Poetry
Return
I returned to a city too busy
to notice me walking past the delis
and dollar stores, skipping
the circulars at the A&P and the bread
on sale in the late afternoon.
The streets were empty as Memorial Day
and silent as I imagined your footsteps
must be with no crunch of gravel
behind me as I climbed into the light
and the sun worked into the sky.
I felt the day light my face and turned
to watch it on yours but you were not there
only my shadow pointing to the earth
I overturned like a grave robber.
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from City of Blows
By Tim Blake NelsonFEB 2023 | Fiction
Those familiar with Tim Blake Nelson's work in Coen brothers films, the Watchmen series, or last year's Old Henry, will immediately understand that this novel's depictions of Hollywood machinations are of a higher caliber than those in any other literary work that's attempted to depict that world. City of Blows abounds in the economy and fluidity that accompanies true authority—seen in this description of a producer: “One of the biggest pricks in LA. But he gets his movies made. Directors rarely work for him twice.” What's less expected is Nelson’s investigation of the relationship between insecurity and toxicity, seen in Weinstein-esque predators but also applicable to masculinity at large. The psychological motivations and character examinations develop City of Blows from a roman à clef to a work far more universal.
Motor City Underground: Leni Sinclair Photographs 1963–1978
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Unlike so many other exhibition monographs—which are often treated as something between a program guide and show souvenir—Motor City Underground presents detailed reproductions of Sinclair’s photographs, often blown up to full-page, alongside a wide variety of testimony. The range of dates and sources across which these statements are culled suggests years of research combing through a decade’s worth of underground missives—the type of ephemera that does not often make it into digital archives.
72. (Various walls around the city)
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One day in 1986, more than a dozen years after Shirley Chisholm, Barbara Jordan, Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and Cardiss Collins have been elected to Congress, a group of artists, activists and art historians who keep their identities secret by donning gorilla masks surreptitiously plaster the walls of the city with a poster noting, in thick sans serif type: “Only 4 Commercial Galleries in N.Y. Show Black Women. Only 1 Shows More Than 1.”
A Choreographed Return to Theaters
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Dance is back in theaters. The productions are better than ever, but the real choreography is happening in the audience. As we navigate a safe return to indoor space, how do we hold on to the pleasures of attending a show?
