Arts May 30 Photographer goes to great heights for call to arms on sprawl Christopher Gielen is not an architect and he can't speak to the future of land development, but he hopes his photographs will serve as a tool for those who can make a difference.
Arts May 29 How an unlikely group changed the face of the FBI, retold in ‘The Burglary’ “There was a sense in the anti-war movement that it was being infiltrated by spies, by informers, but there was no evidence,” said Betty Medsger, author of "The Burglary." In 1971, a small group of unlikely individuals -- including a…
Poetry May 26 Weekly Poem: Dan Chiasson and his poetry time machine Poet Dan Chiasson started working on his book “Bicentennial” after the death of his father, who left when Chiasson was 7 months old. While the two never really knew each other, that event prompted Chiasson to revisit his childhood in…
Poetry May 19 Weekly Poem: W. S. Di Piero uses language to create ’emotional immediacy’ W. S. Di Piero never wants to hear again that his poems are intense. “You get tired of hearing certain things if they get said so many times about the kind of work you do. I don’t write poems that…
Arts May 15 Vietnam War reenactors go full metal in the woods of Oregon Deep in the woods of western Oregon, a group of men trudges through mud and rain, wearing full army fatigues and using slang not overheard since the Nixon administration. The men are reenacting the Vietnam War and award-winning filmmakers Mike…
Arts May 14 Lost and found identities in Dinaw Mengestu’s ‘All Our Names’ Life in post-colonial Africa and the civil rights era in the United States aren’t typically compared, but Dinaw Mengestu, author of the new novel “All Our Names,” saw those moments in history as an echo of each other.
Poetry May 12 Weekly Poem: Mark Bibbins takes ‘little pieces’ to craft layers of meaning Bibbins writes poems like collages -– using words or anecdotes to create new layers of meaning.
Poetry May 05 Weekly Poem: Kevin Powers approaches war with ‘unadorned honesty’ In his first collection of poems, “Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting,” former Army machine gunner Kevin Powers writes about combat and the consequences of conflict.
Arts May 02 What does (insert your race here) look like? Impossible answers to an impossible question Here at Art Beat, we don’t want to shy away from difficult conversations and sensitive topics when they are depicted in art. Such was the case when we posted the story “Photographer examines what being white looks like.” It elicited…
Arts May 01 Photographer examines what being white looks like In 2007, photographer Myra Green had just finished “Character Recognition,” a collection of images of her face printed through a historical photographic process called ambrotype on black glass. The project sparked a conversation with one of her friends about race.