Arts & Culture

Living Blues Treasure

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Not only is Honeyboy Edwards alive, kicking, and sharp as a fresh toothpick, he’s on the road, making a rare and not-to-be-missed stop at the Rosendale Cafe on September 8.

Witness to History

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Ron Haviv’s photo of a Serb militiaman kicking a dying Muslim woman in the head—published a week before the fighting started—became one of the most enduring images of the Balkan conflict.

The Good Word

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Spoken-word performance, the artform so identified with Manhattan’s East Village of poverty, drug addiction, and AIDS, has once again inched its way up the Hudson.

Waxing Poetic

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The encaustic boom is going strong. “Encaustic Works 2007,” R&F Encaustic’s biannual juried exhibition, was chosen from approximately 3,000 entries, by the artist Joan Snyder.

Public Opinion

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What started as an editorial assignment to document public opinion about the US invasion of Iraq turned into a project examining how people are misinformed and confused by news and governmental spin on the war.

Portfolio: Richard Merkin

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The great thing about being an artist is this: All the things you’ve done, all the pictures you’ve made, they’ll stay and say what you wanted to say.

One Heck of a Hootenanny

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Dan Zanes is not afraid to employ lap steel, trombone, saxophone, tambourine, mandolin, accordion, balalaika, tuba, tin whistle, fiddle, or anything else that helps step up the fun.

Food & Drink

Sometimes You Want to Go

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The Blue Plate Restaurant is one of those rarities that possess a definitive but indescribable essence—what’s known in Latin as genius loci, or “spirit of place.”

Books

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Book Reviews: Land of Stone: Breaking Silence Through Poetry

By Sparrow

Karen Chase begins her preface by calling Land of Stone “a story of silence and kinship.” It is also a story about love, healing, and the redemptive power of poetry—and it is unlike anything you’ll ever read.

September Short Takes

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Six must-reads for September.

Book Reviews: Trashed

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Trashed is a delightful romp through the sordid and deliciously sleazy world of the Hollywood tabloid media machine and the seriously neurotic, occasionally psychotic stars who feed it.

Book Reviews: Russian Lover and Other Stories

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A well-done short story feels miraculous, the selection of just the right moments and details to create an entire reality in a bite-sized handful of pages. Woodstock author Jana Martin gets it right.

Perennial Voyager

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There are few laudatory adjectives that critics haven’t applied to John Ashbery’s 26 books of poetry; “dazzling,” “sublime,” and the like become shopworn.