This story originally ran on July 31, 2024.

Keith Taylor is launching two new books this year.

The University of Michigan lecturer emeritus and former bookseller offers 40 years of poetry in All the Time You Want: Selected Poems 1977-2017, which was published in January. Then he studies the natural and human world through his poetry collection What Can the Matter Be?, which debuts in August. 

Taylor will read from What Can the Matter Be? at Schuler Books in Ann Arbor on Saturday, August 10, at 3 pm.

Taylor will discuss What Can the Matter Be? with Monica Rico at Literati Bookstore on Wednesday, October 16, at 6:30 pm.

All the Time You Want begins with dancing and concludes with painting. A note to the reader informs us that the poems appear “in roughly chronological order.” These poems map the formative places in Taylor’s life by traveling through Canada and to Ireland, Detroit, Ann Arbor, Isle Royale, Paris, Big Sur, South Bend, North Fishtail Bay, and other places.

Another throughline of the poems is the birds—the crested shelduck, snowy egret, pigeon, cerulean warbler, great horned owl, and ancient murrelet. Or you can follow the art and see “the gaze out past the painting / to all the other stories / no one else could ever understand.” 

These selected poems encounter the ups and downs of the poet’s life and experiences. One day there is “a momentary sense / of the utter loveliness of things” and another day brings “nothing but the clear, sour odor of skunk.”

Musical theater has always been inclusive. Sometimes it broadcasts the message, the way Oscar Hammerstein II did in South Pacific: ”You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear.” Mostly, it simply has been a welcoming home for artists, characters, and spectators of different races, religions, sexual orientations, and gender identities.

Now along comes a musical reimagining of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night at the University of Michigan, which runs for four performances October 10-13 at Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre. Inclusion is a key theme here, and unlike most musicals that we can label—classic American musicals, rock musicals, opera-style musicals, for instance—it includes just about every kind of music and dance style, too.  

The musical begins as the Shakespeare play does. Viola is shipwrecked on the coast of Illyria and disguises herself as a Cesario, a man, so she can gain employment with Duke Orsino. She falls in love with Orsino, who yearns for Olivia, who in turn loves “Cesario.” 

Director Jessica Bogart says this Twelfth Night is not set in one specific era or locale but “in an imagined city we call ‘the magical now' ... an abstract location that allows characters to discover their true selves and true strengths. The source material itself has this gorgeous exploration of gender and identity.”   

How closely does it follow that source material?

The Fall spooky season is always a great time to revisit the macabre stories of Edgar Allan Poe, and this October the Penny Seats Theatre Company brings to life a stage adaptation of one of the author's most haunting tales.

Based loosely on The Fall of the House of Usher, Michigan playwright John Sousanis's Usher finds the last two heirs of a once-great family reunited with an old friend within their crumbling mansion. Penny Seats' production is directed by company Artistic Director Julia Garlotte, and stars Brittany Batell as Madeline Usher, David Collins as Roderick Usher, and Jonathan Davidson as the unnamed Visitor.

This year marks Garlotte's first season as artistic director of Penny Seats, though she has previously worked with the company as an actor and sound designer. Staging Usher, as with the other Penny Seats performances for 2024, was selected by previous artistic director Joseph Zettelmaier, though Garlotte was in conversation with him throughout the decision-making process. "We both decided that it would be a cool addition to the season," Garlotte says. Zettelmaier had seen Usher during its original run in 2007, and Michigan playwright John Sousanis rewrote the script for Penny Seats. 

"We had some stuff we wanted fleshed out and questions answered," Garlotte says, "and he was willing to take another stab at it. So we have a really great script."

As to what appeals to her about Usher, Garlotte says she is "always a sucker for drama and tragedy, which is a strange thing to say when sometimes the state of the world calls for something a little more light-hearted."

In U-M alum Perry Janes’ new poetry collection, Find Me When You’re Ready, the poems weigh desire by examining what you can express, what you hold back, and how you tell the story. These poems chase and dodge competing and sinister desires—and see what prevails. 

Janes, originally from Michigan, now lives in California. The poems in Find Me When You’re Ready involve both places, as the book’s description says, “Janes traces a sweeping journey from Detroit to Los Angeles.” 

Janes returns to Ann Arbor for an event at Literati Bookstore where he will be joined in conversation by Peter Ho Davies, with a reading by Tommye Blount, on Friday, October 4, 2024, at 6:30 p.m.

On the topic of relocating from Detroit to the West Coast, Janes writes in the poem, “Ode to Xeriscaping; or, Regarding Austerity, I Find Devotion":

It seems a too-painful irony that U-M art professor Rebekah Modrak while working on the new book Trouble in Censorville: The Far Right’s Assault on Public Education and the Teachers Who Are Fighting Back had to work around censorship laws.

Modrak’s co-editor, Nadine M. Kalin, is on faculty at the University of North Texas, “and in the middle of working on the project, Texas created a new law saying that you can’t essentially do work around diversity,” Modrak explained. “So we, at the University of Michigan, had to create an email address for [Kalin] and sponsor her as an academic so she could use our email address as she worked on the project, to create some distance for herself and some protections. And I thought, wow, maybe this is the future of the country, where we have blue states, where work like this is being done, and we protect academic refugees from red states who are being censored.”

Even with this awkward workaround in place, the pair managed to gather oral histories from 14 public school educators who’d been harassed (or outright dismissed) in recent years because of, among other reasons, their gender presentation, or the topics they taught in class, or the books they offered on their shelves.

“The impetus for the book was that they wanted to be able to tell their own story because their stories were so—the way it was being told by parents or outsiders in the community, or by the administration, was such a distortion from the truth as they understood it,” said Modrak. “So they wanted to be able to tell that. A few of the teachers did go to the media in order to try to get that story out and were punished further for it.”

Some knew Jay Stielstra as an activist who ran for Ann Arbor City Council in 1964 and served as a board member of the Washtenaw County chapter of the ACLU.

Others knew Stielstra as an athlete who attended the University of Michigan on an athletic scholarship. He played football, basketball, and track and became a Big Ten champion in the long jump.

He also was a public school teacher who introduced Black history into the curriculum at Ann Arbor’s Pioneer High School and coached the football team.

Stielstra also connected with others through his creative pursuits, including novels like Meet Me at the River, musicals like North Country Opera, poetry collections like In Drought Time: Scenes From Rural and Small Town Life, and a revered catalog of music.

As a singer-songwriter, he brought all his passions together. He wrote songs about the devastation of war, social justice, the passage of time, drinking in taverns, the beauty of Northern Michigan’s woods and waters, finding and losing love, and getting old.

For over 50 years, Stielstra—who died March 1 at age 90—performed these songs on stages large and small.

“He walked through so many different communities in the course of his life,” said Barbara Schmid, Stielstra’s widow.

To celebrate Stielstra’s legacy, Schmid and Ann Arbor singer-songwriter Judy Banker are hosting a tribute and benefit show September 28 at The Ark—a place that nourished Stielstra and was one that he loved. 

Celebrating the Music of Jay Stielstra will feature a lineup of Michigan musicians performing his songs in acoustic styles from blues to bluegrass. It also doubles as a fundraiser for the Ann Arbor folk and roots music club.

The characters in ’Pemi Aguda’s new collection of short stories, Ghostroots, set out to protect what they have or find what they want—sometimes at a major cost and often via circumstances beyond the ordinary. 

Aguda, who earned her MFA at the University of Michigan and now lives in Philadelphia, will be in conversation about her new book with author and U-M professor Peter Ho Davies on Friday, September 20, at 6:30 pm at Literati Bookstore.

All of the stories in Ghostroots, which is longlisted for the National Book Award in Fiction, are set in Lagos, Nigeria. One story, “The Dusk Market,” covers a woman’s interactions with an evening fair, where “When the sun slinks away, when the light of the day things out—oranges replaced by dark grays and purples, the women come out of nowhere.” Yet, “You don’t see the dusk market if you are not invited to the dusk market, but there are slippery moments, slits, frissons.” This unreliability, this capriciousness, catches the attention of this woman, Salewa, whose “eyes are willing to see more than is otherwise available to her.” 

Salewa catches on to the dusk market, but it seems to elude her attempts to go there. The market becomes her main goal because “forget these men, their syrupy tongues, their slimy hands that can break a heart, a body. It is the market that Salewa wants, the soft light, the pleasant hum of commerce, that warmth of camaraderie she had stumbled unto, into, for a short moment or two.” This market becomes a place to feel at home. 

As Salewa searches, she struggles to locate this event and to be recognized as a human. While continuing her quest, Salewa tries to speak to a person whom she recognizes, but the individual responds:  

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.

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:

You’d be hard-pressed to think of a more fun, entertaining way to support Ukraine than to see Odesa-based, klezmer /“gangster folk” band Kommuna Lux play at Saline’s Stony Lake Brewing Co. as part of the monthly Acoustic Routes concerts series on July 27.

“Sometimes opportunities just fall into your lap,” said concert series founder Jim Cain, noting the band reached out to him about performing.

“In the 10-plus years I’ve been doing this series in Saline, word has gotten around about us across the country and internationally. We’ve had bands from Northern Ireland, Canada, England, Scotland—the music community’s so tight, especially bands who tour a lot, that we can punch above our weight class. Yes, the venue’s a brewery, but there’s a listening-room vibe, and one hundred percent of the ticket proceeds go to the artists.”

That last point is often a big selling point for Acoustic Routes, since, as Cain notes, by the time touring bands pay for hotels, gas, and food, there’s often little money left.

But in the case of Kommuna Lux—a group of seven classically trained musicians who blend vocals with clarinet, accordion, trumpet, trombone, acoustic guitar, and percussion—its current U.S. tour is primarily aimed at raising funds for its war-torn home country.

“The needs of the people [in Ukraine], the scale of it, is hard for us to really comprehend,” said Cain. “One of the things that’s fascinating to me is the diaspora. Here in Michigan, I’ve had Ukrainian people reach out, and the Jewish community as well, offering to help spread the word about the show.”