A mature, memorable collection of poems about aging, dying, and living.
Garrison’s latest poetry collection tackles a range of topics from animal companionship to grief.
The book begins with a fable (“And Dog Said”) in which God creates Dog first, and only then creates Man to serve as his companion. God offers Dog the following word of caution regarding Man: “He has only a few words / like come and fetch, / and he knows little / of the earth / and its redolence, / but let him totter along / behind you and learn.” These attributes—tottering, learning, and speaking a few words here and there—recur throughout Garrison’s collection, which explores the complexities of aging and the sublimity of articulation at length as well as the relationship between people and dogs. The speakers marvel at the magic of small things, such as the intimacy of helping a woman zip a dress closed or the camaraderie of cancer patients sneaking off to share a nighttime smoke in a hospital parking lot: “The rasp / of a match or the click / of a lighter are passwords, / and no outsiders can shame them” (“Rasp”). There are odes to doorknobs, condoms, Scotch whisky, and the habits of men in their 70s—quotidian things that seem suddenly surreal when examined with poetic attentiveness. Cancer comes to dominate the later works, though Garrison finds unexpected avenues to approach it. One poem begins, “I go into a panic / when a Hollywood mogul dies / of the same cancer I have” (“Putting Killers Away”). A middle section features poems that grapple with the writing of poetry, and a final series of elegiac works confronts the concept of oblivion with a mix of grace and bewilderment.
Over the course of this collection, Garrison presents a style that has an understated lyricism—one that’s neither abstruse nor overly conversational. One poem, “Chromatics,” reads in its entirety: “Black notes / on gray staves / of oak and ash, / grackles gather. / Measure by measure / they line the branches, / inscribing / their dark music.” The poems are mostly free verse, though there are several written as sonnets or other forms, with many referencing classic poets such as Ovid, Robert Burns, John Keats, or Robert Frost. There are a few moments in the book where the poems get a bit saccharine, as in the commencement speech–like “What To Pack” or a work of praise of the eponymous poet in “Langston Hughes.” More often, though, the poems succeed because of their great restraint, as in the standout “Sousa March on the Radio.” Equally impressive is Garrison’s ability to encapsulate a broad, nebulous relationship in a tight little stanza: “I wear my father / like a handed down overcoat. / It fits better now that I am / old enough to know what is him / and what is me” (“Overcoat”). Indeed, it’s likely that readers will find themselves wearing a few of these poems around for a long time.
A mature, memorable collection of poems about aging, dying, and living.Pub Date: July 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-948017-88-6
Page Count: 78
Publisher: Dos Madres Press
Review Posted Online: June 10, 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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