Howe's poetry is fabricated from questions rather than certainties and arises, like the revelations of more conventional...
Howe is the author of more than 20 books, encompassing both fiction and poetry, most of which have been published by small presses (the most recent in 1997). This marks her first collection of
earlier and more recent poems published by a university press. She is Professor of Writing and Literature at the University of California at San Diego. This volume traces the odyssey of Howe's evolution as a poet over the past two decades, from Boston (the setting of some of her earliest poems) to Ireland (her ancestral and spiritual homeland) to California (her current home). Considered one of the leading `experimental` poets in the US, Howe is noted for her spare, almost austere style, yet there is much tenderness and even joy in life expressed in these verses. At times she proves herself capable of Zen-like detachment, as in her oft-quoted stanza, `Zero built a nest in my navel.` But she occasionally loses that composure, as in her lament that, `Loss is the fulfillment of the Law,` or when she asks, `Why be obedient to a world that will end?` Her convictions may appear tentative, but only because her reality remains nascent, always in the process of becoming. She strives to get to the source of meaning, to `concentrate on the consciousness the sea comes out of.` She is not afraid to stare into the gaping maw of the horror vacui, but, unlike a good many of her contemporaries, she does not accept the over-the-counter existential palliatives.
Howe's poetry is fabricated from questions rather than certainties and arises, like the revelations of more conventional mystics, from contemplation in solitude.Pub Date: April 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-520-22262-8
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Univ. of California
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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