by Inger Christensen ; translated by Susanna Nied ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 27, 2018
Christensen’s probing, questioning, hopeful voice was an important one and is missed, but we can still hear it in this...
Insights into a poet who was definitely not living in an ivory tower.
Danish author Christensen (Light, Grass, and Letter in April, 2011, etc.) was one of Scandinavia’s finest experimental poets. Thoughtful and ruminative, these essays, skillfully rendered by translator Nied, reveal what poetry meant to Christensen (1935-2009) and how she wrote it. She calls herself “an almost insanely enthusiastic ‘enthusiast of language.’ " Her concerns were many—nature, art, philosophy, freedom, equality, and politics, including Ronald Reagan and Alexander Haig—and her artistic influences wide-ranging: Blake and Newton, Magritte, Elias Canetti, Chomsky, Maurice Blanchot, Merleau-Ponty, and Giordano Bruno. In the first essay, Christensen recalls having three “experiences” as a young girl, “still nearly indescribable.” Those “warm summer images” were her “first aesthetic experiences.” “Silk, the Universe, Language, the Heart” is her poetic discourse on another discourse, Lu Chi’s Wen Fu. The author explores how language is alive for her: “All nouns are very lonely,” adjectives, “helpless,” adverbs, “quite strong-willed,” verbs, “very agreeable,” and prepositions, “nearly invisible.” By writing poetry, Christensen believes, “we’re trying to produce something that we ourselves are already a product of.” She envisions the Big Bang as a “poem” we’re “in the middle of.” When she writes, she “sometimes pretend[s] it’s not me but language itself that’s writing.” As “human beings, we can’t avoid being part of the artistic process.” Christensen excitedly describes working on her poetry collection alphabet, which was a “great adventure.” Poetry, declares the author, is “not truth—it’s not even the dream of truth—poetry is passion—it’s a game, maybe a tragic game, the game we play with a world that plays its own game with us.”
Christensen’s probing, questioning, hopeful voice was an important one and is missed, but we can still hear it in this provocative book.Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8112-2811-4
Page Count: 160
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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by David Sedaris ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 29, 2018
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
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In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
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by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson
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by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis
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