10 Books, Art, and Music That Embody the City – Chicago Review of Books

10 Books, Art, and Music That Embody the City – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] In avery r. young’s words, these are “10 Chicago, books, art, music that I dig. People do what they want to do. Check them out or miss out.” We couldn’t agree more. The Curtis album By Curtis Mayfield Curtom Records, 1970 It’s like the funk of Cottage Grove found its way to The Lyric … Read more

On Love, Trauma, and Music in “Notes on Her Color” – Chicago Review of Books

On Love, Trauma, and Music in “Notes on Her Color” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] Notes on Her Color is not only a debut novel by Jennifer Neal, but also a musical composition. Each word is a note carefully considered before being etched onto the page with the hope of bringing art to life and feelings to the surface. Gabrielle is a young woman living in hell. Her father … Read more

An Interview with Lesley Harrison on “Kitchen Music” – Chicago Review of Books

An Interview with Lesley Harrison on “Kitchen Music” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] “My house holds sound / like the sea inside a shell,” writes Lesley Harrison in the poem “Convergence.” And this is the sense one has while reading Kitchen Music, a poetry collection filled with as much sea and wind as a house on the coast of an island. Conversing with a variety of artists … Read more

An Ever-Ending Story in “Absolute Music” – Chicago Review of Books

An Ever-Ending Story in “Absolute Music” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] Is the world of our everyday reality the only world we live in, and the realest one we can apprehend? For McPhail, the protagonist of Jonathan Geltner’s novel Absolute Music, the world of fantasy—“the other world that has no name or too many names,” a “world behind the world”—is not only real but all … Read more

Listening to Earth Before It’s Too Late, in “Earth’s Wild Music” – Chicago Review of Books

Listening to Earth Before It’s Too Late, in “Earth’s Wild Music” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] The climate crisis is so rapidly laying waste to our world that it can be depressing to even attempt to comprehend it. We’re in the midst of a mass extinction period brought upon by human greed and soulless expansion. Billions of years of unique evolution have been ripped out from under us by a … Read more

Sonic Relationships and Semantic Rhythms in “Field Music” – Chicago Review of Books

Sonic Relationships and Semantic Rhythms in “Field Music” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] Alexandria Hall’s National Poetry Series-winning book, Field Music, possesses a poetic maturity born less from extensive experience than from piercing vision and sensitivity. Hall, a finalist in the 2018 “Narrative 30 Below Contest” has lived some, undoubtedly, but somehow manages to sidestep the typical language registers of youth—the naiveté, the callowness, the arbitrary ambiguity. … Read more