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
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
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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