It’s been nearly a year since 
“Broad City” concluded its run, 
leaving a hole in the heart of 
anyone who watched — especially 
for Comedy Central. The apparent 
heir to this is “Awkwafina Is Nora 
From Queens” which should fit 
in just fine, once it settles down. 
After Awkwafina’s recent string 
of success in high-profile films 
like “Crazy Rich Asians” and 
“Ocean’s 8,” and after becoming 
the first Asian-American woman 
to win a Golden Globe for Best 
Actress for her role in “The 
Farewell,” she now steps into 
what could be her hardest role 
yet: filling the shoes of both Abbi 
and Ilana.
It’s 
extremely 
difficult 
to 
judge a show based on its pilot, 
as that first episode serves 
as an introduction into the 
show’s 
universe 
rather 
than 
an actual episode of the show. 
But, in attempting to establish 
the 
various 
relationships 
and dynamics of “Nora From 
Queens,” 
the 
similarities 
to 
“Broad City” become unavoidable 
— and they really just make me 
wish I was watching “Broad City” 
instead. Rather than focusing on 
the relationship between friends 
in their twenties, it’s Awkwafina 
and her family. One thing that 
remains 
the 
same, 
however, 
is that it’s a comedy about an 
entertainingly 
oddball 
young 
woman trying to make meaning 
of her life as she works strange 

jobs, gets high and makes the 
most of living on a tight budget. 
Comparing the show to “Broad 
City” is not the issue at hand. 
After all, imitation is the highest 
form of flattery. Once you stop 
comparing them, however, the 
problems 
become 
apparent. 
The editing and fast pace are 
supposed to provide the show 
with a sort of comedic energy, 
but Nora’s storylines are almost 

too short to become invested 
in. Fans of Awkwafina will feel 
her personality and creativity 
through some goofy montages, 
but that isn’t enough to stop the 
show from burning out fast.
Nora lives with her widowed 
father, Wally (BD Wong, “Jurassic 
Park”), 
and 
her 
unfiltered 
grandma 
(Lori 
Tan 
Chinn, 
“Orange is the New Black”). After 
being mocked for her hoarder-

like messy room and made fun 
of by a neighboring teenager for 
still living at home, Nora decides 
it’s time to move out. She’s going 
to get a job, an apartment and live 
the life she set out to live a decade 
before … except, she’s not! After 
a predictable set of escalating 
twists, she ends up right back at 
home by the end of the episode. 
In all fairness, this first episode 
gives us a taste of what’s to come. 
Nora’s failure to show any sort of 
growth tells us that her family 
will play a major role in the series, 
making this an ensemble comedy.
The scenes with her family got 
the most laughs and present the 
most possibilities for humorous 
interactions, which is why I have 
a feeling the show will improve. 
The pilot relies on Awkwafina to 
carry all the comedic weight in 
far too many of the scenes. This is 
mostly a function of her character 
trying to be something she’s not 
— an adult — which results in 
the episode being something the 
show isn’t going to be — a show 
about her becoming an adult on 
the fly.
As I tried to make meaning 
out of the various roadblocks, 
in some instances literal ones, it 
became increasingly clear there 
was no meaning to make. Far too 
many storylines led to dead ends 
rather than open up possibilities 
for Nora’s character. “Awkwafina 
Is Nora From Queens” should 
be able to find its footing, escape 
the similarities to “Broad City” 
and hopefully find its own path 
forward, but it’s going to take 
Nora much longer than it took 
Abbi and Ilana to grow up.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Tuesday, January 28, 2020 — 5

‘Norah from Queens’ sits 
in shadow of ‘Broad City’

COMEDY CENTRAL

JUSTIN POLLACK
Daily Arts Writer

Jane Hirshfield’s ninth book of 
poetry is an elegy to her lost sister 
and the world she used to live in, 
the world that had her sister in 
it. The collection was strangely 
uplifting, however; Hirshfield 
deals with the challenging topic 
of death by creating poetry that 
finds wonder in mundanity. 
In fact, her book isn’t really 
about death at all. Rather, it is 
the aftermath of death in her 
own mind, the way she deals not 
with the death itself but with the 
way it changed her worldview. In 
her poem “Vest,” she compares 
her memory to a “pocket holding 
the day / of digging a place for my 
sister’s ashes,” then comes to a 
realization of her own mortality 
in the next line when she writes, 
“the one holding the day / where 
someone will soon enough put 
my own.” Death doesn’t hang 
like a dark cloud over “Ledger.” 
Instead, it intertwines with life 
— in nature, in everyday objects, 
in the author’s own ponderings. 
Throughout the collection, the 
poems work together to create 
a unified philosophy of how life 
goes on after death: by taking 
nothing for granted, by finding 
beauty in the everyday and by 
contextualizing a life in terms of 
nature.

Despite grappling with these 
complex ideas throughout the 
collection, 
Hirshfield 
makes 
room to play with form and 
sound. For example, in the 
section of the book with similarly 
titled poems like “My Doubt” or 
“My Dignity,” the final poem 
is called “My Silence.” Calling 
this piece a “poem” proves that 

it has pushed the boundaries 
of the genre, because there are 
no words after the title — just 
blank space. It forces the reader 
to reckon with actual silence, 
rather than its idea distilled 
into 
verse. 
Hirshfield 
also 
includes two “assays,” which at 
first seems like a misspelling of 
“essay,” because these pieces are 

essentially mini-essays, written 
in prose and in a somewhat 
academic tone. In a play on words 
that would require a google 
search for most readers, the 
word “assay” means to examine 
something in order to assess its 
nature. One piece, then, serves 
as a play on words as well as 
an extension of the meaning of 
“poetry” by its very inclusion in 
this collection.
Hirshfield 
uses 
the 
dichotomous 
framework 
of 
something either “continuing” 
or “not continuing” to express 
everyday things we take for 
granted. In the poem “I Wanted 
to Be Surprised,” she writes, 
“What did not surprise enough: 
/ my daily expectation that 
anything would continue, / and 
then that so much did continue, 
when 
so 
much 
did 
not.” 
Implicitly, because of the context 
given by the rest of the collection, 
life is what “did not” continue 
for her sister; still, Hirshfield 
chooses to first highlight the 
remarkable 
fact 
that 
other 
things — most things — did. ‘The 
word keeps spinning’ is repeated 
to the point where the words 
lose their meaning. Hirshfield 
takes this concept and forces 
the reader to relearn it, writing, 
“I did not keep walking. / The 
day inside me, / legs and lungs, 
kept walking.” She separates 
her own experience from the 
rest of the world, sending them 
briefly on two separate tracks. In 

this way, her poetry produces a 
curious dissociative effect which 
demonstrates the walls trauma 
can erect in a person.
Environmentalism 
is 
characterized in this book not 
just as a grand and noble goal 
but a small, personal one as 
well. Nature is one of the ways 
the book deals with death — by 
placing it in a larger universal 
narrative of balance. She writes 
“Today, for some, a universe will 
vanish. / First noisily, / then 
just another silence” and then 
“Something else, in the scale of 
quickening things, / will replace 
it.” If the “universe” in these 
lines is a personal tragedy, she 
is reminding the reader — and 
to some extent, herself — that 
like “the glacier, / the species, 
the star,” things disappear. In 
relation to the existence of so 
many other things, that loss 
is relatively small and even 
expected.

The reconciliation of death 
and 
nature 
helps 
fuel 
the 
reverential 
environmentalism 
of the collection. Hirshfield 
establishes the link between the 
personal and the environmental 
early in the book, writing in 
the third poem, “I don’t know 
why I was surprised every 
time love started or ended” — a 
personal statement — followed 
immediately by “Or why each 
time a new fossil, Earth-like 
planet, or war” — a universal and 
environmental statement. By the 
end of the book, the mourning 
has moved from the personal 
to the global and perhaps to the 
political: “The facts were told 
not to speak / and were taken 
away. / The facts, surprised to be 
taken, were silent.” Hirshfield no 
longer simply grieves for the loss 
of someone in her own life — she 
grieves instead for the planet as a 
whole, condemning carelessness 
and ignorance in the face of 

ecological desperation.
Beautiful 
verse 
aside, 
several poems mention specific 
environmental 
concerns, 
like 
“freighters 
[that] 
carry 
their hold-held oil / back into 
unfractured ground” or “Fish 
vanished. 
Bees 
vanished 
… 
Arctic ice opened.” Hirshfield 
writes 
with 
a 
respect 
for 
nature and a moving plea for 
environmentalism that is all the 
more effective after the many-
pages-long 
emotional 
primer 
of her own personal loss. Now 
compared to the impending loss 
of the planet, the ecological 
grief feels personal, as she says, 
“Hands wanted more time, hands 
thought we had more time.” 
Hirshfield’s subtle handling of 
environmental issues, rendered 
in masterful verse, forces the 
reader to think of climate change 
in terms of personal loss, rather 
than as an abstract and distant 
problem.

Equating ecological and
personal loss in ‘Ledger’

BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW

EMILIA FERRANTE
Daily Arts Writer

POETS.ORG

When an orchestra finishes 
a musical performance, there’s 
usually a moment of silence and 
stillness. The musicians hoist 
their bows in the air, lift reeds 
and mouthpieces from lips and 
lift drumsticks off the kettles. The 
audience waits as the last note 
finishes rings through the hall 
before showering the ensemble 
with applause.
This scene did not occur Nov. 19 
of 2019. University Philharmonia 
Orchestra 
conductor 
Adrian 
Slywotzky’s 
right 
hand, 
suspended 
in 
midair 
after 
delivering the final cutoff, came 
crashing down onto his podium. 
His baton, enclosed around his 
fist, came to a halt atop the final 
pages — the barnstorming ending, 
if you will — of Dvorak’s Sixth 
Symphony, 
finely 
completed 
under his direction.
“I remember that moment, too, 
because I sort of surprised myself 
when I heard the stick hit the 
stand … ” Slywotzky said. “By the 
time you get to the end of a piece 
like that in a performance, you 
feel the weight, the substance of 
all the work that was done ... it’s a 
very triumphant moment.”
That moment, the polished 
performance 
which 
preceded 
it and a semester of seamless 
transition 
in 
the 
orchestra’s 
leadership, 
were 
statements 
Slywotzky 
— 
a 
first-year 
conductor at the U-M School of 
Music, Theatre and Dance on 
a one-year contract — made by 
letting his job performance do the 
talking.
But when he sat down to do 
some actual talking, he struggled 
to isolate his modus operandi. 
It took 20 minutes before it 
crystallized into words, though 
it’s apparent to anyone who 
watches him conduct a single 
measure. 
Slywotzky 
revolves 
around his love of the music and 
doing it justice. In an industry full 
of musicians with personal and 
political extracurriculars on their 
agendas, that is a beautiful thing.
***
Adrian Slywotzky played violin 
seriously growing up, but entered 
Yale University thinking he would 
wind up in a career that musicians 
call “something else.” Four years 
later, he graduated with a B.A. in 

architecture, but not all had gone 
according to that plan.
“Late in the game (I) made the 
decision to go into music instead,” 
Slywotzky said. “Getting my 
master’s in violin performance ... 
that was a very long transition.”
A 
mainstay 
during 
this 
transition was Yale University 
professor of violin Kyung Yu, who 
taught Slywotzky throughout his 
time as a Yale undergraduate.
“The fact that Kyung was ... 
able to support me and my violin 
playing ... during a time when 
I didn’t think I was going into 
music professionally was crucial 
for me,” Slywotzky said.
His introduction to conducting 
was gradual as well, beginning 
as an assistant of a student-run 
ensemble. Slywotzky’s interest in 
conducting turned into a passion, 
and after a trio of graduate 
degrees — master’s degrees in 
violin performance and orchestral 
conducting at the Yale School of 
Music, and a terminal degree in 
the latter at U-M — Slywotzky 
boasted an extensive resume 
filled with study under the world’s 
finest teachers in both fields. 
Diplomas in hand, he returned to 
the Northeast and began racking 
up diverse work experience, be 
it in a prominent role with the 
nationally 
acclaimed 
Boston 
Youth Symphony Orchestras or 
leading a New Haven, CT-based 
series of contemporary music.
“The fundamental thing is 
the same for every orchestra — 
everyone wants to sound good, 
and the difference is how to help 
each orchestra get to essentially 
the same goal,” Slywotzky said. 
“We’re all on the same path.”
In 
his 
interim 
capacity, 
Slywotzky 
succeeds 
former 
School of Music, Theatre and 
Dance faculty member Oriol 
Sans, now in his first year as 
director of orchestral activities 
at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison. His are large shoes to 
fill.
“I have the highest admiration 
for (Oriol) ... I wanted to continue 
his work to the best of my ability,” 
Slywotzky 
said. 
“Naturally 
things are going to be different ... 
(but) it wasn’t my goal to change 
anything.”
Slywotzky’s expertise when 
dealing with the string section, 
informed by his many years of 
playing in ensembles as illustrious 
as the Tanglewood Music Center 
Orchestra, is evident at every 

rehearsal 
and 
performance. 
Through 
repertoire 
spanning 
from Classical to 20th Century, 
he worked diligently to create a 
unique sound true to the musical 
period and composer. 
Considering 
the 
group’s 
performance of Haydn symphony 
No. 99; written in the 1790s, 
Slywotzky elected to be faithful to 
the style in which it was originally 
played by doing away with any 
vibrato in the string sound. The 
process of weaning the strings 
from their vibrato, often used as 
a crutch to mask poor intonation, 
was tenuous, but ultimately a 
key ingredient for an authentic 
performance.
The 
freshman 
conductor 
made an administrative change 
invisible to audience members but 
instrumental to the growth of the 
violinists of the group: rotating 
the players all over the two violin 
sections.
“UPO players should have the 
experience of playing second 
violin and first violin and playing 
in the front and playing in the 
back,” Slywotzky said. “ ... we’re 
all going to have those seats in 
our professional lives, so why not 
learn them here?”
His repertoire choices are 
far from fan favorites, but his 
conviction in their value bled onto 
his musicians and their audience 
if the standing ovations by the 
latter are any indication.
“The Brahms Serenade (No. 1) 
... it’s just a piece I’ve admired for 
a long time ... I thought it would 
be a fun project for the orchestra,” 
Slywotzky said. “The Beethoven, 
I think the second symphony is a 
little bit underappreciated, partly 
because the third symphony made 
a huge splash and continues to be 
so influential ... (in the second 
symphony Beethoven) expanded 
the dramatic possibility of the 
symphony.”
When asked about his career 
trajectory 
after 
this 
year, 
Slywotzky was tight-lipped. 
“I’m very happy to be here, 
doing the best I can while I’m 
here,” he said. “It’s written 
somewhere in the stars.” 
Even with jobs in his field 
shrinking, 
he 
radiated 
no 
concern about the future — only 
satisfaction in his current work. 
What more could a school want 
out of a professor?

Slywotzky, UPO kick off 
another promising year

JACK WHITTEN
For the Daily

Awkwafina Is 

Norah from 
Queens

Series Premiere

Comedy Central

Wednesdays @ 10:30 

TV REVIEW
TV REVIEW
ARTIST PROFILE

Ledger

Jane Hirshfield

Knopf Publishing Group

Mar. 10, 2020

Read more online at 
michigandaily.com

