Triumphantly mordant and transporting poems.
This collection of poetry may be founded on a series of playful dreams, but its message of protest offers a rousingly powerful wake-up call.
This second volume of poetry by Salinas is divided into two sections. The first and longer of the two is entitled “Sleeping” while the second is called “Woken.” Many of the poems found in the first section delve into whimsical, dreamlike scenarios. In “Cat,” he muses: “I dreamt I was a snow-white cat who / Owned Haruki Murakami.” The deliciously absurd piece describes the poet as a cat master, demanding that felines be featured in all of Murakami’s books in exchange for food and shelter. In the equally absurd “Smoke,” Salinas writes: “I dreamt I was a cigarette,” followed later by “I begged Ayn / Rand to light me up.” The poem is rendered darker by the knowledge that Rand, a heavy smoker, contracted lung cancer. The mercurial nature of Salinas’ poetry will leave readers uneasy and uncertain of where he will take them next but beguiled all the same. His writing sometimes shoots from the hip. In a poem called “Native,” he references sexual harassment accusations against the Native American novelist Sherman Alexie, asserting controversially: “You allowed your pendulous / Totem pole to carve the path, and now all / Our efforts are shattered.” Yet when addressing the death of George Floyd in “Breathe,” the poet’s tone is tender, although tempered with rage: “My brother, / My beauty, / I can’t breathe / When I hold back the / Black rain.” Alternatively, “Whistling Dixie on Trump Tower one fine January morning” channels Salinas' disdain via an erasure poem shrewdly crafted by omitting selected words from Donald Trump’s 2017 presidential inauguration speech—part of which reads threateningly: “I will fight you / never, ever let you / start winning again.” Other pieces are marked by the poet’s expressive wordplay; in “Serpentine Situation,” gridlock on the interstate is described delightfully as “Aggro jazz of / Chrysalis lives, / Some in Chryslers.” This outstanding collection goes where it likes, often to places some readers may not wish to follow. Those who do will not experience a dull moment.
Triumphantly mordant and transporting poems.Pub Date: July 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-912017-19-5
Page Count: 77
Publisher: Hekate Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Hokey plot, good fun.
A business executive becomes an unjustly wanted man.
Walter Nash attends his estranged father Tiberius’ funeral, where Ty’s Army buddy, Shock, rips into him for not being the kind of man the Vietnam vet Ty was. Instead, Nash is the successful head of acquisitions for Sybaritic Investments, where he earns a handsome paycheck that supports his wife, Judith, and his teenage daughter, Maggie. An FBI agent approaches Nash after the funeral and asks him to be a mole in his company, because the feds consider chief executive Rhett Temple “a criminal consorting with some very dangerous people.” It’s “a chance to be a hero,” the agent says, while admitting that Nash’s personal and financial risks are immense. Indeed, readers soon find Temple and a cohort standing over a fresh corpse and wondering what to do with it. Temple is not an especially talented executive, and he frets that his hated father, the chairman of the board, will eventually replace him with Nash. (Father-son relationships are not glorified in this tale.) Temple is cartoonishly rotten. He answers to a mysterious woman in Asia, whom he rightly fears. He kills. He beds various women including Judith, whom he tries to turn against Nash. The story’s dramatic turn follows Maggie’s kidnapping, where Nash is wrongly accused. Believing Nash’s innocence, Shock helps him change completely with intense exercise, bulking up and tattooing his body, and learning how to fight and kill. Eventually he looks nothing like the dweeb who’d once taken up tennis instead of football, much to Ty’s undying disgust. Finding the victim and the kidnappers becomes his sole mission. As a child watching his father hunt, Nash could never have killed a living thing. But with his old life over—now he will kill, and he will take any risks necessary. His transformation is implausible, though at least he’s not green like the Incredible Hulk. Loose ends abound by the end as he ignores a plea to “not get on that damn plane,” so a sequel is a necessity.
Hokey plot, good fun.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781538757987
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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
SEEN & HEARD
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