An intellectually stimulating and emotionally resonant collection.
A book of poems that toggles between the head and the heart.
Tripoulas combines philosophical ponderings with indelible memories. He opens with “Fish Hooks,” a contemplation of bronze fish hooks from the 4th century BCE, preserved behind glass at the Piraeus Archeological Museum in Greece. He notes that despite “centuries beneath the sea,” they’re the same shape of hooks found in tackle stores today. While in Florence, Italy, the speaker of “Ekphrastic Theology” realizes that “Uffizi’s many Annunciations / often portray literate Mary / with book in hand. In “Asemic,” the speaker observes that Buddha, Christ, and Socrates never held a pen, perhaps because “Only their disciples turned to / written manifestation (manus, hand), / trying to make revelation / tangible, like grasping the wind.” Other poems have a more modern, personal tone; “Insomnia” recalls a grandfather’s cigarettes singeing "the skin of his two fingers / and turning them yellow.” Still others tell stories that are certain to surprise readers, such as “Mike Gabel in Hell,” in which a deceased friend visits the speaker in a dream to inform him that the friend didn’t die by suicide, but that his wife murdered him—a dream proven true when police reinvestigate the friend’s death. Tripoulas is primarily a philosophical poet, which can occasionally make for cumbersome lines, such as “Opposites are one, / wrote the Riddler, / like lyre and bow they beget / the clashing power / of polar strife.” (“Looking for Heraclitus in the Samaria Gorge”). Other works can be quite dark, such as “Faces Are Silent Words,” inspired by a 10-year-old girl who drowned during a refugee crossing: “Her face is missing, scoured by sea brine, / her small nose eaten by fish.” Whenever the poet turns his gaze toward nature, he does so stunningly, as in this evocative description of autumn: “leaves swoon to their death / like costumed tragic actors. / Bereft bare branches / high above, grieve.” (“Two Views of Autumn”). Throughout, the author unearths remarkable truths about what he sees as timeless and universal in the human experience.
An intellectually stimulating and emotionally resonant collection.Pub Date: April 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781962847056
Page Count: 138
Publisher: Dos Madres Press
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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