An evocative but cluttered collection by a passionate nature lover.
A Canadian writer who grew up in rural Ontario offers a volume of nature-themed poetry.
As Yeates Camara explains on the copyright page, this book’s title refers to the process of firing a piece of pottery in low oxygen conditions. This is reflected in her minimalist style of poetry. The first part of this collection, “Winter,” explores nature scenes like estuaries, the silent flight of a bird, and the leaves of a Japanese maple tree. In “Lovely,” the poet compares the sparse beauty of bare ranges in winter to mature women. “Make the Best” features forests of older siblings, clouds of aunts, seas of cousins, and a grandfather sun and grandmother moon. Yeates Camara takes on the perspective of a scarecrow in the eponymous poem. A series of numbered poems about love opens the “Autumn” portion. The “Summer” segment presents sensual poems brimming with desire, fantasies, and passion: “I find / my bones yet longing for your weight.” And the “Spring” section starts with a piece dedicated to a woman who succumbed to bipolar depression, then abruptly ends with a series of biblical-style poems about the speaker’s “master.” The author’s descriptions are vivid. A cormorant is portrayed as “slick and near / soundless.” Pines dance “dramatic / slow ballets” while maples move to “lively jazz.” Yeates Camara’s similes are strong, from “rippling like the elephant’s ear / or ticking tails like bulls” to “A heart peaceful and lively / Like a child running arms full span.” But formatting problems make for an arduous reading experience. There are no page breaks between poems, so multiple pieces are crammed onto each page, eliminating the necessary white space and breathing room between entries. The seemingly indiscriminate line breaks also muddle the meaning of some of the poems. For example, “I realized / today / it wasn’t you that I’ll / always be wanting / more / warmth” is difficult to decipher.
An evocative but cluttered collection by a passionate nature lover.Pub Date: May 25, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 100
Publisher: Yeates Expressions
Review Posted Online: June 6, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
I Who Have Never Known Men ($22.00; May 1997; 224 pp.; 1-888363-43-6): In this futuristic fantasy (which is immediately reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), the nameless narrator passes from her adolescent captivity among women who are kept in underground cages following some unspecified global catastrophe, to a life as, apparently, the last woman on earth. The material is stretched thin, but Harpman's eye for detail and command of tone (effectively translated from the French original) give powerful credibility to her portrayal of a human tabula rasa gradually acquiring a fragmentary comprehension of the phenomena of life and loving, and a moving plangency to her muted cri de coeur (``I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct'').
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-888363-43-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
Engrossing worldbuilding, appealing characters, and a sense of humor make this a winning entry in the Sanderson canon.
A fantasy adventure with a sometimes-biting wit.
Tress is an ordinary girl with no thirst to see the world. Charlie is the son of the local duke, but he likes stories more than fencing. When the duke realizes the two teenagers are falling in love, he takes Charlie away to find a suitable wife—and returns with a different young man as his heir. Charlie, meanwhile, has been captured by the mysterious Sorceress who rules the Midnight Sea, which leaves Tress with no choice but to go rescue him. To do that, she’ll have to get off the barren island she’s forbidden to leave, cross the dangerous Verdant Sea, the even more dangerous Crimson Sea, and the totally deadly Midnight Sea, and somehow defeat the unbeatable Sorceress. The seas on Tress’ world are dangerous because they’re not made of water—they’re made of colorful spores that pour down from the world’s 12 stationary moons. Verdant spores explode into fast-growing vines if they get wet, which means inhaling them can be deadly. Crimson and midnight spores are worse. Ships protected by spore-killing silver sail these seas, and it’s Tress’ quest to find a ship and somehow persuade its crew to carry her to a place no ships want to go, to rescue a person nobody cares about but her. Luckily, Tress is kindhearted, resourceful, and curious—which also makes her an appealing heroine. Along her journey, Tress encounters a talking rat, a crew of reluctant pirates, and plenty of danger. Her story is narrated by an unusual cabin boy with a sharp wit. (About one duke, he says, “He’d apparently been quite heroic during those wars; you could tell because a great number of his troops had died, while he lived.”) The overall effect is not unlike The Princess Bride, which Sanderson cites as an inspiration.
Engrossing worldbuilding, appealing characters, and a sense of humor make this a winning entry in the Sanderson canon.Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9781250899651
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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