This collection of 365 flash fictions seems like an anabasis through Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio (never Paradiso). But not always.
Sin Phoney in Face Flat Minor
NY Sin Phoney IN FACE FLAT MINOR. Bart Plantenga, Sensitive Skin Books, 2017. This collection of 365 flash fictions seems like an up-to-date anabasis through Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio (never Paradiso). But not always.
This film might very well win an Best Actor oscar for Casey Affleck.
Manchester by the Sea
Director: Kenneth Lonergan. Starring: Casey Affleck, Michelle Williams and Luke Hedges. Distributor: Roadside Attractions. Film length: 137 min. Release date: December 16, 2016. ****
This film might very well win an Best Actor Oscar for Casey Affleck as a young janitor with a temper and strong passions. Continue reading “Manchester by the Sea”
The St. Petersburg Opera presented an Il Trovatore that met all the requirements of a classic Verdi opera production.
Il Trovatore (St. Petersburg Opera)
IL TROVATORE. Opera by Giuseppe Verdi, libretto by Salvatore Cammarano. Cast: Michael Morrow (Manrico); Alexandra Batsios (Leonora); Claudia Chapa (Azucena); Christopher Clayton (Count di Luna). Stage Director: Karl W. Hesser; Costume designer: Glenn Breed; Conductor and executive director: Mark Sforzini. Produced by St. Petersburg Opera.
Poet Susan Eisenberg has published three previous books, all worth reading, all notable for their lack of pedantry and abstractions affecting so much poetry today. Her poems are immediate, dramatic, and firmly rooted in day-to-day reality. With this fourth volume, she reveals something personal you’d appreciate knowing about. She is unwell: a cancer survivor, she also has lupus, an insidious autoimmune disease you can read all about in Wikipedia. So what does she do? She writes about it. How? Astoundingly well. Continue reading “Best Poems Ever about Illness”
Perhaps this book is too modestly titled. True, it does begin as an account of the author’s father and his struggles with failing eyesight, as he falls victim to the hereditary disease of retinitis pigmentosa. In the opening scene he takes the author, a six-year old, for a seemingly harmless ride in the family car. Soon it is revealed that he can barely see the road and almost has a traffic accident. Continue reading “An Affliction of Many Dimensions”