Arts & Culture – Page 57 – Michigan Quarterly Review

Arts & Culture

I Am What Is Missing: Our Stuff, Ourselves

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A few years ago, I was teaching a middle school writing elective at a well-regarded summer camp for the arts. The students in this class were not primarily interested in writing: they were there as young musicians, or dancers, or studying “general arts” which usually meant their well-off parents thought it more edifying for them to draw with charcoal and write poems and create spliced-together musical theater out of the latest pop songs than to let them spend the summer watching TV and lighting matches in the backyard.

I Am What Is Missing: Our Stuff, Ourselves Read More »

A few years ago, I was teaching a middle school writing elective at a well-regarded summer camp for the arts. The students in this class were not primarily interested in writing: they were there as young musicians, or dancers, or studying “general arts” which usually meant their well-off parents thought it more edifying for them to draw with charcoal and write poems and create spliced-together musical theater out of the latest pop songs than to let them spend the summer watching TV and lighting matches in the backyard.

Vampire Vigilante Justice: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

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Do we remember Diogenes of Sinope? Diogenes—the Greek cynic who famously wandered around holding a lantern up to all the men he passed in the marketplace, asking them, “Hey, are you full of shit?” Yes? We remember this? Good. Because that’s essentially the plot of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Vice Films, 2014), only we’re in “Bad City,” Iran and it’s always nighttime and Diogenes has been recast as a vampire, and she—the titular “Girl” (Sheila Vand)—is dope as hell.

Vampire Vigilante Justice: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night Read More »

Do we remember Diogenes of Sinope? Diogenes—the Greek cynic who famously wandered around holding a lantern up to all the men he passed in the marketplace, asking them, “Hey, are you full of shit?” Yes? We remember this? Good. Because that’s essentially the plot of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Vice Films, 2014), only we’re in “Bad City,” Iran and it’s always nighttime and Diogenes has been recast as a vampire, and she—the titular “Girl” (Sheila Vand)—is dope as hell.

Celebrating Eileen Cropley

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To have the fire in the belly means to have the drive and the desire. But it’s more than that. In terms of dance, it means the dancer must communicate the want and need to dance, embody it, and project it outward. It’s the essential thing that sets the professional apart from the amateur.

Celebrating Eileen Cropley Read More »

To have the fire in the belly means to have the drive and the desire. But it’s more than that. In terms of dance, it means the dancer must communicate the want and need to dance, embody it, and project it outward. It’s the essential thing that sets the professional apart from the amateur.

A Rant on Writers Who Dislike Craft, or Why I Still Like Vermeer

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I don’t know what to say to writers who aren’t interested in craft. I don’t know what to say when they start invoking the primacy of the unconscious, of seeing the bigger picture, or of writing the plain damn Truth.

A Rant on Writers Who Dislike Craft, or Why I Still Like Vermeer Read More »

I don’t know what to say to writers who aren’t interested in craft. I don’t know what to say when they start invoking the primacy of the unconscious, of seeing the bigger picture, or of writing the plain damn Truth.

“To Dig In and Endure”: Remembering Philip Levine, 1928-2015

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Indeed, in light of economic downturns leading to greater divides between the privileged and working classes, Levine’s poetry only seems to increase in relevancy. Never has there been more urgency for, as Edward Hirsch noted in his essay “Naming the Lost: The Poetry of Philip Levine,” poetry that reflects “the stubborn will of the dispossessed to dig in and endure.”

“To Dig In and Endure”: Remembering Philip Levine, 1928-2015 Read More »

Indeed, in light of economic downturns leading to greater divides between the privileged and working classes, Levine’s poetry only seems to increase in relevancy. Never has there been more urgency for, as Edward Hirsch noted in his essay “Naming the Lost: The Poetry of Philip Levine,” poetry that reflects “the stubborn will of the dispossessed to dig in and endure.”

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