Literary Arts
Celebrating National Poetry Month
with Billy Collins
Billy Collins reading Grave. 1:31 min. Camera: Lee Skye. Video editing: Daniel Colmenares. Photo & Design: Raymond Elman Dubbed “the most popular poet in America” by Bruce Weber in the New York Times, Billy Collins is famous for conversational, witty poems that welcome readers with humor but often slip into quirky, tender or profound observation on the everyday, reading and writing, and poetry itself. Collins was born in 1941 in New York City. He earned a BA from the College of the Holy Cross, and both an MA...
read moreWhere Is Your Family From?
A Passover Story.
By Necee Regis I’m a sucker for ritual. So Passover is naturally one of my favorite holidays. I love going to a Seder, reading the 3,000-year-old prayers, and eating the same prescribed foods at the same predetermined times during the meal. This would be perfectly normal, even expected, if I were Jewish. But I’m not; I’m Catholic. Well, ex-Catholic to be precise, though one can never really escape their heritage. I’m steeped in doctrine and pickled in a culture I wear like skin. My upbringing, with its layers of...
read morePoet P. Scott Cunningham
and the O, Miami Poetry Festival
Introduction to P. Scott Cunningham. 0:52 sec. Video editing: Nikita Yasmine Grant. Music: Carmen Cicero. Photo & design: Raymond Elman. Editor’s Note: This video interview is part of the Jill Braufman & Daniel Nir Inspicio Arts Education Series. Scott Cunningham (b. 1978) is a poet, translator, essayist, and community organizer originally from Boca Raton, FL. He is the author of Ya Te Veo (University of Arkansas Press, 2018), selected by Billy Collins for the Miller Williams Poetry Series. His work has...
read morePortraits of Poets
Editor’s Note: This group of portraits and video commentary is part of The Esther Paster & Rick Grossman Inspicio Photography Series. In celebration of National Poetry Month and the O, Miami Poetry Festival, Inspicio has curated a few portraits of prominent poets (U.S. Poet Laureates, Pulitzer Prize recipients, the 5th Inaugural Presidential Poet among them) by photographer Robert Zuckerman and painter Raymond Elman. MAYA ANGELOU: The Backstory 6:31 min. Robert Zuckerman, Photographer. April...
read moreRoben Farzad: Miami-Raised Broadcaster, Journalist, and Author
Introduction to Roben Farzad. 1:12 min. Camera: Lee Skye. Video Editor: John Persaud. Music: Mario Carvajal. Photo & Design: Raymond Elman. Roben Farzad hosts the weekly program Full Disclosure on NPR One and is a special correspondent on PBS NewsHour. He was previously a senior writer for Bloomberg Businessweek, where he covered Wall Street, international finance, and Latin America. Farzad is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Business School. The videos below are organized by topic and run between...
read moreThe Angel Fenstermacher
By Neil Plakcy The night was alive with Jews. Everywhere Harris drove, it seemed that there were clusters of Jewish men on the street corners, walking home from Friday night services. It had been a cloudy, overcast day, unusual for Miami, and so it was a dark, velvety evening, full of the shine of street lamps and headlights, and the somber, dark-suited Jews. These were not the Jews of his boyhood on Long Island in the forties and fifties, those prosperous burghers and matrons who supported their synagogues and...
read moreTom Hudson, VP of News at WLRN
Introduction to Tom Hudson. 1:45 min. Camera: Angelika Rinnhofer. Editor: John Perez Music: Carmen Cicero. Photo & Design: Raymond Elman. In a journalism career covering news from high global finance to neighborhood infrastructure, Tom Hudson is the Vice President of News and Special Correspondent for WLRN. He hosts and produces the Sunshine Economy and anchors the Florida Roundup in addition to leading the organization’s news engagement strategy. Hudson was most recently the co-anchor and managing...
read morePoet Marie Howe: Always Worth Waiting For
Introduction to Marie Howe. 1:06 min. Photo & Design: Raymond Elman. Marie Howe (b.1950) is an American poet born in Rochester, New York. Howe is the author of four volumes of poetry: Magdalene: Poems (W.W. Norton, 2017); The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (W.W. Norton, 2009); What the Living Do (1997); and The Good Thief (1988). She is also the co-editor of a book of essays, In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic (1994). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry,...
read moreMitchell Kaplan: A Man for All Seasons
Introduction to Mitchell Kaplan. 1:46 min. Edit: John Perez. Music: Carmen Cicero. Photo & design: Raymond Elman. Everybody who reads books in the Miami area knows that Mitchell Kaplan is the highly successful founder of the independent bookstore group, Books & Books, and co-founder of the Miami Book Fair, the largest book fair in the United States. A while back, Inspicio published a written interview with Kaplan, focused on Books & Books and the Miami Book Fair, both of which are over 30 years old. What...
read moreDaniel Okrent’s 2004 New York Times Column Even More Relevant Today
Editor’s Note: In October 2003, Daniel Okrent was named the first public editor for the New York Times (NYT) following the Jayson Blair scandal. Okrent served in that position until May 2005. In June 2004, he wrote the piece below about the overuse and misuse of ANONYMOUS SOURCES. Given the current howling about anonymous sources, the constant declarations about “fake news,” and calling the press the “enemy of the people” during the Trump era, I thought it would be worthwhile to reconsider Okrent’s 2004 column and a follow-up comment he...
read more