Last weekend, the creative duo, slowdanger, opened a 5-week performance series at the Wood Street Galleries. The series’ aim is to bring “up and coming local artists” to the third floor of the gallery, in unique and intimate performances. Anna Thompson and Taylor Knight (the slowdanger artists) fit that description in terms of their individuality. …
Do Not Rise Poems by Beth Bachmann Pitt Poetry Series, 2015 $15.95 You be the garden I leave my boots in when I walk barefoot after drought. Do to me what no one has done. These lines come from Bachmann’s poem “garden, and a gun,” a title that brings to light the collection’s most powerful …
More Money Than God Poems by Richard Michelson Pitt Poetry Series, 2015 $15.95 Balanced on the threshold of misery and comedy, Richard Michelson’s More Money Than God is an examination of the intersections where personal tragedy and global suffering meet. In Michelson’s fourth collection, we find poems that seek resolution but settle for meaninglessness, all …
White Vespa by Kevin Oderman Etruscan Press, 2012 $16.00 Running from one’s problems doesn’t mean they are left behind and oftentimes there are new troubles waiting. In White Vespa, Myles travels to Greece to distance himself from the pain of his disintegrating family only to find himself mired in the complications of two siblings with …
Crystal Eaters by Shane Jones Two Dollar Radio, 2014 $12.00 I’ve been told time and time again not to judge a book by its cover. And I’ll come clean—I always do. I’m a sucker for beautiful cover art. It will force me to pick a book off the shelf every time. I grew up with …
Last week, I went grocery shopping at Giant Eagle on S. Braddock Avenue in Pittsburgh with my 90-some-year-old friend, Ginger Carlson, who lives by herself in Wilkinsburg. First, though, we sat on her back porch, watched a black and white cat, splayed flat pretend to stalk a pair of red squirrels who plainly knew a …
Closing the Book: Travles in Life, Loss, and Literature by Joelle Renstrom Pelekinesis Books, 2015 $20.00 Joelle Renstrom’s collection of essays, Closing the Book: Travels in Life, Loss, and Literature, does not try to explain to the reader how to lose a loved one. This is not a self-help book, at least not in the …
A little known fact in the Pittsburgh dance community is that Michele de la Reza, co-director of Attack Theatre, performed mime as her first stage experience. She eventually went on to receive a degree in dance from the renowned Juilliard School, but her original training never left her. Her partner, Peter Kope, also has dramatic …