Selected Publications

Selected essays, reviews, and criticism.

Essays

Cool Enchantment — Public Books (2025)

Where Even Shadows Hum: Judee Sill, Weyes Blood, and the Ghosts of Laurel Canyon — Image (Issue 126, 2025)

Reviews and Criticism

The New Criterion (Dispatch)

Vitally spirited — The New Criterion (Mar 6, 2025)

Styles noble & fantastic — The New Criterion (Mar 20, 2025)

Two Heinrichs & a Henry — The New Criterion (Mar 31, 2025)

Orpheus in chartreuse — The New Criterion (May 8, 2025)

Pekka, Esa-Pekka & the Philharmonic — The New Criterion (May 27, 2025)

Credible tones — The New Criterion (Jul 28, 2025)

Trembling air — The New Criterion (Sep 24, 2025)


Inspired by Walter Pater’s Marius the Epicurean, this site looks at the cultural life of Pasadena and the surrounding cities. You’ll find reviews, essays, cultural spaces, and local performances.

A cultural notebook by M. P. Kennedy.

Woodblock print by Frances Gearhart, depicting woods and the California coastline.