An emotionally vulnerable book of poems that may be too self-referential for some.
A sincere poetry collection about faith, survival, and renewal.
In this confessional book of poems, photographer and writer Jackson explores spirituality, resilience, and self-acceptance. The first poem, “Fear,” reveals that the speaker is afraid to dream and live, uncertain how his future will unfold. “Will I live a peaceful existence? / Or will I excuse self-ignorance?” he asks in “Breathe.” Despite “many tears” and “a burdened mind,” he finds solace in Jesus in “Love.” Christianity continues to provide relief in “Saved,” in which the speaker proclaims, “At last, I can breathe, my heart beating / Jesus, help me to never feel alone again.” Poems such as “Skin” and “Playground” address racial identity and childhood bullying, while “Untold” and “I am” question self-worth. “Who I Am” contrasts negative self-perception and an aspirational self. Alongside this spiritual journey, the speaker longs for a romantic partner. “Wait,” “Find Me,” and “Love?” detail the speaker’s search for a special someone he can lean on. “Hello Father” is a direct address to the speaker’s absent parent, informing him of milestones he’s missed. The closing poem, “Redemption,” finds the speaker in a hopeful state after recognizing that his thoughts were untrue and that “at last, I had the courage / To tell myself / I was wrong.” The greatest strength of this collection is its brutal honesty and raw emotion, evidenced in poems like “Waiting,” in which Jackson writes, “I have a rose / With no one to give it to / A heart…with no one to cherish it / A ring…with no one to wear it / Love…with no one to share it with.” Those who have experienced despair will relate to Jackson’s depiction in lines like “Never good enough / Not more than a bluff / Echoes of victory / Become a mystery / As dreams fade away.” Jackson also fruitfully experiments with point of view, as in several poems written from Jesus’ perspective. However, some readers may struggle to stick with this deeply personal and painful self-discovery over hundreds of entries.
An emotionally vulnerable book of poems that may be too self-referential for some.Pub Date: July 21, 2024
ISBN: 9798333693846
Page Count: 331
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2026
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
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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