An illustration of intimate family history that’s a testament to the continuity of Indigenous life and poetics in California.
A poetry collection that speaks of Indigenous culture and history by telling a family’s story through its relation to sea, land, and memory.
Prose poems begin each of the three sections in the collection, establishing its overall themes. “The Gathering” opens the first section, which brings a refreshing perspective to the relationship between Indigenous people and the sea. Like the ocean ebbs and flows, the speaker illustrates her elderly father’s memories and dreams as his health deteriorates: “The old man had been tending the Sacred Fire since before dawn, each branch and limb of oak an added prayer.” As the family is there to support and witness his transition, now the poems remain to honor his legacy. The use of line breaks and extra spacing between words, as in “The White Buffalo Painting,” in which a physically debilitated grandfather yearns to paint the strong buffalo he dreams about, reproduces the pauses made by culture-bearing oral storytellers and invites readers to reflect on other types of gaps being evoked: “Grandfather / born in 1897 / going blind / losing his hearing and / sense of touch / dreams at night / of the White Buffalo.” “The Inland Sea” begins a segment of poems connected to the desert, the land, California roads, and to women, including the speaker’s foremothers. In this section, “Fox Paw and Coyote Blessing” is particularly memorable. Mixing storytelling and wordplay, Valoyce-Sanchez skillfully illustrates belonging to multiple Indigenous backgrounds, challenging monolithic notions of Indigeneity. As with other long poems in this collection, the reader’s visual and sensorial experience might have been enhanced had the poem been reproduced on facing pages. The overall style and themes of this collection are reminiscent of Deborah A. Miranda’s writing in their fluidity and nuanced portrayal of Indigenous life. The last section begins with “The Pictograph,” which refers to ancestral wall art whose physical, but not spiritual, access is blocked by steel bars. These final poems broach the creation and interpretation of worlds through Indigenous lenses.
An illustration of intimate family history that’s a testament to the continuity of Indigenous life and poetics in California.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-73453-135-0
Page Count: 84
Publisher: Scarlet Tanager Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
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
A beautifully produced, engaging homage.
Celebrating a beloved artist.
Published to coincide with a major exhibition of works by British-born artist David Hockney (b. 1937) at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, this lushly illustrated volume offers a detailed overview of the artist’s life and work, along with chapters focused on his various styles and subject matter, a chronology, and a glossary of the many techniques he employed in his art, including camera lucida, computer, and video. Contributors of essays include noted art historians and curators, such as Norman Rosenthal, who edited the volume; Simon Schama; Anne Lyles; James Cahill; and François Michaud. Growing up in the north of England, Hockney was drawn to the light and sparkle that he found in Hollywood movies. When he finally arrived in Los Angeles, the sunlit landscapes inspired him, and his new sense of artistic freedom concurred with sexual freedom: As a gay man, he felt liberated from the constraints that had weighed on him in Britain, even in the “relative Bohemia” of the Royal College of Art. Essayists reflect on his artistic interests, such as landscapes, portraiture, flowers, and the opera—for which he created boldly exuberant sets—as well as on his influences and experimentation. Michaud examines the impact on Hockney of a visit to Paris in the 1970s, where he became familiar with Henri Matisse and his contemporaries from museum exhibitions. In the 1990s, visiting his mother and friends in Yorkshire, Hockney painted both outdoors and in the studio, experimenting with various media—including the photocopier and fax machine—as he worked to render the woodsy landscape. As a companion to the exhibition, the volume offers stunning reproductions of Hockney’s prolific works. Enormously popular with museumgoers, Hockney, Rosenthal exults, “transforms the ordinary and the everyday into the remarkable.”
A beautifully produced, engaging homage.Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9780500029527
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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