A moving tribute to Walt Whitman’s truest heir.
Poet and anthologist Shinder (Tales from the Couch, 2000) rounds up two dozen literati to reflect on the revolutionary impact of Allen Ginsberg’s most famous work.
“Howl” has been outraging the squares and enrapturing the alienated ever since Ginsberg first read portions of it at a San Francisco gallery in 1955. Published in the famous City Lights paperback edition in 1956, it overcame obscenity prosecutions to spread its subversive message overseas (Andrei Codrescu recalls reading it in Romania as a teenager) and across the generations (Alicia Ostriker, Marge Piercy and Eileen Myles are among the younger poets who write here of being inspired by it to break free from literary constraints). “Allen Ginsberg is responsible for loosening the breath of American poetry,” Helen Vendler once wrote; Shinder’s introduction points out that it loosened up a whole lot more. Amiri Baraka captures—in jazzy Beat prose—the poem’s status as a quintessential Beat document; Mark Doty investigates it as an expression of queer sexuality (but not an icon of the gay movement); Rick Moody proclaims its relevance to the punk-rock crowd; and Eliot Katz rather drably explains its political relevance, then and now. Thank goodness for Marjorie Perloff’s excellent explication of its formal qualities, or we might forget that “Howl” is, first and foremost, a truly great poem. (Doty also does a nice job of reminding us how funny it is.) But Ginsberg’s cry of revolt and embrace of excess has always burst the bounds of literature, promising ecstasy and liberation to all kinds of people, from Robert Lowell to Bob Dylan, 1960s radicals to New Age spiritual seekers. It was, perhaps, “the last poem to hit the world with the impact of news and grip it with the tenacity of a pop song,” as Luc Sante notes with characteristic acuity. Variable in quality though they are, taken as a whole the essays here offer a plethora of reasons why.
A moving tribute to Walt Whitman’s truest heir.Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-374-17343-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
A plainspoken, worthy, and sweeping manual on parenting teens.
A guide provides tips to parents dealing with teenagers in the age of cellphones and rampant social media.
In this fifth edition of his parenting book, experienced family counselor and author McIntire (Grandma, Can We Talk?, 2017, etc.) doles out a great deal of pointed advice on every aspect of raising teens. Some traditional subjects are addressed in clear and straightforward prose: personal economy, homework, drug use, and the much-vexed “birds and the bees”-type talks about dating and sex. Throughout the manual, McIntire is evenhanded in his treatment of the two sides of the parenting equation, consistently reminding his adult readers that their own self-care is a vital part of the process. “A parent who continually accepts responsibility and blame and feels accountable for whatever goes wrong, sacrifices his/her own self-esteem,” he writes. “When parents take care of their own needs, they help their teens as well as themselves.” But the bulk of his program centers of course on the kids. “The first priority in parenting,” he reminds readers, “should be finding things to highlight about our kids.” To this end, he lays out 12 general steps that cover an enormous amount of material: encouraging teens to contribute to the whole family; addressing poor impulse control and the formation of bad habits; coping with the complicated ramifications of punishments; and so on. The book’s opening chapters add a good deal of new, valuable guidance on questions of teen use of the internet and warn parents to take a tough line with social media, reminding them that it’s their job to know what their kids are doing online. The advice is amiable but firm, offered with many hypothetical dialogues to illustrate better conversations. McIntire closes by assuring his readers that they and their children should strive to be lifelong friends, and the useful suggestions throughout this work should help make that happen.
A plainspoken, worthy, and sweeping manual on parenting teens.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9614519-4-3
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Summit Crossroads Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A memoir begging for an editor.
An epic autobiography that’s part chronicle of American life gone-by and part diatribe against controlling men.
Caless begins her diary-style memoir with an account of life on a poultry farm during the Depression. She recalls a secure childhood with enough to eat and, eventually, modern conveniences–oil lamps give way to electric lights, a radio and, at long last, a refrigerator for her mother. All is not well on her homestead, however–her father molests and exposes himself to her, and her brother physically abuses her. Her parents spoil her brother but give her often-grueling jobs, even leaving her alone working their roadside stand at night. By the time she was 18, she’s had enough, and takes a bus to her boyfriend’s home in New Jersey. She’s out of the familial frying pan, but soon becomes infuriated by her new husband’s stingy and cruel ways. After he returns from World War II, she leaves him and her young son and aimlessly heads off to make a new life. For decades, she works at an insurance company and meets men at the Jersey Shore–some of whom are married and some aren’t. In her 50s, Caless is visited by a man from her past, but that relationship too has an unhappy ending. His story is woven in between the author’s interminable battles with lawyers and banks, after deaths in her family. Caless can be spunky and sparkling, and some of her stories are engrossing, notably those of reconciling with her son and caring for her dying mother. Her details about the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s are historical treasures. However, those attributes are ruined by her wordy, redundant writing. Caless belabors her points, repeating small establishing details constantly. As the massive page count indicates, she includes far too many long, extraneous stories, even devoting two pages to the story of French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat. The author’s life story has compelling moments, but they are buried under an avalanche of unnecessary recollections.
A memoir begging for an editor.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4257-3185-4, 9
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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