Friday Five highlights music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This edition features indie-gaze by The Nuts, post-everything by Post-Ford, modern classical by Carlos Taboada, remixes of Annie Bacon songs, and electro-pop by Lovepark.

Diane Seuss questions and challenges the utility of poetry in her new book, Modern Poetry. The poems in this collection examine poetry directly and indirectly. One poem, blunt in its title “Against Poetry,” speculates, “Maybe what distinguishes / art from illustration / is its uselessness.” 

Death and love crop up frequently throughout this book, as is fitting for a collection titled Modern Poetry. In the poem “Love Letter,” death is reality—“It’s clear we die a hundred times / before we die”—and love is imperfect: 

When I first read the word denouement
out loud, my ex-husband
laughed at my mispronunciation.
I include it here as an illustration
of the fact that love does not conquer
all. Now when I think
of love, it’s like focusing too hard
on the mechanisms of blinking or breathing.
You can be blinded or suffocated
By that degree of self-consciousness.

Through these poems, Seuss articulates the inadequacy and necessity of our human constructs, both in poetry and in life. The poet asks, answers, and prods the reader to contemplate this as well. 

Friday Five highlights music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This edition features emo-tinged punk by Geranium Red, yoga music by Golden Feelings, electronica by Evan W, improv and electronics by Panto Collapsar & Cyrus Pireh, and indie-tronica by Ness Lake with DJ FLP.

This piece originally ran on January 8, 2024.

In my family, I’m the person who insists on setting apart the cans that can be returned for deposit, while my husband says, “What do you get, three dollars? Not worth it.”

Perhaps not. But different philosophies about money, at the macro and micro level, are all-too-common in marriage. I mean, there’s a reason that finances always make the list of “things couples fight most about,” right?

To address these differences, Scott Rick, a U-M Ross School of Business marketing professor, has a new book called Tightwads and Spendthrifts: Navigating the Money Minefield in Real Relationships. Billed as distinct from conventional self-help or personal finance books, the book instead uses behavioral science as scaffolding for a broader discussion of how spending plays into our sense of personal identity; why we’re sometimes attracted to people who are quite unlike ourselves (in terms of spending); and practical ways to work through money-related conflicts.

“In order to run a highwayman to the ground, you have to learn to think like him: drink where he drank, eat what he ate, bathe in the same stream, and sleep in the bed … .” 

This remembrance of what lawman Irons St. John said by retired Pinkerton detective Emmet Rawlings kicks off Rawlings’ research and recollections of St. John—known as Ike to his friends—in Iron Star.

Loren D. Estleman’s newest Western novel reprises the character of St. John from his appearance in Mister St. John (1983) and looks back at his exploits. In the book, film star Buck Jones commissions Rawlings, who worked with St. John, to assemble his story for a new movie. 

Estleman is based in Whitmore Lake. Westerns are not the only books that he writes. Estleman has penned many mysteries, crime, and detective books, some of which are based in Detroit. 

In Iron Star, St. John has worked as a deputy U.S. marshal and spent time in jail. These disparate experiences on both sides of the law are evident in his behavior and speech. He is wary of everyone he encounters, as this exchange from St. John’s perspective illustrates: 

Craig Walsh spotlights everyday people and their impactful contributions to society in Monuments, a large-scale, nighttime video installation. The Australian visual artist projects people’s portraits onto trees in public spaces to honor community heroes and create welcoming spaces.

“When I made this work the art—the trees—are looking at the audience, so there’s this reversal of the role of art,” said Walsh, who’s from Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

“That work does take on different meanings to different people and quite often in different cultures and different places. That’s the beauty of touring this work—it’s always different in every location.”

Walsh is bringing his Monuments video installation to Ann Arbor’s Wheeler Park September 4-8 in partnership with Ann Arbor Summer Festival and the Ann Arbor District Library.

It's also receiving support from the University of Michigan Arts Initiative, Friends of the Ann Arbor District Library, and the Ladies Library Association. 

Monuments arrives during the city’s bicentennial year and celebrates the living history of four individuals who have served the community:

Friday Five highlights music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This edition features three electronica artists from the Sunbabe Records stable—Magoose, Caly3r, and Billion Dollar Mind—along with R&B from Vonsiwel and more electronic beauty via Otherseas.

Friday Five highlights music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This edition features punk rock by Sex Change, electro-prog by The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, space rock by Tomorrowland, Americana by Wells & the Outfit, and distorted beats by Foreign Carnivals.

Time can bring insights, and this proves true for U-M professor and author, Aaron P. Dworkin. In his new book, Lessons in Gratitude: A Memoir on Race, the Arts, and Mental Health, published this month by the University of Michigan Press, he reflects on his influences, formative years, career trajectory, and current state in life.

Lessons in Gratitude follows Dworkin’s life from birth through many milestones, including adoption, college, career, marriage, and family. He shares the messages he absorbed as a child and then how he continues applying them into adulthood. During his violin lessons when he tried to explain mistakes, his teacher replied, “You no talk. You play.” This led Dworkin to see that, “These words were probably the most important lesson Mr. Graffman ever taught me. One of my personal tenets is that ‘It’s not what you say, but rather what you do.’” This interaction, among many other encounters with music and in his home life, informed Dworkin’s subsequent approach to work and relationships.

Early in the book, Dworkin chronicles his education as he grew up in New York City and later in Hershey, Pennsylvania, attended Interlochen Arts Academy for two years, and then went to college. Throughout his life, such as when he was studying music and falling in love for the first time, his identity as a biracial and adopted person intertwined with his experiences. Dworkin tells how music has been a unifying force:

My relationship with music has been rocky at times, especially during my teens. Even so, I have never denied its hold on me. Music allowed me to express my emotions I could never articulate how it resonates deep in my soul, the hidden spaces known only to me and what one may refer to as god. Music is the story of mankind with its melodies and beats—the tragedies, the triumphs, the loneliness, and the wonders. It is a part of me that connects me to the rest of the world.

Friday Five highlights music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This edition features Irish-American fiddle folk by Hannah O'Brien & Grant Flick, original electronica courtesy of MEMCO, drum 'n' bass by Indigo Virus, country-folk by Kathy Wieland, and a Phil Collins cover by Chris DuPont.