While this collection feels unruly in length and scope, single poems digested slowly offer the exceptional pleasures of...
Galas’ first collection of poetry is substantial of breadth and sure of voice, covering topics ranging from science to love with an authoritative flare.
The collection is made up of more than 100 poems with photographs and drawings by the author scattered throughout. “The world does not need you—know it the hard way, / by gathering shards,” Galas says in “A Poet’s Fate.” It is these shards of images, ideas and moments that Galas and, by extension, his reader need on the journey through this hefty collection. The book is divided into three unnamed thematic sections—which might be described as nature, love and society—and the movement among them reflects both the cycle of life and the evolution of this poet’s mind and vision. While the poems vary wildly from meditations on science to elegies to reconstructed memories, the voice is constant in its seeking of beauty and meaning through melancholy. At times, the mediations may be too abstract in their language for the reader to maintain a sure foothold, though refreshing images shine through; “the steel curtain of time” in “Rain Fell Today,” “pieces of days lived in sunlight and sound” in “The Poet’s Fate” and “knives of silken promise” in “Breasts.” Later poems tackle political and social issues and in their specificity are some of the most vibrant pieces of the whole, as the narrator takes the reader back to the disappointments of the Bush-Cheney years and on some overseas travels that offer new perspectives on life. Overall, more variation would be welcome in the narrator’s voice, as the “I” feels static from poem to poem, bringing a redundancy to those who read the book straight through from start to finish.
While this collection feels unruly in length and scope, single poems digested slowly offer the exceptional pleasures of poetry.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0984101702
Page Count: 119
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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