An inspired biographical and autobiographical journey.
A prismatic portrait of the canonical poet.
Oxford literature professor Moshenska takes a fresh perspective on John Milton (1608-1674), the art of biography, and the experience of reading to create a lyrical, meditative narrative about a poet who has seemed to generations of biographers and readers to be “perennially contemporary.” It’s not possible, Moshenska writes, “to separate the place of Milton’s writings in his lifetime from the questionings and imaginings that they can provoke in ours.” The author has been haunted by Milton, entangled with him as a reader and teacher, and his captivating, perceptive study reveals a deeply felt connection. Dividing the biography into three parts, the author considers Milton’s birth and early life, marked by his growing up in “a house full of music” that, Moshenska believes, made him particularly sensitive to rhythm; his experiences in his late 20s and early 30s, including a “formative and fraught” trip to Italy and meeting with the aged Galileo; and the latter half of his life, when he married, became a father, and emerged as a controversial public figure. At this point, “he presented himself as a learned, urbane, and respectable poet” whose writings on divorce “could make women leave their husbands” and whose political views “threatened the bonds between monarchs and subjects.” Moshenska follows Milton’s footsteps from his birthplace on Bread Street in London to his travels through Italy; visits Milton’s several homes; offers meticulously close, sensitive readings of poems and essays; and reveals “granular details” of turbulent 17th-century English political and religious life. Throughout, the author shares his own intimate responses to Milton’s sometimes “alien and challenging” views. Milton, he writes, “was able to be absolutely himself while remaining in some sense foreign to himself, and this strange kind of self-relation I have found rich and useful in making sense of myself.” With no aspirations to produce a definitive biography, Moshenska has crafted, instead, an incisive portrayal.
An inspired biographical and autobiographical journey.Pub Date: Dec. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5416-2068-1
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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