Laura Kasischke
I hate to do it, but I can't talk about Laura Kasischke's new novel, The Life before Her Eyes, without giving something important away — the beginning. Two young women, inseparable best friends, juniors in high...
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The Ron Brooks Trio
The Bird of Paradise has been serving jazz seven nights a week for more than fifteen years, and throughout that time a trio led by bassist Ron Brooks, who owns the club, has been a featured attraction. But the band antedates the...
Read MoreValentine’s Ragtime Trot
I've never quite understood why Valentine's Day, being in February, is such a big thing. May, June — now those would be prime months for the coy deliverance of cards, chocolates, flowers, and protestations of...
Read MoreThe Art Oasis
The high-quality exhibit Contemporary Artists of Ann Arbor at the Art Oasis on Main Street tempted me to take one of the classes held in the studio space behind the gallery. If I did, I realized, some of my fellow students would...
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Doc Watson
"Oh, I have seen the David," sings Guy Clark. "Seen the Mona Lisa, too. And I have heard Doc Watson sing 'Columbus Stockade Blues.' " My own favorite Doc Watson moment is more modest. It came the last...
Read MoreGermany versus France
What do you get when you cross a metaphysically inclined German tough guy with a liberté et égalité French orchestra? Beautiful music? Maybe. Maybe not. Christoph Eschenbach is the metaphysically inclined German tough guy....
Read MoreTimothy Liu
Early in Burnt Offerings, his second collection of poetry, Timothy Liu writes: “All my life / the sound I’ve been trying to hear is the sound / of my own voice.” It is perhaps too easy to put that as a kind of...
Read MoreThe Starlight Drifters
A few days after George Harrison’s funeral I saw the Starlight Drifters at the Tap Room in Ypsilanti, and it was, believe me, very easy to imagine a world in which the Beatles had never existed, despite being told...
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