FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME: Artists know the difference between a career and a calling. When the money’s not great (or nonexistent), there’s got to be something else driving you to do what you do. Dallas poet Robert Trammell, who died in 2006, embodied that drive to create at all costs. Fellow writer Ben Fountain looks back at Trammell’s life in work in this engrossing piece from Sunday’s Dallas Morning News. Kudos to the DMN for including this kind of thoughtful writing on the front page.

TAKING A DIP: Theatre Arlington’s Dixie Swim Club follows a quintet of women who reunite every summer to catch up. Over the course of the play, the women age more than 30 years. “It’s an acting stretch that director B.J. Cleveland’s skilled quintet handles superbly in a first-rate staging,” Perry Stewart writes on theaterjones.com. Punch Shaw agrees that the acting is solid, but the play itself is way too predictable. “An occasional zinger hits the mark,” he writes in his dfw.com review. “but most aspects of this show miss their targets because we see them coming from so far away.” You’ve got ’til Aug. 22 to find out for yourself if the show sinks or swims.

DUE SOUTH: Toronto Star music columnist William Littler packed his bags and headed down to our state recently to check out Round Top, Texas. Why Round Top? Because he was interested in the International Festival Institute at Round Top, where future pro musicians go to prepare for their careers after their formal training is over. “For my money it represents one of the most remarkable fusions of education and music-making anywhere in North America,” Littler writes.