life” — A Poet Who Spoke to Unbearable Loss
By John R. Killacky
This is not a dry, academic look at Thom Gunn’s life: the biographer supplies a loving — though at times unflinchingly honest — view of the self-punishing poet.
Latin Jazz Album Reviews: Oscar Hernández, Argentina Durán, and Jesus Molina — All in Superb Form
By Brooks Geiken
A trio of Latin-themed jazz albums that range from the best of the year to an uneven debut effort.
Classical Music Album Review: Pavel Kolesnikov & Samson Tsoy — A Fabulous Four-Hand Team
By Susan Miron
Pianists Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy’s debut CD is breathtaking, released a few months after the pair’s acclaimed performance at Carnegie Hall earlier this year.
Doc Talk: From Revolution to De-evolution at the Nantucket Film Festival
By Peter Keough
The documentaries War Game and Devo take up the topic of insurrection, political and cultural.
Film Reviews: Tribeca Film Festival 2024, Part One
By David D’Arcy
The 2024 Tribeca Film Festival was predictably celebrity-heavy and substance-light. Yet, between the cracks, there were efforts well worth seeing, particularly among the documentaries.
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Editor-in-Chief
Bill Marx
wmarx103@gmail.com
