A quick series of precise poems by an American master.
Kooser, a former U.S. poet laureate, finds moral drama in rural stillness over the course of his latest poetry chapbook.
In these 18 poems, people watch and are watched; a woman crosses a highway to pick up her mail, a bull guards a field of cows, and the eponymous raker takes a break from work: “he’d been watching the rake / tick around clockwise, minute to minute, / a fine afternoon passing forever away, / but he’s figured out now how to slow it / all down….” Slowing it all down is often just what these poems are after. The works find inspiration in tiny happenings: “I watched a glint of morning sunlight / climbing a thread of spider’s silk / in a gentle breeze” begins “A Glint.” Another, about a farmer at a titular “Farm Sale,” ends, “He’s got / his cap on square, nothing better / to do on a warm Saturday morning / than to park at the far end of / where all of the others have parked, / and to walk up the road, in no hurry / to see what’s for sale at the sale.” In these quiet rhythms of American rural life—the moments between work and whatever comes next—Kooser, a Pulitzer Prize winner, seeks the sublime, and he crafts lyrics out of accessible, everyday language. He finds music in the creaking of old farmhouses, the pump of well water, and the squealing of piglets in a cardboard box. It’s a slim collection, but every poem leaves a mark. The highlight is perhaps “A Mouse Nest,” which reimagines Robert Burns’ famous discovery of a mouse’s hovel. In Kooser’s work, the nest is in the steel housing of a basement band saw. After the speaker dismantles the nest, he returns later to see if the mouse and its young are still present: “every trace of what had happened to us there / was gone, except for a little red fiberboard sawdust.” These poems, too, are like this sawdust—what remains of a happening experienced and then gone.
A quick series of precise poems by an American master.Pub Date: March 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-73497-917-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clyde Hill Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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