Unwieldy title aside, a funny and provocative work.
A substantial collection of incisive neo-Beat poetry.
Throwing in his hat decades ago with the rebellious likes of Charles Bukowski and Allen Ginsberg, San Francisco resident Davis now offers up a hefty volume of what he dubs his “journal entries, mind maps and poetry,” all expressing in various free-verse forms his discontent with modern society. Readers will be pleased with the author’s displeasure, as Davis’s insights and wit cut right to the chase on a number of pressing contemporary issues: Iraq, gay rights, George Bush and more. These are poems of the present, both in the intimate, visionary delivery of their messages, as well as in their collage-like incorporation of bits of relatively recent cultural touchstones. Davis frequently excerpts lines from show tunes or clips of well-known dialogue from mainstream films and gives them a gentle but ironic tug. For instance, in “Loners,” a short political piece addressing the myopia of “Reagan-bush-wotyla-putin-ratzinger” in their attempts at “socially forcing freedom” upon others, Davis chooses The Sixth Sense’s signature line to drive home the poem’s theme: “I can tell you my secret now / I see dead people / They only see what they want / to see.” Constantly reaching for balance, this religious poet is quick to point to the house-of-cards–like aspect of much of our existence, advising at one point, “You don’t ask a problem / how to solve it / satan-how do we end this / hell thing?”; and persuasively warning against circular reasoning at others, especially in the poem “god told me”–“my faith is a lie / and i believe in god / so i discarded my lie / so now / i believe in god / and have / no faith.”
Unwieldy title aside, a funny and provocative work.Pub Date: April 7, 2006
ISBN: 0-595-38483-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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