For the Artists: Critical Writing, Volume 2

While For the Artists, Volume 1, issued earlier this year, focused on visual artists, this second volume gathers together a number of reviews and essays I’ve written for various publications and websites critiquing books and music.

While For the Artists, Volume 1, issued earlier this year, focused on visual artists, this second volume gathers together a number of reviews and essays I’ve written for various publications and websites critiquing books and music. – essays and reviews examine Wordsworth's great neglected poem The Prelude to Gertrude Stein and William Carlos Williams to celebrations of bassist/composer Charlie Haden and rock group Animal Logic and a number of extended essays examine the so-called "electric period" of Miles Davis. More than a jazz musician, I attest repeatedly, Miles Davis' innovations – incorporating influences from outside the traditional jazz realm – exploded narrow confines and opened musical development to incorporate influences from every region and idea on the planet into an ever-evolving amalgam of aural delight and provocative emotional journeys.

Greg Masters has lived in the East Village of Manhattan for the past 40 years. He is the author of For the Artists: Critical Writing, Volume 1 (Crony Books, 2014), Stumbling into Modernity: Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Cling to Tradition (Crony Books, 2012) and At Maureen’s (with Bernadette Mayer, Crony Books, 2013). He was an editor of the Poetry Project Newsletter; was co-editor, with Michael Scholnick and Gary Lenhart, of Mag City, a poetry magazine; was co-editor (with Sheila Keenan) of HOWL! Souvenir Book (FEVA, 2003); and is publisher of Crony Books.