ArtsBeat

Lucille Clifton to receive Frost Centennial Medal posthumously

It will be a bittersweet celebration Thursday night at the National Arts Club on Gramercy Park South in New York City when the Poetry Society of America awards its highest honor -- The Robert Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime achievement in American poetry -- posthumously to Lucille Clifton. The Frost Medal typically involves a guest lecture on the part of the recipient, but this year the format has been changed to incorporate a tribute to Clifton's life and work featuring several of the leading figures in American poetry.

 

Clifton -- a Buffalo-area native, National Book Award winner, two time Pulitzer Prize nominee, and the first African-American woman to receive the prestigious Ruth Lily Prize from the Poetry Foundation -- had been selected to receive the award earlier this year, but died on February 13th following complications of emergency surgery. The award to Clifton was to carry special significance as it was intended to mark the centennial celebration of the Poetry Society of America. 

 

In the weeks following her passing, we've read many fine tributes to Clifton's work and career, but two especially worth noting are Elizabeth Alexander's insightful appreciation "Remembering Lucille Clifton" in The New Yorker and fellow former Buffalo area native Kazim Ali's more closely read analysis of the formal aspects of her poetry in Adam and his mother: Lucille Clifton’s Prosodic Line originally published in the little known Barn Owl Review, but soon to be included in Ali's Orange Alert: Essays on Poetry, Art and the Architecture of Silence forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press.

White Pine, BOA titles shortlisted for Best Translation Awards

White Pine Press has a long and distinguished history of publishing poetry in translation. For nearly four decades, the Buffalo-based independent press founded and edited by poet Dennis Maloney has published works by such luminaries as Pablo Neruda, Juan Ramon Jimenez, and Gabriela Mistral while helping introduce American readers to such important voices in world literature as Tomaz Transtromer of Sweden, Antonio Machado of Spain, Alfonsina Storni of Argentina, and Rolf Jacobsen of Norway.

While White Pine has also published a substantial number of important American poets and fiction writers, the art of contemporary literature in translation remains a key element of its mission.

Just 90 miles east in Rochester, perennial award-winning BOA Editions Ltd. has followed the equally ambitious agenda of its founder -- the legendary poet-publisher Al Poulin, Jr. (1938-1996) -- by including world poetry in translation in its diverse catalog of voices representing excellence in a wide range of poetic traditions.  BOA is also the publisher of Buffalo area natives Kazim Ali, the late Lucille Clifton, and the late UB poet-professor John Logan.

Novelist Lily Hoang and poet Lisa Robertson visiting Buffalo

Two women at the forefront of innovative writing in North America visit Buffalo over the next two days for a series of readings and lectures that are free and open to the public. Although Lily Hoang and Lisa Robertson belong to different generations and ostensibly work in different genres, both are noted for their ability to adapt and reconfigure traditional narrative and lyric forms into work that challenges and expands our understanding of language, gender, and difference.

At 7 p.m.this evening, award-winning Vietnamese-American novelist Lily Hoang -- widely considered one of the most important American fiction writers under age 30 -- will read from her work in the library in Huber Hall at Medaille College, 18 Agassiz Circle as sponsored by Medaille's the Write Thing Series.

Ms. Hoang is the author of Parabola -- the winner of Chiasmus Press' "Un-Doing the Novel" contest in 2006, in which she foregrounds and "disorients" the trajectory of a traditional coming-of-age in a Vietnamese-American family story in as a plottable mathematical function -- and Changing, her [Italo] Calvino-esque reworking of the hexagrams of the I Ching to represent tableaus of a Vietnamese family gone mad in the United States, and out of whose seemingly random arrangement, the reader freely constructs an accretion of family history and practical wisdom. 

Survey says: taking stock of declining audiences

 

In this week's issue of The New Yorker, music critic Alex Ross takes stock of the decline in the public appetite for classical music in America. In his column (unavailable online for non-subscribers), Ross cites a recent study released by the National Endowment for the Arts, a problematic document which I wrote about last month. The study shows, rather unsurprisingly, that audiences for classical music are in the midst of a protracted dive that, for a host of reasons, classical music institutions have not been able to stall or reverse.

Ross, not unlike like the orchestras, string quartets and opera companies he covers, seems to be looking high and low for any approach that might usher a new and younger generation of musical thrill-seekers into the art form's fold. He urged organizations to find "a deeper transformation," asking what ought to be the key question among arts groups of any kind as they search for a way to sustain themselves in the future: "There's a growing feeling in the classical business that the customary way of presenting music must evolve if new devotees are to join the ranks. But how? Can you refresh the ritual while remaining true to the music?"

There and then to here and now: Ehmke on Cage

Ron Ehmke performs on Sunday at the Burchfield Penney Art Center as part of a 23-day festival dedicated to John Cage. (Charlie Lewis / The Buffalo News)

I dropped by day three of the Burchfield Penney Art Center's 23-day John Cage festival on Sunday to check out performances by Ron Ehmke, Kyle Price and J.T. Rinker. I have to identify myself here as something of a Cage neophyte and say that I am attracted by the philosophy behind the performances and the festival in general, without knowing as much about the composer's work as I'd like to. That said, there are 20 days left in the festival, and I intend to get my fill of Cage before it's over.

Out of what I saw today, Ehmke's relatively conventional storytelling performance was what grabbed me most. 

Cage, who was of course one of the 20th century's great explorers the musical unknown, could hardly be described as conventional. So I was surprised to learn, from Ehmke, that the composer was also an accomplished, compelling and funny storyteller. That's something that obviously appeals to Ehmke, who, through his solo performances and work with such outfits as the Real Dream Cabaret, embodies all those attributes. (Hear an audio interview with Ehmke after the jump.)

Aspiring board members: the Arts Council wants you

The beleaguered Arts Council in Buffalo and Erie County, which was thrown into a period of uncertainty after the departure of Executive Director Celeste Lawson earlier this month, is intent on getting back in the game immediately.

Board member Daryl Rasuli, who has effectively become the organization's spokesman in the wake of Lawson's firing, e-mailed today an infomercial-esque recruitment pitch for future Arts Council board members, which follows below:

Have you been just sitting around watching the TV and really wanting to do something meaningful in your life?

Now is your chance. The Arts Council of Buffalo and Erie County is embarking on its vision to regain its position as a protector and provider for the cultural arts community. It’s expanding its board. If you have a passion for protecting and developing the cultural fabric of the community and can commit some time and expertise to re- building this important art institution please call 856-7520 or email a brief bio/vita/resume to Info@artscouncilbuffalo.org.  

There you have it. Proof positive that the Arts Council is not yet quite beyond saving. The powers that be at the AC, such as they are, at least recognize that a wholesale reorganization of its long-weakened board is necessary before any private or public source will even entertain the idea of tossing money the Arts Council's way. Even with that realization, it's going to be a steep climb for the organization to return to relevancy and, one hopes, genuine effectiveness as an multi-functional advocacy group. 

But it's a good first step.

--Colin Dabkowski

'Emerging Leaders in the Arts' kicks off

Anyone under 40 who works or is interested in working in the arts sector is invited to the launch of Buffalo's chapter of "Emerging Leaders in the Arts" at 7 p.m. Wednesday. The event, organized by Arts Council in Buffalo and Erie County's Lauren Albrecht, aims to create a local community of current and aspiring arts professionals.

The event, which takes place at Sample Restaurant in Allentown, will be facilitated by Kimberly Billoni, the chief executive of SPLiCE, a product licensing company.

The text of a release about the event follows after the jump.

--Colin Dabkowski

Tale of Two Conventions: Social Media and the MLA

I've never been to one of the annual conventions of the Modern Language Association, and would likely feel as out of place there as at a monster truck rally. But I've always found reports of what takes place at these annual professional gatherings of  language and literature scholars from across the United States to be useful intelligence on what's up and what's down, who's in and who's out, and what the larger ideas and trends are in how literature and the humanities are taught, discussed, and written about in our culture. 

 

Reports from such conventions usually involve multiple narrative threads and several levels of discourse, but as Jennifer Howard reports in this account published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, the big story coming out of last week's 2009- 2010 convention in Philadelphia was not necessarily the convention's presidential theme --"The Tasks of Translation in the Global Context"-- chosen by MLA president Catherine Porter, or even the standing room only crowds for the various programs involving the emerging field of the "Digital Humanities," including panels on collaborative research and "New Models of Authorship."

 

No, the MLA presentation that "went viral" was Brian Croxall's paper The Absent Presence: Today’s Faculty, a particularly trenchant first-hand account of his impoverishment as a non-tenure track visiting assistant professor of English at Clemson University backed up by some sobering statistics about the contraction of the job market for college level teachers with Ph.Ds in the Humanities. The paper was delivered in absentia by a colleague as Croxall was unable to afford attending this year's conference (attendance at which was down 13% from 2008-2009), even with the travel subsidy offered by his university.

Happy birthday, Mr. Rogovin

Photographer Milton Rogovin at a 2005 protest in Buffalo. Photo by Paula Rogovin. Courtesy The Rogovin Collection, LLC

Today, Milton Rogovin, the internationally known social documentary photographer who has called Buffalo home for more than 70 years, turns 100. Rogovin, whose photographic explorations of the poor and working classes -- in Buffalo and around the globe -- was honored earlier this month with a celebration at the Burchfield Penney Art Center.

Rogovin began his life in New York City, and moved to Buffalo to start an optometry practice in 1938. He was inducted into the army in 1942. In the anti-communist fervor of the 1950s, Rogovin was called before the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee and refused to name names. Because of his silence, Rogovin was effectively forced to give up his optometry practice and turned instead to photography, which he saw as a way to expose social injustices and to tell the stories of the world's oppressed minorities. This turned out to be fortuitous for Rogovin's social causes, and for the field of photography as a whole. His travels took him from Buffalo's West Side, where he still lives, to the factories and neighborhoods of Latin America, Africa and Europe.

The faces of his subjects, though they hailed from different continents, bore the unmistakable mix of strength and discouragement that characterizes the experience of the world's working poor. In this way, his photography became much more than mere documentation, but a link that joined together disparate sections of the world's population and pointed toward a great and painful commonality among all cultures.

Some of Rogovin's work, with accompanying poetry by local professor Eric Gansworth, is now on view at the Burchfield Penney. See a slide show of that work, with narration by Gansworth, below:

--Colin Dabkowski

Kindred spirits: Alexander Hamilton and Tupac Shakur

Poking around the inter-webs in advance of my interview with "In the Heights" creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, I ran across this fascinating video of Miranda's performance at a White House spoken word event in May. It features a glimpse at Miranda's forthcoming concept album based on the life of founding father and treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton written from the perspective of his murderer, Aaron Burr. No lie.

--Colin Dabkowski