A thoughtful and often beautiful volume of poetry that explores the Middle East and America.
Glancy (Trigger Dance, 2015, etc.) contemplates history and culture in this new collection of poems.
The impetus for this book, as Glancy explains early on, was a trip she took in spring 1994 through Syria and Jordan on behalf of the U.S. Information Agency. A cultural ambassador of sorts for the U.S., she confronted the depth of the history that surrounded her: “Standing at the ruins of Ebla in Syria, there was an older oldthan any of the history I knew in America.” The author’s travels in the Levant forced her to consider the disconnect she felt between the Holy Land of the Christian Bible—a place so revered by Americans—and the modern Muslim nations that Americans regard with such suspicion. These Syria and Jordan poems sit side by side with others set in North Dakota, Arizona, New Hampshire, and elsewhere in the U.S., in which Glancy examines her personal history as well as her own cultural background as a Native American. As the poet writes, “You know how seeing another country / makes you see your own / and you know how America’s eye is always on itself.” The second section of the book revisits the Syria of recent years, ruminating on how the holy desert of Glancy’s travels has become a conflagration of violence and inhumanity. In these poems, she mourns the loss of the people and places she saw in 1994, wondering what has become of them: “I thought of the dyer of blue cloth in Damascus / … / What happened to the patterns and jars of blue? / The maker of them?” The work moves back and forth between narrative verse poems and contemplative prose poems, tackling complex ideas from multiple angles. The result is a book that is both analytical and lyrically satisfying, a profound meditation on the nature of nationhood, history, and the narratives readers allow themselves to live in. The question Glancy poses in the title poem is as true of America as it is of Syria: “What can be trusted to be true / in the complexities of a country at war with itself?”
A thoughtful and often beautiful volume of poetry that explores the Middle East and America.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5326-0302-0
Page Count: 94
Publisher: Wipf and Stock
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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