Elizabeth Bishop

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Poems, prose, and the New Yorker

After James Merrill described Elizabeth Bishop as "a poet's poet's poet," reviewers repeated the witticism as if it were true. Actually, beginning with her first book, Bishop got awards and grants — that master poet politician Robert Lowell was in her co
Elizabeth Bishop goes pop
By WILLIAM CORBETT | February 04, 2011

Jenny Holzer's projections remake buildings

Jenny Holzer is not an architect, but in 2004, when she projected those words onto the stone facade of the Hotel Pennsylvania in Manhattan's Times Square, the historic building acquired a character it had never before seen.
Big words
By NICHOLAS SCHROEDER | December 03, 2010

Grave Spotting

I asked the question this way: "Where would you want to be buried?" Not "do," but "would." That is to say if, by chance, you were to die, unlikely as that might be, where would you want to spend all of nonexistence?
Spooky? A bit, but Massachusetts's cemeteries are also the bucolic, final resting places of many great American writers.
By NINA MACLAUGHLIN | June 18, 2010

Midnight ramblers

In rock ’n’ roll, it was possible to live in Harvard Square, be a musician — a local musician — and be able to pay your rent and find restaurants where you could eat and buy food and survive, and feel that there was a sense of . . . future, with hope and
Rock legend Peter Wolf serves dinner and verse to the Phoenix ’s poet .
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | April 09, 2010

Best in their field

The jazz scene continues to struggle — along with everyone else — through hard times.
An early 2010 harvest
By JON GARELICK | January 01, 2010

Year in Books: Word plays

Here, listed alphabetically by author, are 10 of the best works of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry that the Phoenix wrote about in 2008.
Of werewolves and wastelands
By JON GARELICK | December 22, 2008

Phenomenal!

Living for a century is still a milestone; for a great and still-productive artist to do so is virtually unheard of.
Elliott Carter turns 100
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 10, 2008

Selected and otherwise

Simic is a poet not of big gloomy poems but of small glooms and fears that haunt our waking lives and disturb our sleep.
A sheaf of post-April poetry and poets
By WILLIAM CORBETT | May 13, 2008

Orpheus in the afterworld

Tomsic’s last Boston recital was four years ago. We can’t afford to be without her this long.

Harbison and Mahler at the BSO, and the return of Dubravka Tomsic

By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | April 22, 2008

Bishop, after all

To enter a Bishop poem with the mind and senses wide open is to be scrubbed back to first principles.
The ‘poet’s poet’ gets canonized
By SVEN BIRKERTS | February 05, 2008

Lloyd Schwartz: the beat goes on

Classical-music critic Lloyd Schwartz recently marked his 30th year as a Phoenix contributor.
Letter from the Executive Editor
By PETER KADZIS | January 30, 2008

Country for old men

A youthful 80-year-old Sir Colin Davis was back in front of the Boston Symphony Orchestra last weekend with one of the pieces he loves most.
Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, BMOP, Marc-André Hamelin, and Sasha Cooke
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | January 29, 2008

Doodle bugs

Every teen mag worth its weight in heartthrobs can tell you what your notebook doodlings reveal about your personality.
Brushes with greatness
By NINA MACLAUGHLIN | January 02, 2008

Winter reads

Esteemed fiction writers, young stars, the Civil War, the ’60s, and the morass of contemporary geopolitics — it’s all here for reading during winter’s long, dark nights.
Novels from Peter Carey and Russell Banks, poetry from Elizabeth Bishop, and advice from Madeleine Albright
By BARBARA HOFFERT | December 21, 2007

Playing with your food

In 1977, two food-loving childhood friends named Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield signed up for a $5 Penn State correspondence course in ice-cream making, just for the hell of it.
Recreational cooking classes to satisfy every appetite
By ASHLEY RIGAZIO | October 25, 2007

Three for the road

Maybe it’s Larry Klein’s world and the rest of us just live in it.
Herbie Hancock, Renee Rosnes, and Luciana Souza
By JON GARELICK | August 21, 2007

Winter harvest

"I don’t want to be here,” soprano Susan Larson lamented in her moving eulogy to her old friend and colleague Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.
Emmanuel’s memorial to Lorraine Hunt Lieberson; Angelika Kirchschlager at Jordan Hall; Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos and El Niño at the BSO
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 12, 2006

The Paris Review Interview, Vol. 1 introduction by Philip Gourevitch

Picador, 524 pages, $16
By JON GARELICK | December 04, 2006

High Numbers

This article originally appeared in the March 19, 1993 issue of the Boston Phoenix.
Elliott Carter at 85, Pavarotti at Boston Garden, plus Russell Sherman and the Boston Philharmonic
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | November 16, 2006

Harvard Square

Harvard Square was very different 40 years ago.
Ground zero for so much, for so many
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | November 15, 2006

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson

We were very lucky, here in Boston, to have had so many chances to hear Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who died in Santa Fe last Monday at the age of 52.
1954–2006
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | July 11, 2006

Nothing pretty

Novelist Valerie Martin has made a career of tackling the offbeat, the morally ambiguous, and the bizarre.
Valerie Martin digs into art’s dirty work
By CLEA SIMON | June 02, 2006

Ralph Hamilton

My lovable, impossible friend of more than 30 years, the artist Ralph Hamilton, died on February 19, of complications from diabetes. He was only 59. It’s a very sad loss. He was one of Boston’s most original and searching painters and had been doing some
1946–2006
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | March 09, 2006

Sham-pagne

"Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends!"
Getting acquainted with the other sparkling wines
By RUTH TOBIAS | January 12, 2006

War and peace

Since September 11, publishers have been rushing to supply Americans with non-fiction books about the war on terror, the war in Iraq, and anything relating to the upheavals in the Middle East.
Books that travel from the Mecca to Memphis
By JOHN FREEMAN | January 02, 2006

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