Broke Baroque


Book Description

BROKE BAROQUE is the third in a series of Broke Books by award-winning poet, Tony Medina. Centered on Medina’s iconic everyman, Broke, a character that bears witness to his plight of homelessness in a humorous yet profound way. BROKE BAROQUE contains poetry peppered with images articulating Broke’s erratic experiences on the streets of Any City, USA. Through tall tales, anecdotes, episodes, rants and jokes, Broke eloquently and irreverently conveys his marginalization in a grossly unaccommodating society. With his trademark absurd and caustic wit, Medina portrays Broke’s anger, fear, humility, and resolve with humor, insight and compassion, bringing moments of levity and hopefulness to Broke’s plight. Funny and perversely sharp, whimsical and impassioned, BROKE BAROQUE is compulsively readable and will connect with any book and poetry lover alike. With a powerful introduction by McArthur-winner Ishmael Reed.




The Origins of Baroque Art in Rome


Book Description

Delivered at the turn of the twentieth century, Riegl's groundbreaking lectures called for the Baroque period to be judged by its own rules and not merely as a period of decline.




This Book is Broken


Book Description

The year was 2000. The alternative music scene had all but died, and pre-packaged pop stars had filled the vacuum. But in a basement apartment in the heart of downtown Toronto, two musicians were forming a creative partnership that would revive the mass appeal of indie music and forever change how we think of a band. In this biography of the ever-evolving indie-rock collective, Broken Social Scene, music columnist Stuart Berman tracks the group's inception by Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning; groundbreaking performances at Ted's Wrecking Yard that raised the band's local status to mythical proportions; Broken Social Scene's meteoric rise upon the release of breakout album You Forgot It In People; the creation of Arts & Crafts records with music-biz maverick Jeffrey Remedios; and life on the road with revolving bandmates, including members of Stars, Metric, The Dears, and international pop sensation Feist. Stuart Berman has drawn from hours of interviews with members and affiliates of Broken Social Scene, and exclusive, never-before-seen photographs, gig posters, and artwork to create a spectacular oral and visual history of this ever-evolving indie-rock collective.




Garden History


Book Description

Highly illustrated to present and explain in a most appealing way, the historic styles of gardens with particular emphasis on the philosophy of garden design. This carefully structured overview makes the large subject of garden history accessible to a wide range of readers. The sections on history and philosophy are written as succinct essays, illustrated with photographs or perspective drawings. The essays deal with the ideas and historical conditions, which led to the making of particular types of gardens. The section on styles will focus on plan analysis and will be illustrated. Diagrams illu.




Unifying the Universe


Book Description

Unifying the Universe: The Physics of Heaven and Earth provides a solid background in basic physics. With a humanistic perspective, it shows how science is significant for more than its technological consequences. The book includes clear and well-planned links to the arts and philosophies of relevant historical periods to bring science and the humanities together.




Boricua Passport


Book Description

BORICUA PASSPORT evokes the complex in-betweeness that represents the contemporary Puerto Rican condition as filtered through the prism of poet J.L. Torres’ life experience. For many Puerto Ricans the sense of being unhomed—having a homeland but not really feeling at home anywhere—is a real lived experience determined by a persisting and unsettled colonial condition. In BORICUA PASSPORT, Torres, screams, shouts, rejoices, celebrates, tickles and challenges with a poetry sprinkled with Spanish/Spanglish that is immediate and urgent. His is a testimony to the indefatigable Puerto Rican spirit which, although burdened by this colonial condition, still strives to cobble a hybrid world full of love, passion and hope. BORICUA PASSPORT will transport any reader into this limbo world with all its fascinating incongruities and descriptive vistas. It’s your passport into a world simultaneously real and imaginary, one most people don’t even know exists. A must read!




Baroque Fictions


Book Description

This volume is the first in-depth study of the French novelist Marguerite Yourcenar's fiction to contend that the author's texts exhibit in unexpected ways numerous characteristics of the neobaroque. This subversive, postmodern aesthetic privileges extravagant artistic play, flux, and heterogeneity. In demonstrating the affinity of Yourcenar's texts with the neobaroque, the author of this study casts doubt on their presumed transparency and stability, qualities associated with the French neoclassical tradition of the past century, where the Yourcenarian oeuvre is most often placed. Yourcenar's election to the prestigious, tradition-bound French Academy in 1981 as its first female "immortal" cemented her already well-established niche in the twentieth-century French literary pantheon. A self-taught classicist, historian, and modern-day French moralist, Yourcenar has been praised for her polished, "classical" style and analyzed for her use of myth and universal themes. While those factors at first seem to justify amply the neoclassical label by which Yourcenar is most widely recognized, this study's close reading of four of her fictions reveals instead the texts' opacity and subversive resistance to closure, their rejection of stable interpretations, and their deconstruction of postmodern Grand Narratives. Theirs is a neobaroque "logic," which stresses the absence of theoretical assurances and the limitations of reason. The coincidence of the new millennium -- which in so many ways reflects Yourcenar's disquieting vision -- and her centenary in 2003 affords not so much an excuse to reject the author's neoclassical label, but rather the obligation to reassess it in light of contemporary discourses. This study will be of interest to students of twentieth-century French fiction and comparative literature, especially that of the latter half of the twentieth century.




Bad Men


Book Description

How have African American writers drawn on "bad" black men and black boys as creative touchstones for their evocative and vibrant art? This is the question posed by Howard Rambsy’s new book, which explores bad men as a central, recurring, and understudied figure in African American literature and music. By focusing on how various iterations of the bad black man figure serve as creative muse and inspiration for literary production, Rambsy puts a wide variety of contemporary African American literary and cultural works in conversation with creativity research for the first time. Employing concepts such as playfulness, productivity, divergent thinking, and problem finding, Rambsy examines the works of a wide range of writers—including Elizabeth Alexander, Amiri Baraka, Paul Beatty, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Tyehimba Jess, Trymaine Lee, Adrian Matejka, Aaron McGruder, Evie Shockley, and Kevin Young—who have drawn on notions of bad black men and boys to create innovative and challenging works in a variety of genres. Through groundbreaking readings, Rambsy demonstrates the fruitfulness of viewing black literary art through the lens of creativity research.




The Age of Reason Begins


Book Description

The Story of Civilization, Volume VII: A history of European civilization in the period of Shakespeare, Bacon, Montaigne, Rembrandt, Galileo, and Descartes: 1558-1648. This is the seventh volume of the classic, Pulitzer Prize-winning series.




Fanfare


Book Description