New Year–a continuation of beauty and the ache that inspires it. In his collection Breakfast with Thom Gunn, Randall Mann melds vulnerability and eloquence like few poets can. This month, in a truly poignant interview, he reads his poems and talks to me about heartache, homosexuality, drugs and death in San Francisco. Annie Palmer is an introspective storyteller with a liquor-honey voice who was born in Chattanooga and now lives in...

Michigan musician Annie Palmer talks and plays.