paper 1-882413-52-0 A collection of casual ruminations, appreciations, and diaristic essays from a longtime New York poet/advocate. In these pieces treating of the poetry (or prose) of James Schuyler, Elizabeth Bishop, John Hollander, Joseph Ceravolo, Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery, and artists including Fairfield Porter, Trevor Winkfield, and Edith Schloss, North (New & Selected Poems, 1998, etc.) comes across as that likeably easygoing fellow we’ve all met at parties who, upon prolonged exposure, reveals himself to be more dogmatic in his tastes than was first suspected. Readers who share North’s bent or who are curious to learn more of the New York School have something to gain from his devoted yet not uncritical insider’s view (—. . . it strikes me that Ashbery is one of the most self-indulgent writers who ever lived—). Others will find that for them his chosen range is too narrow. North will not persuade the unconverted when he praises a poetics capable of producing verse as ostentatiously terrible as “I have a death rattle in my nose I have summer in my/brain water/I have dreams in my toes” from Koch’s “The Art of Love,” which lines North calls both “strong” and “moving.” At times, he is too much the apologist, as when North notes, —In the fifties when Ashbery began, one of the things left to do was to leave out. In the climate of serious, high-toned and academic verse that had poetry gasping for air, it was left to be . . . anti-academic and irreverent like the poets in New York.” These latter poets’ experiments with sense would later also leave some poetry aficionados gasping. North’s emphasis on poetry’s pure sensory appeal, his shrewd sensitivity to play as a necessary poetic impulse, and his general resistance to the scholarly establishment are all potentially refreshing. But the author tests our patience and sometimes wastes his critical faculties on poems unworthy of either.
Pub Date: July 15, 1998
ISBN: 1-882413-53-9
Page Count: 176
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1998
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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