1) The music of Jimmy Eat World / I rarely go long stretches without listening to the pride of Mesa, Arizona (the city in which I finished high school). But I enjoyed a special engagement with the band this week. Last year, the band live-streamed performances of three albums from its catalog: “Clarity,” “Futures” and “Surviving.” With the audio from those moments now available for streaming as well, I steeped in those sessions. There’s something magical about hearing a great band remain at the top of its powers so long—and about hearing some of its finest material with an additional flourish, or a little extra measure of soul.
2) The music of INXS / While we’re on the topic of revisiting a band, I combed back through footage of this Australian outfit’s 1991 performance at London’s Wembley Stadium. For some reason, I needed a reminder that the late Michael Hutchence was indeed one of the most magnetic frontman we’ve ever known. Not a deity but not quite human, Hutchence is rock and roll embodied in that moment.
3) Yusef Komunyakaa, “Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth” / My first introduction to this Pulitzer-winning poet was an immersion—long, leisurely swims through his new and selected work. I was amazed by the earthiness, the elemental detail, in Komunyakaa’s work as well as its musicality. How can you not respond to a poem like “A Night in Tunisia,” which opens like this:
How long have I listened
to this blues & how long
has Dizzy Gillespie been dead?
I remember an old longing,
a young man reaching
for luck, a finger poised
between pages of Baldwin’s
Notes of a Native Son, a clock
stopped for a hard, crystal-
clear moment.
4) Kate Baer, “I Hope This Finds You Well” / A remarkable sense of liberation lives on the pages of this collection, which makes poetry from the words of online missives—some encouraging, most dripping with some brand of ignorance or misogyny. The erasure techniques Baer uses are impressive enough, but her ability to subvert and reform this language will no doubt spur readers to take back the power of words for themselves.
5) David Peisner, “Michael Stipe is Present” for Bitter Southerner / The longtime R.E.M. frontman is now and forever my first answer to the hypothetical “What celebrity would you want to have dinner with?” Peisner’s profile only confirms that choice, looking at Stipe as he begins a new artistic phase and seeks clarity through the fog of our information-rich, wisdom-deficient age.