Never give a Cuban a microphone … Babel’s Richard Blanco

The 2013-2014 season of Just Buffalo Literary Center’s Babel series start a tad late as the largest contingent of audience members since Salman Rushdie (or perhaps ever) shuffled into Kleinhans to see Inaugural Poet Richard Blanco talk about his career and inspiration. Even after a nice poem written and read by one of the artists who use the Genesseo Migrant Center to hone her artistic skills and the usual introduction from Just Buffalo Artistic Director Barbara Cole (one that brought Blanco to the verge of tears) push the evening farther,…

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REVIEW: Die Wand [The Wall] [2012]

“There is no impulse more reasonable than love” There is something to be said about an allegory that doesn’t feel the need to beat you over the head with one “true” interpretation. Isn’t the point of such veiled metaphorical introspection that we experience it on our own terms and take what we will whether right, wrong, or conflicted? This is the type of journey director Julian Pölsler’s adaptation of Marlen Haushofer’s 1963 novel Die Wand [The Wall] takes us, one with deliberate questions devoid of the concrete answers necessary to…

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