Ever faithful to the cowboy-poet ethic, Dawson never strays from the land and the cattle-rancher lifestyle that he so clearly loves.
By turns humorous, nostalgic and reflective, Dawson’s poems insist on uncomplicated, traditional values and on a taciturn sort of self-discovery, a process marked by action more than introspection. Dawson’s narrators always learn something about themselves, but they do so unselfconsciously, pitting themselves against the elements, breaking themselves down with hard work or immersing themselves unquestioningly in collective efforts. What they learn, they attempt to teach, as every poem comes with a lesson, a point Dawson explicitly makes in the hilarious “Apparently Not”—“Most stories from the farm have a moral or two. / This is no exception, when properly viewed.” Billed as rhyming free verse, the poems revert most frequently—and most enjoyably—to heavily punctuated iambs in an a-b-c-b rhyme scheme with a judicious peppering of internal rhyme thrown in for seasoning. Dawson’s quick pacing and light touch are perhaps nowhere more in evidence than in “When the Breeze Becomes a Storm,” the brief ballad of a cowboy who allows stubborn emotion to trump logic, refusing to believe the weather will turn on him until he and his mare are finally caught in a furious storm. Though he promises his frightened horse that he will trust her instincts the next time, she knows that “He’d downplay the signs, / He’d prevaricate, / Only turning to her / After it was too late. // That’s just how it was / For she’d known from the start / That like every other cowboy, / He led with his heart.” Not every poem in this collection gallops quite so easily. Dawson occasionally slows down for more somber reflection, as in “Gathering,” a heavy, nostalgic piece in which the 14- and 15-syllable lines lumber and lurch within the tight corral of an a-a-b-b rhyme scheme, losing grace and momentum. Fortunately, those moments are outnumbered by the tighter arrangements and quicker lines at which Dawson excels. Though he shares some similarities of voice with Joel Nelson, Dawson, unlike many cowboy poets, eschews colloquialisms and vernacular, giving his verse a more accessible, contemporary flavor. Dawson’s earnest, refreshing collection will appeal to anyone not afraid to have fun with poetry.
Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-1450249720
Page Count: 129
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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