Reviews - May 2019

The poetry of a New York hour

A thousand singers on a mile-long stage

Mile-Long Opera along the High Line in New York City, October 2018. Photo by Iwan Baan.

For six evenings in October 2018, the Mile-Long Opera was performed for free on the High Line, starting at 7:00 p.m. That time is significant: the opera was billed as “a biography of 7:00 p.m.” because the libretto and accompanying texts were based on interviews with hundreds of New Yorkers about the meaning of the hour when day gives way to night.

“No we don’t talk, but people get to know each other just by walking past each other all the time.”

Glimpsing the new normal

On Kristen Gallagher’s ‘85% True/Minor Ecologies’

Writing that tends to take an anthropocentric consideration of the physical world — e.g., a traditional nature writing that privileges human observation — implies a certain hierarchical separation between subject and material. It is the same assumption that leads to the glaring dismissal of other actants, especially those considered to be alien (i.e., not human). When the fantasy of privileged human experience is dissolved, there is an equitable condition, where people and their environments are slipped, or perhaps coerced, into substance.