Listen & Look

Here are several events early this week worth your attention.

Jazz at Public, 337 Main Street, presents "Rudy & Rich", a quintet led by vocalist Rudeyna Babouder and guitarist Rich Goldstein, Tuesday evening from 6 - 9:30 p.m. Joining them will be the impressive young pianist Craig Hartley, Henry Lugo (bass, from Noah Baerman's fine trio), and Jay Williams (drums.)

The Wesleyan University Writing Program and the Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies presents a poetry reading featuring Professor Vera Schwarcz Tuesday at 8 p.m. in The Russell House, 350 High Street. Schwarcz, Professor of History and East Asian Studies at Wesleyan, is an accomplished poet and will be reading from two new books of poems. "Brief Rest in the Garden of Flourishing Grace" (2009) is comprised of renditions based on the life and times of the Manchu Prince Yihuan. "Chisel of Remembrance" (2009, picture courtesy of Antrim Press ) is a personal collection which blends Chinese and Jewish themes in a passionate and personal style (see below.) The evnt is free and open to the public. Call 685-3448 for more information.

The Screwball Comedy Film Series at The Russell Library, 123 Broad Street, continues Wednesday April 1, at 12noon. "My Man Godfrey" (1936) stars Carol Lombard and William Powell and tells the story of a ditzy socialite who hires a vagrant to be the family butler. The butler (played to perfection by Powell) ends up saving the family fortune and you'll laugh all the while he's doing it. Bring lunch and the library staff provides drinks and dessert as well as expert commentary from Richard Alleva, Assistant Head of Children's Services at Russell and film critic for Commonweal Magazine. The event is free and open to the public.

The Distinguished Writers Series at Wesleyan presents author and editor Junot Diaz at 8 p.m. in The Russell House. Diaz, who is Wesleyan's English Department 2009 Millett Writing Fellow, is the author of the short story collection "Drown" and the novel "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao", which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Díaz is the fiction editor at the "Boston Review" and the Rudge & Nancy Allen Professor at MIT. The event is free and open to the public.

Here's a poem from Vera Schwarcz's "Chisel of Remembrance" (courtesy of Antrim Press.)

THE WHITE BUTTON

My mother,
seventy years ago,
sat between her parents
on a sculptured chair.

The man in the stylish hat
has one arm around the girl
with lace-up shoes, another
on his waist as if the world
were a leisurely place
where he might have taken out
a gold watch, counted the minutes
of daily blessing. His young wife
holds the hand of their daughter,
gazing inward, almost in a dream,
not yet alarmed by war. A wig
on her married head slopes gently
like a sumptuous robe, no armor
against the ravage when it comes.

War comes.

To all her children,
not just this serious girl in a dark sailor suit
with one white button, balanced
between parents she will not be able to save,
war comes. It comes to all her kin

and mine.
I refuse to let them vanish
speechless. I call them back
on this page. I strengthen
my hand around a child with dark eyes
and old fashioned lace-up shoes—

gone the aristocratic chair,
gold chain, hat, wig.
The white button remains,
a pustule of hope.