ArtsBeattag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-13962092009-11-20T21:56:50ZTypePadHa Jin on the writer as migranttag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b85a69e20120a6bc8389970b2009-11-20T16:56:50-05:002009-11-20T20:01:41Z"...No matter where we go, we cannot shed our past completely - so we must strive to use parts of our past to facilitate our journeys. As we travel along, we should also imagine how to rearrange the landscapes of our envisioned homelands." writes Chinese-born novelist Ha Jin in the concluding essay of The Writer as Migrant (University of Chicago Press, 2008), his first collection of nonfiction writings on exile as a literary theme and the moral hazards it presents to a writer. Reading Jean Westmoore's fine interview in The News yesterday and hearing Joyce Krysak's very poignant WBFO radio...Poetry Beathttp://blogs.buffalonews.com/artsbeat/2009/11/ha-jin-on-the-writer-as-migrant.htmlMcCann, Waldrop win National Book Awardstag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b85a69e2012875b90cc4970c2009-11-19T14:52:03-05:002009-11-20T20:23:02ZIrish-born novelist Colum McCann, who dazzled attendees of the 2009 North American James Joyce Conference in Buffalo this past June at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the Hyatt Regency Hotel with readings from his soon-to-be released novel Let the Great World Spin (Random House) was one of the big winners Wednesday night at the 60th annual National Book Foundation's National Book Awards Benefit Dinner and Ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City. McCann's lyric urban epic of a novel--set in August, 1974 in Lower Manhattan as tightrope walker Philippe Petit soars above the city on a cable strung...Poetry Beathttp://blogs.buffalonews.com/artsbeat/2009/11/mccann-waldrop-win-national-book-awards.htmlGoogle Books Settlement gets a makeovertag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b85a69e2012875a7b2af970c2009-11-16T09:19:32-05:002009-11-16T14:19:32ZIt took until nearly midnight on what was itself a four-day extension on a court ordered deadline that had already been postponed from October 7th to November 9th, but at 11:54 p.m. Friday evening negotiators representing Google Books, the Association for American Publishers, and the Authors Guild submitted a revised version of the Google Book Search Settlement to Justice Denny Chin, U.S. District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York. Based on a quick look at the 141 page document and its 15 attachments as well as statements by all the major stakeholders, it appears as if the...Poetry Beathttp://blogs.buffalonews.com/artsbeat/2009/11/google-book-settlement-gets-a-makeover.html'Man of La Mancha' extendedtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b85a69e20120a6955c5c970b2009-11-13T12:34:42-05:002009-11-13T17:34:42ZJohn Fredo and John N. Kaczorowski star as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in MusicalFare Theatre's production of "Man of La Mancha." Photo courtesy MusicalFare Theatre. MusicalFare Theatre's edgy production of "Man of La Mancha," the musical based on Cervantes' "Don Quixote," has been extended for two performances, the theater announced today. Because of audience demand, the theater will tack on two matinee performances on Dec. 5 at 4 p.m. and Dec. 6 at 2 p.m. My review of the musical is pasted after the jump. -Colin Dabkowski REVIEW ★★★ WHAT: “Man of La Mancha” WHEN: Through Nov. 29 WHERE:...Colin Dabkowskihttp://blogs.buffalonews.com/artsbeat/2009/11/man-of-la-mancha-extended.htmlBay Area poets headline "Big Night"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b85a69e20120a686caf2970b2009-11-12T09:09:23-05:002009-11-12T14:09:23ZIt's been more than a half century since what came to be known as the "San Francisco Renaissance" first reverberated through American poetry and post World War Two America, but its legacy runs deep through the culture of spoken word performance and the spirit of collaboration between various poetry, music, and the visual art forms extending into the 21st century. Although Walt Whitman ("...a Kosmos, of Manhattan the son..") may have been the first American poet to write of "urban affection," it was in the mid 20th century San Francisco Bay area that a different social model for a distinctly...Poetry Beathttp://blogs.buffalonews.com/artsbeat/2009/11/bay-area-poets-headline-big-night.html'Beyond/In' artists announcedtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b85a69e20120a67917e6970b2009-11-11T11:32:44-05:002009-11-11T19:03:57ZIt's still a year away, but already the excitement surrounding the next incarnation of "Beyond/In Western New York," the ballooning biennial that launched in 2005, is palpable. This morning at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, director Louis Grachos, consultant Bruce Ferguson and project leader John Massier announced the size and shape of the coming exhibition, slated for Sept. 24, 2010. Its broad theme, "Alternating Currents," is meant to reflect on the conflicting forces that make up the Western New York -- its glorious history and shaky present, its utopian idealism and dystopian reality, a desire to stay and a need to...Colin Dabkowskihttp://blogs.buffalonews.com/artsbeat/2009/11/beyondin-artists-announced.htmlZagajewski's poetry of the cosmic world and the human facetag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b85a69e20120a6b1e13b970c2009-11-06T12:46:52-05:002009-11-06T17:46:52Z"Poetry summons us to life, to courage/ in the face of growing shadow./ Can you gaze at the Earth/ like the perfect astronaut?" writes Adam Zagajewski in "Houston, 6 p.m." from his collection Without End: New and Selected Poems (2002). This creative tension between engagement and reflection--the sense of holding up a darkened mirror to the transfigured world--has made Zagajewski one of the most admired contemporary poets in Europe and North America. Zagajewski, the acclaimed Polish language poet (born in the city of Lvov in what is now the Ukraine), essayist, novelist, and 2004 winner of the biennial Neustadt International...Poetry Beathttp://blogs.buffalonews.com/artsbeat/2009/11/zagajewskis-poetry-of-the-cosmic-world-and-the-human-face.htmlOf goats and murderers and moviestag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b85a69e20120a6b133c6970c2009-11-06T09:15:14-05:002009-11-06T14:37:03ZMovies are not life. Any fool knows that. But sometimes the horrors on front pages and the 24-hour news stations are so brutal that it's almost as if we needed to be reminded. Sometimes movies get lucky when they're caught in history's wake. Usually they're not. The current case in point of a phenomenally unlucky movie is Grant Heslov's "The Men Who Stare at Goats," a wild, black comic satire on New Age military shenanigans in Iraq. It is being nationally released today, just as the nation is mourning the shocking and horrific deaths of 12 people Thursday afternoon in...Blog Editorhttp://blogs.buffalonews.com/artsbeat/2009/11/of-goats-and-murdereres-and-movies.htmlErie County funding for the artstag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b85a69e20120a6542a68970b2009-11-04T17:18:18-05:002009-11-05T16:49:46ZThis has been available for a couple of weeks now, but I want to post up the page of Erie County's proposed 2010 budget that outlines funding recommendations for arts and cultural groups. In all, the county has allocated $5,066,500 to 43 arts and culturals. Check out the recommendations in a PDF below, or download it here.Colin Dabkowskihttp://blogs.buffalonews.com/artsbeat/2009/11/erie-county-funding-for-the-arts.htmlHumanities-speak gone wildtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b85a69e20120a6a971ce970c2009-11-04T16:24:55-05:002009-11-04T21:34:27ZOver at Modern Art Notes, Tyler Green links to the College Art Association's list of papers to be presented at its annual conference, summarized here by the Art History Newsletter. This is the kind of thing I love to read, simply for the utterly confounding, intentionally obfuscating and always entertaining terms certain writers and academics sometimes use to sex up the titles of their papers. My fave: “Pray, Sir, Whose Dog Are You? Nobility and Animality in Eighteenth-Century French Hunting Pictures.” This list, which is definitely one for the ages, reminds me of Gary Kamiya's much-circulated essay for Salon, jokingly...Colin Dabkowskihttp://blogs.buffalonews.com/artsbeat/2009/11/humanitiesspeak-gone-wild.html