Jay Platt thought he'd be an engineer. The boat lover moved to Ann Arbor in 1963 from Alexandria, Virginia, to study naval architecture at the University of Michigan.

But a different career called out to him after he visited a bookstore in New York City:

"I had always been interested in older things, for one thing, and books—I wouldn't say I was a collector, but I would make a point of getting an earlier edition," Platt told Elizabeth Smith and Amy Cantu in an episode of AADL Talks To that was published March 30, 2024. "Then in early, I think, '71, I believe it was, I was in New York City with a good friend of mine, and he was into book collecting. We visited some bookshops ... but one we went into and he asked for this book by—I forgot what the title was—but the book dealer went way up in, knew right where it was. I said, 'How did he know that? There are thousands of books here,' and now I know, because you know your stock. You have to, and that's what got me started."

Platt worked for a couple of bookstores in Ann Arbor before launching his own business here in 1975: West Side Book Shop at 113 West Liberty Street. He and his partner at the time held an opening party on September 21, 1975, at the store, which is located on the street level of the John Haarer Building, which was built in 1888.

Fifty years later, West Side Book Shop is still going strong inside the Haarer Building.

Octaves by Tyler Dunston moves through a world where “As always / uncertainty is ours.” 

These poems bring in earthly realities like death and the dullness of the noon hour while also reaching more broadly to the skies in which “the moon and stars wilted / through layers of floor-to-ceiling glass.” The realms collide or overlap. A tangible structure interacts with the sun when “I looked outside / at a slab of brick buttered with light.”

The poet’s perspective is clear in the appearances of the first person “I” across the poems, as the poem called “On W.G. Sebald’s natural history of the herring” declares that “I always thought death was ashen gray.” First person plural expands the outlook to involve the reader through meditating “On emptiness” with the lines, “We understand the weight of ladled things, / time maybe most of all, easy to waste / and hard to throw away.”

In Dunston’s poems, his visual art background shows through because the poet is never only fixed on his own experience but rather takes in the full scene and notices the details. The whole time, “I’m feeling my way / in the dark toward you, the sea in my ear.”

Dunston is a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan. He previously earned his MFA in poetry from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Stanford University. Octaves was also a finalist for the Moonstone Press Chapbook Contest, and as the title suggests, many of the poems contain eight lines. 

Fellow poet Jason Barry joins Dunston in conversation to celebrate the release of Octaves at Literati Bookstore on Tuesday, September 23, at 6:30 pm.

Dunston and I spoke about Octaves, visual art, his PhD studies, what he's reading, and what he's working on next.

This story originally ran on December 5, 2024. "The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry" continues documenting Michigan poets, and on Monday, September 22, there's a live poetry reading at the Downtown branch of the Ann Arbor District Library showcasing four poets from the project: Owólabi Aboyade, Frances Kai-Hwa Wang, Bryan Thao Worra, and Rebecca Biber.

Chien-an Yuan is an evangelist.

Not the type who's selling you hope in exchange for a monthly tithe but the kind who just wants you to believe—in art and its healing powers; in music and its succor; in poetry and life-giving energy.

The Ann Arbor musician-photographer-curator works not just in words but in deeds—and sometimes, the deeds are words, carefully arranged and expertly recited as is the case with The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry.

The project is a collaboration between Yuan's 1473 record label, Michigan poets, and Fifth Avenue Studios, the recordings division of the Ann Arbor District Library (AADL). 

Named after two high school teachers who inspired Yuan, The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry is a collection of recited poems, documented at Fifth Avenue Studios, with covers created by local artists for each chapter in the series. (Shannon Rae Daniels' watercolors will adorn the first 10 sessions.) All the recordings can be listened to and downloaded free of charge whether or not you have a library card.

The anthology's construction is ongoing—you can listen to Ann Arbor poets Kyunghee Kim and Zilka Joseph so far—but there's an official launch for the project on Monday, December 9, at 6 pm at AADL's Downtown location. Kim will be joined by upcoming Coolidge-Wagner writers Sherina Rodriguez Sharpe, Chace Morris, and Emily Nick Howard, along with Yuan introducing the poets and talking about the project. (Joseph will be at a future Coolidge-Wagner event.)

I sent Yuan some queries about The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry, and his answers were so passionate, revealing, and thorough that they stand alone without my framing questions.

Below is Yuan's testament to the power of art and a brief history of The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry:

The Radar tracks new music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This week: Ancel Fitzgerald Neeley, Sacha, Levona, The City Lines, Bekka Madeleine, Mark Zhu, Normal Park, Gee Floyd, The DayNites

Pat Deneau sings about the adrenaline rush he gets from work and music on the song “Hits the Same.”

The musician-firefighter’s heart pounds as he climbs on a firetruck with the Ann Arbor Fire Department, or sets foot onstage with The City Lines and sings, “I don’t know what I’m doing here / But my heart is racing / Is this the price to feel so alive?”

“When I’m singing those lines, I’m almost picturing like I’ve got the hose line in my arm, and I've got my buddy on my back pushing me in and the fire’s pouring overhead,” said Deneau about the anthemic opener from the Ann Arbor trio’s new album, Prescribed Fires. “It feels exactly the same as flipping the standby switch on the amp, and the volume control is up and the cymbals wash.”

“Hits the Same” also sets the compelling narrative for The City Lines’ third album, which explores parenthood, career, mental health, heritage, and the environment.

The A2 Jazz Fest began as a one-day event in 2016 and highlighted the area's deep talent pool. It ran for four years, took a break from 2020 to 2022, and resumed in 2023 with the longtime touring trio of Larry Goldings, Peter Bernstein, and Bill Stewart as headliners. The fest expanded again in 2024 with superstars Joshua Redman, Dee Dee Bridgewater, and Bill Charlap headlining the four-day event.

For the 2025 edition, the A2 Jazz Fest is going back to its foundations. It's two days, free, and focuses on Michigan-residing artists, with a special set from international trumpet star Theo Croker, who also performed at the fest in 2019. His influences run from modern-day hip-hop and R&B, 1970s fusion, 1960s experimental, 1950s hard bop, and even the Dixieland swing of his influential grandfather, trumpeter Doc Cheatham.

The 2025 edition of the A2 Jazz Fest runs Saturday and Sunday, September 27-28, at two downtown Ann Arbor locations: First Congregational Church on East William Street and The Ravens Club on Main Street.

Another key aspect this year is education, which is a passion for bassist, Blue LLama Jazz Club artistic director, and A2 Jazz Fest originator Dave Sharp.

"Dave wanted to blow out the educational programming, so that was very attractive to me," said Dr. Anna C. Gersh, who has worked extensively in education and joined her husband in organizing this year's festival as the administrative director, along with drummer-educator Sean Dobbins and Jennifer Pollard, a jazz vocalist and creator of the Lifting Up A2 Jazz page on Facebook.

"Professional musicians are running the educational workshops on both days of the festival," Sharp said, "so Anna's experience. fits really well with those elements of the festival. And you know, in jazz, in general ... is very mentorship heavy." (Students can sign up here to participate.)

Below is the full lineup of the 2025 A2 Jazz Fest, as well as music from some of the featured musicians:

Press Release:

Downtown Ann Arbor will come alive this fall with the launch of the Down on Main Street Music Festival, a brand-new celebration of Americana, country, and rock music. The festival will take over Main Street on Friday, September 26 from 4 pm to 10 pm, transforming the downtown corridor into a vibrant, walkable stage for an unforgettable evening of music, food, and community.

At the heart of the festival is Matthew Altruda, a beloved Ann Arbor music curator and radio personality known for championing local and national talent. With Altruda’s expertise, the lineup features a carefully selected group of artists that embody the spirit of Americana and rock: The Michigan Rattlers (headliner), Louie Lee, Audrey Ray, and The Minor Pieces.

Alexis C. Lamb created Refugia Festival in 2024 out of a sense of frustration. 

She saw a disconnect between environmentally conscious arts programming, which is usually presented indoors, and the natural place for eco-art: outdoors.

The second edition of the all-day music and arts Refugia Festival, which is at the Nichols Arboretum in Ann Arbor on September 28, provides a way to celebrate sound and become more aware of the needs and issues related to the climate while harmonizing with it. How does the music we produce resonate with nature? What do animals think of the music we blare through speakers whenever we want? And what can music do to explore and inform humanity’s relationship with the climate?

"[Refugia] came out of my doctoral dissertation work, which was in the School of Music, Theater and Dance at the U of M," Lamb said, "which was focused on exploring whether a sonic relationship between our human-made music and the sounds of the natural world was possible, without being threatening to that particular ecosystem.”

Friday Five was a column that highlights music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

"Coda" is the Italian word for "tail," as in the end of something: a comet, a dog, a piece of music.

This is the coda for Friday Five, a column started on September 11, 2020, when the world was shut down. It was a way to keep content flowing on Pulp, a website that focuses on local events and creators, at a time when most of those things were shut down or kept behind doors.

Not music, though.

Magdalena J. Zaborowska makes connections across the experiences of and influences on James Baldwin in her wide-ranging book James Baldwin: The Life Album. Unlike her earlier two monographs on Baldwin, this unique and deeply researched biography is written for a general audience.

However, Zaborowska did not write James Baldwin: The Life Album as a standard biography but rather modeled it after a double vinyl record with four sides (i.e., sections), each with its own tracks (i.e., chapters). The table of contents serves as a track list. Zaborowska elaborates on this creative approach in her book’s introduction:

His critics’ desire that Baldwin straighten out is among the reasons why in James Baldwin I tell his life story in a deliberately unstraightforward, even queer, manner. To honor who he was, and how he viewed and wrote about himself, I revisit his life both chronologically and achronologically, and at times by mixing the two approaches. A brilliant stylist of the English language, Baldwin leaned on repetition and revolution, even re-evolution, of themes, phrases, and points of view, some of which were inspired by Black English and music. Exploding traditional syntax, style, and genre expectations, his long sentences remixed ideas, characters, events, and locations, embracing what he called “the beat.” Fascinated with how experience and emotion drove embodied imagination, will, and speech, he channeled their restless dance into his works, syncopating dates, locations, and personae, repeating riffs and refrains like a virtuoso improviser.

The biography’s structure as an album lends itself well to telling Baldwin’s life story and reflects the very way Baldwin himself approached his work.