Category:Guest Artists

For He Was a Great Man

Juan Felipe Herrera, U.S. Poet Laureate Emeritus

For he was a great man thrown & pulled toward the flames
For the flames were familiar for they would seal his story
For he was taken down face down body down to account
For his soul stood up & noticed the chariot song descending
For he pleaded as the fiery metals coiled upon his ebony skin
For he was our Renaissance our thirst our vessel for Freedom
For they said he was our father our son our symbol our body
For a choir assembled in the streets in every furnace of witness
For he called upon his mother as he called upon the Source
For he was not your Negro he was not your Black cut down
For he was the ancestral ship burning through waves & chains
For he was the future no one had prophesied the Now & the Is...

Full Circle Sail

Daniel Picker

With the mast up
while wheeling the boat
out from the yard,
by the sandy shore
to launch as if for
the first time, sun
bright, sky light, wind
half brisk, a new ...

Kinds of Blues: 3 Songs & 3 Poems

Cornelius Eady

Cornelius Eady has published more than half a dozen volumes of poetry, among them Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (1985), winner of the Lamont Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets; The Gathering of My Name (1991), nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; and Brutal Imagination (2001), a National Book Award finalist.

The Superpower of Conducting: Women Rise to the Podium

Anna Rakitina, Assistant Conductor, Boston Symphony Orchestra

Being а female conductor in today’s music world does not feel too uncommon, though, for sure, it was not always like this. The rise of women in the profession is a relatively recent development and, as with many other leadership…

Ghost Session

Pete Mullineaux

In the elbow of the snug, our absent selves make ready – open cases, ease bellows, tune strings – spread the rosin; some chit-chat about weather, the match, a bit of world news thrown in. Flute enters, shrugging off the raingear, bicycle clips; Banjo tries to order drinks, plink-plink of a coin on an empty glass. A few are already warming up fingers, loosening wrists, softening lips; taking off into a gentile O’Carolan set, maybe a jig or two, before letting rip with a few high tempo reels...

Social Distance and Two Other Poems

Eileen Cleary

Like the car-heavy bison on the ruined road
in Chernobyl’s exclusion zone, she keeps her home
here. A raven stretches its wings atop a crucifix in spring
as Maria farms her atomic land. Armored bugs threaten
her crops. Why must they interrupt? She two-steps ...