A stunning, fertile selection of poems worthy of the broadest possible audience.
Duncan’s debut collection of introspective poems plaits together pain, love, truth and self-discovery.
The author begins her magnificent collection with the simple premise of knowing oneself. Taken together, the poems chart her journey from suffering heartbreak to embracing life. Shards of a shattering loss shimmer from page to page, and Duncan examines them piece by piece, with her reinvention of herself hiding between the lines. Symbolism lends depth in “Small Waters,” in which the poet describes longing as droplets: “But if / you chance to listen to the sigh / of each tear as it curls around stone, / you may feel a thirst that fills you / and wets your carved cheek.” Her words document both pain and joy, and her poems document a journey of self-integration and change; even a poem about emerging from painshouts with triumph. Duncan speaks of love in words reminiscent of the Bible’s Song of Solomon in “Please Hold My Hand”: “Neither your vessel nor mine will last / forever; each with its cracks will finally / break. Soon enough we will fall into / another season of beauty. So for now, / please hold my hand. Let us drink wine / and sing love songs to one another.” After these intimate explorations, the collection ruminates on larger, more ephemeral issues, such as universal oneness and humans’ connection to nature. In these areas, the poet becomes less tangible and more airy, but the rich, vibrant language evokes moonlit incantations and meditations in the open air. In one gorgeous line from “Grace,” for example, Duncan sums up the life of the artist: “I have only words to express my restless heart, / only a few clear notes that ring inside my busy head.”
A stunning, fertile selection of poems worthy of the broadest possible audience.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4929-2265-0
Page Count: 118
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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