A generous, stirring collection honoring loving relationships, hope in hard times and religious devotion.
Newfoundland-born author Difalco adds to her growing catalog of inspirational verse with a masterful collection of poems.
The author’s latest poetry collection—the first published for an American audience—is a veritable font of wisdom about such profound issues as life, death, family and faith. Like many other talented poets, Difalco uses her own experiences, her memories, and stories told to her as inspiration for verse. In one particularly poignant piece, she reminisces about her grandparents who were lighthouse keepers: “The winds of time now gently flow / The lamps are trimmed and fit / From sunset rays till early dawn / All through the night you sit.” She bases many of her precisely metered verses on real events, as in the stirring “Don’t Leave Me,” about a lone survivor of a plane crash awaiting help in the cold ocean: “I must not drift back into night.” In “Only a Girl,” based on a story told to the poet, an old man buries his wife but sees her only as she was when she was young. Although a few verses reflect larger socioeconomic issues such as homelessness or environmental decay, the main themes are nostalgia and finding strength in religious faith. The collection could have drifted dangerously toward sentimentality, but the author’s deft touch maintains a wise voice throughout, keeping the verses strong and clear rather than melodramatic—a difficult high-wire act for any writer. Despite her tendencies toward Christian themes, nonbelievers may find solace and joy in her descriptions of the power of the natural world and of the comfort of loving family members past and present. This volume might make an excellent gift for friends in need of a touchstone of inspiration.
A generous, stirring collection honoring loving relationships, hope in hard times and religious devotion.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-1452579924
Page Count: 94
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A marvelously tender memoir on suicide and loss.
An essayist and novelist turns her attention to the heartache of a friend’s suicide.
Crosley’s memoir is not only a joy to read, but also a respectful and philosophical work about a colleague’s recent suicide. “All burglaries are alike, but every burglary is uninsured in its own way,” she begins, in reference to the thief who stole the jewelry from her New York apartment in 2019. Among the stolen items was her grandmother’s “green dome cocktail ring with tiers of tourmaline (think kryptonite, think dish soap).” She wrote those words two months after the burglary and “one month since the violent death of my dearest friend.” That friend was Russell Perreault, referred to only by his first name, her boss when she was a publicist at Vintage Books. Russell, who loved “cheap trinkets” from flea markets, had “the timeless charm of a movie star, the competitive edge of a Spartan,” and—one of many marvelous details—a “thatch of salt-and-pepper hair, seemingly scalped from the roof of an English country house.” Over the years, the two became more than boss and subordinate, teasing one another at work, sharing dinners, enjoying “idyllic scenes” at his Connecticut country home, “a modest farmhouse with peeling paint and fragile plumbing…the house that Windex forgot.” It was in the barn at that house that Russell took his own life. Despite the obvious difference in the severity of robbery and suicide, Crosley fashions a sharp narrative that finds commonality in the dislocation brought on by these events. The book is no hagiography—she notes harassment complaints against Russell for thoughtlessly tossed-off comments, plus critiques of the “deeply antiquated and often backward” publishing industry—but the result is a warm remembrance sure to resonate with anyone who has experienced loss.
A marvelously tender memoir on suicide and loss.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780374609849
Page Count: 208
Publisher: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
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PERSPECTIVES
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