Original Poem: The Charles Mingus Sextet in Europe, 1964
Sean MurphyI continue to appreciate the team at Jerry Jazz Musician for celebrating America’s unique art form, and showcasing not only the sounds, but the words around the sounds. For my fellow old…
2023: A Creative Recap
Kicking off '23 in Todos Santos From 1455’s Movable Type, Issue 15 (peruse the complete archives, here): The State of the Art, right now, is a sum total of every individual…
2023: A Final Farewell to Some Irreplaceable Icons
Wow, it's sad to look back and see the sheer number of all-times greats we watched depart our planet this year. Of course, these losses are invariably mitigated by the…
Original Poem: Albert Ayler’s Vision
If it’s true a picture is worth a thousand words, this particular image seems able to conjure up entire books, libraries filled with stories of pain and pathos, apathy and…
1455 PRESENTS: A CONVERSATION WITH ALYSON WEINBERG, AUTHOR OF ‘BELLOW & HISS’
Check it out: Alyson Gold Weinberg serves as a poetic tour guide for how it feels and what it signifies to be a human being, taking us from embryos to…
Poetry at the Peter Bullough Foundation
It has been my extreme pleasure to collaborate with (and enthusiastically support) Winchester’s Petter Bullough Foundation. More about their history and mission here, and some previous programming we’ve done together, featuring the…
Louise Glück and the Power of Poetry
Sad to see Louise Glück depart our puny planet, but glad she received the love and attention she richly deserved, and was able to feel that approbation while she was…
This Day in History: “Porgy and Bess,” the first great American opera, premieres on Broadway
From History.com On October 10, 1935, George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess premieres on Broadway. Porgy and Bess began its journey to the Broadway stage in 1926, when George Gershwin wrote a letter…
Original Poem: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY, 1967: MUHAMMAD ALI REFUSES ARMY INDUCTION*
My thanks to Words & Sports Quarterly for publishing my poem about how America handled Muhammad Ali and his (spiritually & politically astute, prescient) conscientious objection to the Vietnam war.…
Original Poem: The Unsatisfactory Suicide Note
Four summers ago, almost to the day, a friend took his life, and his life partner posted his farewell note. This situation was awful enough, on so many obvious levels,…