Real passion and outrage on subjects public and private; less-than-stellar execution.
Ironies abound in this collection of poems on war, politics, history and society.
Written over a period of 50 years, Kean’s poems take on the anguish of injustice, whether personal or political, and demonstrate the disconnect between human potential and human cruelty. Categorized by overarching themes (war, politics, history and society), each poem bears a location and date, giving the reader a map of creation and a method to fix the poem in a historical context. The Iraq War, the CIA’s involvement in Chile, New York’s Love Canal and Soviet assassination attempts are as inspiring to the poet as King Tut, scenes from a Mexican town square and urban landscapes of love and crime. At their strongest, the political poems mix horrific subject matter with rollicking rhythm and form to create an unforgettable danse macabre. At their weakest, the pieces dissolve into ranting chants and lists of crimes against humanity. The personal poems, most dating from the ’60s and ’70s, written in the U.S. Virgin Islands and New York City, shift between gentle love poems of regret and the sly raunchiness of erotic declamation. Kean obviously loves language, dabbling in alliteration like “Our Cowboy, Christian, Capitalist Crusader,” as well as esoteric vocabulary–like the recurring word “feculent”–throughout the volume. Unfortunately, these parts do not contribute to a stronger whole, as exhibited in this painful scansion of lines from “America the Dreadful, Set to the Melody of America the Beautiful”: “America! America! A plague is shed on thee, / A phony democracy from sea to polluted sea.” No matter the subject, the voice is the same–accusatory, involved and skilled at pointing out the gaps between what is said and what is done. The poet thus exposes what he perceives as the Truth.
Real passion and outrage on subjects public and private; less-than-stellar execution.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-4357-1856-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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