And all of a sudden, with all the same anticipatory tension as in the beginning of an in-person performance, a body appeared on stage, bathed in ominous music and red light. He curved his frame in a serpentine manner, not a single motion rushed. They were fluid and led into one another, seeming to require great discipline and patience, while at the same time languid and natural. It was a gradual reawakening of the limbs, like the dancer was getting in touch with his senses again, slowly gaining a greater awareness of his body and its capabilities.

For Jay Platt, bookselling has always been about stories and serendipity. Celebrating its 45th year on September 21, his store West Side Book Shop opened at 113 W Liberty Street in Ann Arbor in 1975, a few years after Platt graduated from the University with a degree in naval engineering.

Last week, Platt sat relaxed in a leather swivel chair, sipping water out of a small styrofoam cup as he described how this store began with just a few bookshelves, pointing out the rows and stacks of scattered books.

Last week, The Michigan Quarterly Review’s Khaled Mattawa hosted poet and activist Reginald Dwayne Betts for an evening of visual art and poetry. The event was a celebration of Betts’s editorship of the MQR’s Fall 2020 issue, “Persecution.” While it was held over Zoom, I could imagine its invisible audience holding bated breath as Betts unleashed the power he’s harnessed from and since his confinement. 

In his 1988 poem “Introduction to Poetry,” Billy Collins laments the way his students have been taught to read poetry. Rather than “hold it up to the light like a color slide,” or “press an ear against its hive,” he writes that the students torture a confession — in this case meaning or significance — out of the poem. Once they have found its meaning, analyzed its metaphors and discussed its themes, they leave.