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A Poet’s Poet

America’s new poet laureate is not exactly what you might expect of a writer in such a prominent position. “At age 77, living what has been a well-filled but private literary life, Donald Hall is a bit shocked at the intense national media attention to his appointment.” Hall has been publishing poems for over forty years, and in the often-snarky world of American literature, he stands out as a writer about whom no one seems to have a negative word to say.

Grave Robber Uncovers Archaeological Stunner

“Hoping for leniency in a coming trial, an accused tomb robber led Italian officials two weeks ago to a startling discovery on a sun-scorched hilltop here: the oldest Etruscan burial chamber ever found. The tomb, dating from at least the seventh century B.C., was shown on Friday to reporters who were taken by bus to the site, less than 13 miles north of Rome. For now, archaeologists have named it the Tomb of the Roaring Lions.”

The Met’s Glass House

“For eight years, curators, conservators, lighting experts and stonemasons have been methodically making small but significant improvements to the five medieval cloisters that were fashioned into [a Metropolitan Museum of Art branch operation] in 1938… The most noticeable addition by far, however, is just beginning to become visible. A wall of windows in the Early Gothic Hall that face west overlooking the Hudson has been carefully restored and given an exterior protective glazing in preparation for the addition of 14 panels of mainly 13th-and 14th-century stained-glass windows.”

Ellen Seligman On Editing Fiction:

Seligman is Canada’s “top fiction editor”: “You read a book, and maybe one can say what maybe needs work or what could use revision here and there. So, a reader might be able to do that. But if you’re really going to be useful, I think an editor has to understand what is possible to do. So you learn to develop the idea that ‘Okay, this is this book’ and you learn to make a distinction between what changes would make it another book as opposed to what can be done with the rough parameters of what the author wants to do with this book.”

Was Horowitz’s Piano The Equivalent Of Bonds’ Steroids?

“Although it’s true that tweaking a piano is not illegal, hardly like ingesting a banned substance, one effect resembles that of steroids. According to ‘Game of Shadows,’ the recent bestseller that blew the whistle on Bonds, one of the properties of steroids is that they can reduce the effects of fatigue, permitting ballplayers to ignore pain and concentrate on hitting or throwing. A looser action on a keyboard does something similar: You can play runs and scales faster and for a longer period of time with less muscle fatigue. In that sense, you could say that Horowitz’s instrument was like a piano on steroids.”

Cleveland-In-Florida – Some Mixed Feelings

In Miami there are mixed feelings about a deal that will make the Cleveland Orchestra the resident orchestra of the region’s major new performing arts center. Cleveland is one of the world’s great orchestras. And yet, some worry that having the orchestra in residence will mean the area won’t be able to build its own orchestra. “It’s a shame that the hall was built for the local musicians and they’re not getting a chance to use it. Obviously, the musicians who were in the Florida Philharmonic would like to be playing in the hall that was built for them.”

Zaha Hadid – Architect From A Different Time

“Today, armed with a clutch of actual buildings, a Pritzker Prize and a pile of big commissions (as well as the Guggenheim show), 56-year-old Hadid has joined the select society of designers charged with keeping the future up-to-date. Her architecture is so impeccably modern – so virtuously free of reference to Greek temples or Gothic cathedrals – that it appears to belong to a time the rest of us haven’t experienced yet.”

Barnes Neighbors Protest Plans To Move

residents of Merion, Pennsylvania, are organizing to try to block the Barnes Collection’s move to Philadelphia. The activists say that the barnes’ neighbors had proposed way to increase the number of visitors to the museum and generate more income. “We are here because the move is not a done deal. We refuse to except the theft and ruin of a treasure.”

John Updike At 74

“There is that sense of wonder when you get up in the morning and look in the mirror and realize this old guy with thinning hair and rumpled skin is you. It wasn’t so long ago, it seems to me, that I looked in the mirror and saw this smooth and quite freckled face.”