Italics are mine

Book Review: "What Light Can Do" by Robert Hass

A few weeks ago I picked up a copy of a new book of essays by Robert Hass, entitled What Light Can Do. I've got to admit I'd never heard of Hass before, but the book was face out at the B&N in Bethesda, Md and the colorful cover appealed to me. (Graphic designers of the world, rejoice.) Then I noticed the line under his name, "winner of the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize". That piqued my curiosity, since I like to think of myself as cultivated enough to know of recent prize winners and major contenders. It turned out that Hass is a poet and I haven't followed developments in contemporary poetry as much as I should, but as I've written elsewhere on this blog I've been starved for intellectual discourse in my current town of Bethlehem, Pa, and the size of this book of essays by someone who is clearly an authority in his field was enough to make me buy it, once the cover had enticed me pick it up. (There is a lot to read, which is exactly what I needed for the long evenings back in Pa.)

I started reading the book in the cafe area of B&N Bethesda - a great place to read, if you've never been, because of the large bay windows that flood the area with sunlight when the weather cooperates - and at the first essay I began regretting my purchase ($29.99 + tax, in case you're wondering). The essay wasn't bad, but I didn't care about it. I became a bit worried that the rather expensive book I'd just bought on a whim would only prove useful in making me lift weights - 1.8 pounds, according to Amazon.com. I'm all in favor of exercising, but maybe paying over $30 for one big box-shaped dumbbell hadn't quite been what I had in mind when I'd stepped into B&N. Then I skipped ahead to the second essay, about Anton Checkhov, and all was well with the world again. If you care enough about essays and Hass's book to have read this review so far, let me make it simple for you: buy the book. You won't like the essays equally - which is to be expected, since there are close to 500 pages and a total of 31 pieces - but the essays you like, you will truly cherish.

Hass's second essay is about Anton Chekhov. It so happens that I studied Russian literature quite a bit when I was in school, so I was naturally interested in what Hass had to say. I was not disappointed. In Chekhov's anger, Hass provides an in-depth commentary on Chekhov's stories that both shows his erudition and draws us in thanks to his limpid writing. Hass, who taught at UC Berkeley for many years, is most definitely not one of those academics writing in a pedantic or trite manner that only university presses bother to publish. He was in the news not too long ago for apparently being beaten by a police officer at an Occupy protest in Berkeley last year, when he was 70, so I guess - because of his participation in such a movement - that I shouldn't find his determination to make his knowledge accessible to a broad audience surprising. He clearly cares about reaching a large number of people without being demagogical about it. When I started reading the book I didn't know any of this about him, but his writing style - both grammatically perfect and very accessible - endeared him to me in no time, in addition to his broad range of interests, which we have in common and which I find refreshing, in this area of ever-increasing specialization.

I'll also list the other essays in the book that I particularly liked, in case my readers and I have similar tastes: Howl at fifty, the two essays about Czeslaw Milosz (Milosz at Eighty and Milosz at Ninety-Three), the three essays in the "Three photographers and their landscapes" section, On Teaching Poetry and Families and Prisons. This by no means suggests that the other essays aren't first-rate: I also enjoyed many of those, such as Notes on Poetry and Spirituality and Cormac McCarthy's Poetry. Many times throughout the book Hass made me think of someone's work in new ways - the greatest compliment I can pay to a book of essays. I have to mention that the essays are not new, and bear the year of their writing at the end of each text. Since I didn't know Hass's work before, all the material was new to me, but if you've read some of his nonfiction pieces, you might want to double-check that there is enough new material for you to justify a purchase.

Hass is also well-known for translating some of Nobel-Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz's poems. I had never read Milosz before (again, I haven't followed contemporary poetry as closely as I should, my knowledge is limited to Donald Hall, Jane Kenyon and Billy Collins), but what Hass mentions about him, in the essays that bear his name and some others, made me want to learn more about Milosz, who died eight years ago this past summer. So after reading Hass's book, to which I give five stars out of five, I snapped up a paperback copy of Milosz's Selected and Last Poems: 1931-2004. You'll have to wait until next week to learn what I thought about it! But hopefully reading Hass's 500-page-long book will keep you occupied until then.

Blog I Like: Philip Kennicott's Blog

I recently discovered Philip Kennicott's blog - I had already read a number of his articles in Gramophone and Opera News, and was pleasantly surprised to discover he also blogs when I was looking online for his article on the future of opera. So for today's post I decided to convince those among my readers who enjoy culture and art - and hopefully if you ended up on my blog you do enjoy culture and art, otherwise my writings might bore you rather quickly - to give his blog a try. Kennicott serves as the art and architecture critic at the Washington Post, after stints as its classical music critic and culture critic. I'm not sure why he isn't as famous as The New Yorker's Alex Ross (also very deserving of the success he has received), but hopefully this will change soon.

Anyway, here are a few blog posts or articles that I recommend:

• On opera: The Future of Opera (also published in Opera News), where he worries about "a two-tiered opera world in which the vast majority of the population knows the form only in its digital simulacrum, while an eccentric elite of antiquarians persists in the old ways", and King Roger, Santa Fe and Doing Opera Right (about the focus of Santa Fe Opera on producing mostly serious, lesser-known works rather than the crowdpleasers that would appeal to a broader audience).
• On museums: the Corcoran in DC finds itself in the spotlight because of a possible sale of its downtown building, which would be followed by a move to the suburbs, and Kennicott has written at length about the situation here and here. Fascinating insights into the world of DC museums.
• On anything art related: you can also read his articles in the Washington Post for a broader range of his writings, for instance: "West Heating plant would make ideal arts center for Georgetown", "Rooms with a view of Russian artistic history" and "In Detroit, a museum's tax measure raises hope for arts funding".

If you care about "anything visual" (his new definition of his beat, technically "art & architecture") happening in DC, you know what to read.

"La Boheme" in Philadelphia

Last month I was lucky to see a performance of "La Boheme" at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, and I've got to say, as much as I've enjoyed the Boheme productions I've seen at the Met in New York and in Santa Fe, this one stood out by a mile. It achieved that distinction by cleverly injecting (Philly-inspired!) modernism in the set while eschewing the pitfalls of an outright modern production. I only wish more directors possessed that kind of creativity.

Of course if you follow the opera scene you know that I'm referring to the innovative use of high-tech "animated" paintings, drawn from the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Barnes Collection (which re-opened in May nearby), displaying works created around the time the opera is supposed to take place. The paintings projected on the screen, arranged in a gallery-wall-like fashion on one wall of the set and also replacing Marcello's canvas, changed throughout the performance in a very smooth, unobstructive manner that did not take attention away from the singers and yet presented a refreshing element of novelty - precisely the sort of twist such a workhorse of the opera world needed to get noticed by the media. The production was the brainchild of Davide Livermore, whom I'll certainly keep an eye on in the future.

The singers were excellent, especially the lead male singer Bryan Hymel (a 2008 graduate of the local Academy of Vocal Arts), and I enjoyed the performance from beginning to end. As I was leaving I couldn't help thinking about how much more gratifying I find going to Philly for three operas a year, each shown to the public a handful of times - five, if you care to know - with each production showcasing up-and-coming, talented young singers, rather than heading to New York to see "arrived" superstars in the enormously costly productions at the Met, with ticket prices to match and performances six days a week throughout the season.

I've come to find the Metropolitan Opera in strong dissonance with my personality, for lack of a better way of expressing it. It is tempting to call the Met "stuffy", but the issue is more complex than that: I've enjoyed a number of new productions there, in particular "Tosca" and "Carmen", and I even liked what I saw of their new Ring cycle (although in all honesty I saw only the first of the four operas since the cycle became sold out almost as soon as it went on sale, at least for performances I could have attended.)

So the Met has definitely brought forward enjoyable new productions. My problem with it, though, is that I feel it drips with money to an extent I find a bit revolting. While fund-raising is a normal part of nonprofit operations, at the Met opera becomes about the donors much more than about the singers; anyway once they make it to the Met the singers must be so well-paid that it really turns into the 0.01% of the New York world paying homage to the 0.01% of the opera profession - enjoyable to watch in HD, but something I no longer care to support through ticket purchases.

When I go and see an opera in Philly, I know I will support young singers and the "gritty" vibe of Philly seeps through the novelty of the productions, which I find appealing. (Their Traviata two years ago, set in the jazz age of the 1920s, was far superior to the Met's new, cold production with all the white decor, black costumes and red sofa. I also appreciated that the lead female singer for Manon Lescaut last year was a black woman, the very talented Michelle Johnson. You don't see enough minorities in leading opera roles.)

In Philly I feel that my attendance has an impact and helps people with a passion achieve their dream. This is not to say that opera in Philly attracts a much younger crowd than in New York, but at least the wealth on display isn't a turnoff: the focus remains squarely on what is happening on stage and the exhilarating feeling that this or that singer might just have been cast in the role that will "make" his career. I am proud to be a part of that - and if you had seen Bryan Hymel's smile during curtain calls when people hollered bravo at him, you'd have been proud to have played a bit in his success too, simply by showing up. Maybe next time.