An optimistic poetic consideration of nature’s constancy.
A new book of poetry by Schumacher celebrates the natural world and human life.
What metaphor is more potent for the human life cycle and the composition of our legacies than a garden? In the author’s seventh collection, the garden is a place to take stock of one’s life, to harvest “sheaves of ideas…mounds of wise messages…clusters of kindness” (“Harvest Gift”) and move forward nourished by gratitude and compassion. The poetry has clear influences from Shakespeare, the Romantic poets, and Whitman, conjuring strong emotions and self-reflection via natural imagery. Schumacher describes her style as “word music” and frames many of her poems with rhyme schemes and meters to buoy the consistent message of embracing life’s challenges as opportunities to bloom, as distilled in the ending line of the poem “Memorial Contemplation”: “We may not always choose what’s good, / we may not always understand, / but wisdom comes with trying / to do the best we can.” One poem, “Social Justice,” even inserts a rhyming interview. Just as embracing nature can teach us how to lead with kindness and care for others around us, so, per the author, can God. Some of the longest poems ruminate on Christ’s birth (“Birth Day”) and its impact on Mary (“Mary’s Pondering”), but they abstain from delivering exclusionary Christian messages that might alienate readers with more secular tastes—in one moment of humor, Joseph sleeps through the birth of Jesus. In the collection’s second half, God and nature often become entangled, and the poems’ speakers have no fear of returning to the Earth, which means reaching heaven; there are no true endings in the natural world. While these are not novel ideas enlivened by mind-bending imagery, they may serve readers seeking something short and sincere.
An optimistic poetic consideration of nature’s constancy.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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