A dark, intriguing, but uneven rumination on how people’s choices and experiences influence the afterlife.
A poet offers reflections on death in this debut collection.
The speaker in White’s slim, succinct poetry chapbook has death on his mind. In fact, based on the first poem, “Post Mortem,” he may already be dead. But death does not have finality here; instead, the author argues in verse, the afterlife grants people new opportunities to consider their desires and pasts. The poems are short, at times just a couple phrases long, and many have a hyperbolic quality that deftly evokes a sermon. Some lack subtlety, using biblical language to reflect on God (“God’s Typewriter”), judgment (“Purgatory”), the Crucifixion (“A Sinner’s Plea”), and Eden (“Devil Bait”). The first half is undeniably grim, with allusions to suicide, abuse, and guilt over mortal misdeeds. But White relents to a more hopeful attitude toward the end, affirming that human life is meant to be joyous: “Are we soot? / Impure, black, and / better suited for / sadness. / Quite the contrary /… / We are soil. / Basal, vital, and / better suited for / sunshine.” The poems with less explicit Christian imagery pose more accessible and poignant questions about what people deserve out of life and how they process its end. But those explicitly tied to a Christian perspective of death and heaven can feel ham-fisted. Interspersed through these poems are Orazzini’s illustrations, most of which depict a small figure with a long beak wearing a blue cape and yellow crown traipsing through abstract landscapes. In one, he sits atop a microphone with a pierced tongue curled around it; in another, he slouches on the porch of a dilapidated cabin with orbiting planets in the sky that bear facial features. The images marry the whimsical and the macabre with elements of both Dalí and The Little Prince. While the drawings aren’t explicitly religious, they convey a journey through the unknown and the indescribable—much like people depict death. By the book’s finale, it’s hard to draw a conclusion about how the speaker feels about the end of his life other than, regardless of how he’s judged by God, he knows death is inevitable: “Heaven’s doors / open serendipitously / Ushered by God’s / palm itself / Our journey is / the price of admission.”
A dark, intriguing, but uneven rumination on how people’s choices and experiences influence the afterlife.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63988-570-1
Page Count: 58
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 beautifully produced, engaging homage.
Celebrating a beloved artist.
Published to coincide with a major exhibition of works by British-born artist David Hockney (b. 1937) at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, this lushly illustrated volume offers a detailed overview of the artist’s life and work, along with chapters focused on his various styles and subject matter, a chronology, and a glossary of the many techniques he employed in his art, including camera lucida, computer, and video. Contributors of essays include noted art historians and curators, such as Norman Rosenthal, who edited the volume; Simon Schama; Anne Lyles; James Cahill; and François Michaud. Growing up in the north of England, Hockney was drawn to the light and sparkle that he found in Hollywood movies. When he finally arrived in Los Angeles, the sunlit landscapes inspired him, and his new sense of artistic freedom concurred with sexual freedom: As a gay man, he felt liberated from the constraints that had weighed on him in Britain, even in the “relative Bohemia” of the Royal College of Art. Essayists reflect on his artistic interests, such as landscapes, portraiture, flowers, and the opera—for which he created boldly exuberant sets—as well as on his influences and experimentation. Michaud examines the impact on Hockney of a visit to Paris in the 1970s, where he became familiar with Henri Matisse and his contemporaries from museum exhibitions. In the 1990s, visiting his mother and friends in Yorkshire, Hockney painted both outdoors and in the studio, experimenting with various media—including the photocopier and fax machine—as he worked to render the woodsy landscape. As a companion to the exhibition, the volume offers stunning reproductions of Hockney’s prolific works. Enormously popular with museumgoers, Hockney, Rosenthal exults, “transforms the ordinary and the everyday into the remarkable.”
A beautifully produced, engaging homage.Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9780500029527
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
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