Although I daresay he didn’t originate this style, there is a form of writing where reality and dream are mixed in a special way, which has become associated with Murakami, but which has been given new twists by American authors, most notably in the way it has been given a novel direction and dynamic by Thad Rutkowski in his new collection of short stories, Guess and Check.

If, judging by the trailers, the summer’s great female assassin film will not be Atomic Blonde, but Jung Byung-gil’s The Villainess, I know from having just seen it that so far the summer’s great action film isDerek Kwok’s Wu Kong with its repeated tagline, “My name will be remembered a million years, Sun Wu Kong.”

In an arena of fans and critics primed for the often-bloody sport of declamation, it takes much nerve to attempt to tell the definitive story of a major literary figure.

An evening of quirky romantic comedies for the binge watch generation.

Limited Six-Performance Run! Tix @ www.smartix.com

Greatness surrounds Melissa Cabrera when she attends classes at Bronx Community College. That should not be surprising, because the campus is home to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, where busts of scientists, scholars and statesmen, among others, line a grand colonnade that wraps around Gould Memorial Library, an architectural treasure designed by Stanford White.

It’s a foolhardy attempt to try and nail down any lyrics-driven album in a single set of bars, especially one authored by a rapper of Jay-Z’s legendary, layered dexterity. But early on in the confessional “4:44,” the rapper born Shawn Carter states: “I apologize, often womanize/Took for my child to be born to see through a woman’s eyes/Took me these natural twins to believe in miracles/Took me too long for this song/I don’t deserve you.” The dual facts that a truly soul-searching statement from such a titan of rap has been long forthcoming and that he now better understands both his feminine side and the myths of masculinity are two of the multiple animating elements at work on the rapper’s shockingly good thirteenth studio album, 4:44.

Poets of intersecting identities come together from A Gathering of the Tribes and the Poetry Brothel to perform new work in assorted modes, including confessional, philosophical, humor, and drag.

Featuring: Molly Kirschner, Joanna Sit, Nicholas Oliver Moore, Luciann Berrios

On the occasion of “Too Late: the European Can(n)on is Here,” their second dual exhibition together at Shoestring Press, artists Lane Sell and Phil Rabovsky sat down with curator Madeleine Boucher in a tiny Brooklyn living room over no small amount of whiskey.

An effective technique in poetry is to guide the reader on a journey that feels like you’re discovering together as opposed to resorting to a heavy-handed didactic approach. Guess and Check is not a collection of poetry, however, Rutkowski employs this tactic as we follow his protagonist on life’s obstacle-ridden path

Medrie MacPhee’s newest paintings are made from the shapes and contours of disassembled garments, giving “pattern painting” an entirely new meaning.

Currently on view are exhibits featuring the work of Irving Penn and Rei Kawakubo for fashion house, Comme des Garçons. I went to view both spectacles in the same day and saw Irving Penn’s photographs first. This retrospective of Penn’s work is the largest to date and celebrates the centennial of the artist’s birth.

Hooray for Love! Our second printing of WORD: An Anthology by A Gathering of the Tribes has been ordered and are now available for purchase. Click on the link below! Meanwhile, check out this video of our April 1st Release party brought to you by the fine filmmakers at Neighborhood Slice Productions. 

There are some Minnesotans who want to rebrand this state as North. It’s become something of a movement, and I can’t help but think how apt that is.

I turn fifty this year—a distinction I share with The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the famed Summer of Love… and the Six Day War that brought victory to the state of Israel and began the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights that continues down to this day.

Things to Do when You’re Goth in the Country, opts for a much wider canvas, centering (with one interesting exception) on a broader range of Midwest types, from young lesbians dropping acid in St. Louis to a set of church matrons discussing church business to a jailed, addled druggie musing on blood in the sky.

As the civil rights movement crept north, the debate became over who was baddest: Martin Luther King, Jr. or Malcolm X.

After two and a half years, a Gathering of the Tribes is proud to announce its Anthology of 50 poets and 50 artists called WORD, has been released into the world. And due to popular demand, Tribes is in the process in doing a second printing of the above.

I first became aware that I was losing my eyesight when I was in Nicaragua, helping to celebrate the Sandinistas.