LET’S JUST ADMIT THIS: it’s not always easy to “experience” art. I put “experience” in quotation marks, because that’s the dream, right? You go on the journey the artist has provided, somehow, miraculously, at once leaving yourself behind (so you can get beyond yourself) and taking yourself along (so you can be changed). This is a tricky recipe to get right. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen — my life is more or…

DETERMINATION IS A PREREQUISITE FOR BEING A POET. Poetry demands the poet dedicate himself, for years and years, to the rigors of line and verse, and to learning the craft when he could be applying his talents to more profitable employments, like structural engineering or respiratory therapy or, let’s admit it, serving drive-thru espresso. Poetry is not a lucrative career in a boom time. So, imagine its…

HERMAN NUMBER ONE WAS DRUNK IN THE UPSTAIRS BATHTUB, struggling to recall exactly how many little pills he’d choked down so far. Not enough to get the job done, obviously. “There’s a warning they need to mention in those pharmaceutical ads on TV,” he slurred, gagging back a throat full of something vomit-y: “‘Could be difficult to count when trying to end it all. Ask your doctor if you’re healthy enough…

WORLD PREMIERES OF DANCE WORKS HAPPEN ALL THE TIME in the Twin Cities. In October alone, Ragamala Dance premiered Dhvee; Ballet of the Dolls, Pas de Quatre; Stuart Pimsler Dance & Theater, Tales from the Book of Longing; and James Sewell Ballet, The Bad Plus Us. None of these world premieres, however, were of original, full-length, story ballets. That rarity, and the hype that attends such an event, belonged to Moulin Rouge: The Ballet, performed by…

Poet Bill Holm died in February, but not before completing the poems that comprise the first part of his new book, The Chain Letter of the Soul: New and Selected Poems, published this month by Milkweed Editions. Holms’ colleagues and friends will be reading the new and old poems at a tribute 7 pm, November 2, at Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis. EVERYONE HAS A BILL HOLM STORY. Take, for…

KNIFE ISLAND: CIRCLING A YEAR IN A HERRING SKIFF, IS A SLIM, SPARE VOLUME that comprises meditations spanning a year spent fishing Lake Superior for herring, from Two Harbors to Knife River. The entries describe with precision the days between ice out in the spring and ice’s winter return, days that range from the mundane to the transcendent, colored by everything from politics to poetry. Stephen Dahl…

HOWEVER FAR-FLUNG OUR ADVENTURES INTO THE ETHEREAL REALMS of idea and spirit, we never entirely escape the conditions of our physical incarnation: legs, arms, senses, permeability, strength and weakness, sex. This is, after all, where we live, the source of pain and pleasure, fear and transcendence. Lynn Nottage’s Ruined is a play of startling intelligence and acuity; at its heart, this is an unflinching…

IN 1915, D.W. GRIFFITH PRESENTED HIS CONTROVERSIAL — critics would say racist — silent film, The Birth of a Nation,to a country still licking its wounds after the upheaval of the Civil War. The most profitable silent film in history, Nation incited riots in some cities and was denied release in others, like Minneapolis. The United States exists today in a deeply partisan, but relatively civil, political…

SAM OSTERHOUT HAS DONE THIS BEFORE. He’s breathed new life into a seemingly out-dated, stale form of entertainment — the old-fashioned, Vaudevillian sort of variety show — bringing a crowd of hip young people to a type of live performance that, for years, had primarily attracted much older audiences and nostalgia-seekers. His first go-‘round with this old-timey thing, Electric Arc Radio, was created by…