Imperfect but the insights outweigh the pretension.
What prompts people to write poetry? What permits a poet to revise himself? Poet and critic Teicher (The Trembling Answers, 2017, etc.) offers new versions of previously published essays, each of which considers aspects of poets’ artistic development.
Refreshingly, the author discusses less well-established poets such as Monica McClure and francine j. harris, but he is at his most astute when assessing the oeuvres of poets whose careers are complete, or nearly so. He reads Sylvia Plath, for example, as a poet who experienced a dramatic breakthrough later in her career. Her early work demonstrated “a virtuosity of technique,” but it wasn’t until the last poems in The Colossus and the “extraordinary abandon” of Ariel that Plath found a subject worthy of her technical power (herself). Teicher’s assessment of W.S. Merwin, by turns laudatory and sharply critical, manages in 13 pages to map a complex, persuasive chronology: Merwin’s early affection for “Pre-Raphaelite ornamentation,” his nearly perfect middle-period poetry, his descent into a kind of solipsistic self-parody, and his late work, in which he “can step out of his own way and let the poem come through unobstructed.” Considering Louise Glück, Teicher makes the illuminating suggestion that her poetry is animated by a tension: Glück finds meaning in everything—in the merest leaf or sunbathing episode—but that habit of mind “grates against her belief that the world is mostly meaningless, mostly uncaring.” Teicher’s narrative is marred by occasional romantic self-seriousness—e.g., poets “are people who, for any number of reasons, cannot, or at one point could not, speak…the keepers of the unsayable”—and he is on shakier ground when, instead of discussing poems, he attempts to divine the motives of the poet, as when he suggests that Glück uses a “mask” in Faithful and Virtuous Night because she needed to “fool herself into [the] vulnerability” required to write about the approach of death.
Imperfect but the insights outweigh the pretension.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-55597-821-1
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
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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