A timely, compelling story that challenges the traditional definition of family.
Waldron’s account of life as a gay dad in Arizona.
The author’s engaging debut memoir opens with a protest rally against illegal immigrants in Phoenix. Seeing a young Hispanic boy on his father’s shoulders, Waldron reflects on his journey as a single, gay parent. When he fell in love with the charming smile of a 3-year-old boy, he had little understanding of the child’s intense anger simmering below the surface. After helplessly witnessing one memorable tantrum, Waldron sought a series of nannies to care for his child and teach him Spanish, as well as give himself some much-needed breathing room in his suddenly hectic life. Beginning with fun-loving Paulina, several Mexican women not only cared for his son (and later second child), but also showed Waldron how to appreciate the smaller, day-to-day triumphs of parenting. The women’s undocumented status and their ties to family in Mexico meant that their connections to his young family, while strong, were sometimes short-lived. While the women are idealized in their portrayals and treated like family (a far cry from The Help), the narrator is forthright about his own shortcomings and fears. Parents, especially single parents or those of adopted children, will relate to his worried comparisons to wealthier parents, his fears that his son might be taken away, his frantic juggling of work responsibilities and his musings about the lasting effects of his son’s difficult pre-adoption years. Early on, he confronts his own prejudices about the women he comes to depend upon who live in modest, sometimes sketchy, neighborhoods. He’s also quick to defend them from the unfounded accusations of his neighbors or his father’s concerns about strangers raising his grandchildren. A natural storyteller, Waldron offers a universal tale. He occasionally touches on issues specific to being a gay parent, including being advised to lie about his orientation or being offered harder-to-place children. More personal than political, this memoir’s conversational style, with its short chapters, lively bits of dialogue, candid observations and steady action, makes for enjoyable reading.
A timely, compelling story that challenges the traditional definition of family.Pub Date: June 21, 2012
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A fine anthology of some of the best contemporary poetry around.
Fresh new writers rub elbows with past masters in this scintillating collection of verse.
Under the label “New Neo-Realist,” Lark, editor of the Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities, assembles a collection of narrative poems that usually feature frank engagement with ordinary life; a modern, colloquial idiom; and emotion leavened by irony, astringency, and flashes of humor. That leaves room for a huge range of subjects, styles, and moods. Erika Meitner’s “Wal-Mart Supercenter” contrasts the stores’ sublime friendliness with the police-blotter hell surrounding them (“A couple tried to sell their six-month-old for twenty-five bucks / to buy meth in the Salinas Walmart parking lot”), and L.W. Milam’s surreal “Tootie Fruit ME and Ass-Grasp LA” invokes “crowds of crying turtles, & / Peasant armies of hymn-singing, drug-ridden geckos.” Christopher Kennedy’s mordantly funny “Riddle of Self-Worth” laments that “My pet vulture has the disconcerting habit of staring / at the clock and then at me”; Howard Nemerov’s lyrical “Goldfish” spotlights the creatures’ “Waving disheveled rags of elegant fin / Languidly in the light”; and Tom Crawford’s “Companion to a Loon” levels a matter-of-fact elegy: “Listen bird, I’m past making death sad. / The tide has no time for wakes / or tragedies. We’re either coming in / or going out.” The volume contains an especially strong set of poems by women, including Kate Gale’s agonized “What I Did Not Tell Anyone,” in which a new mother confides “That I felt my whole family / greedily feeding off me. / That my body felt stolen. / That I felt like Russia during all the wars / troops tramping over me on their way to Moscow,” and Christine Hamm’s bitterly whimsical “Signs You Are Ovulating”: “As you apply mascara / in the bathroom, your eyes slit, / a crow hops onto your shoulder, / and whispers, right here, now.” Lark juxtaposes works by well-known legends, such as Allen Ginsberg, Philip Larkin, e.e. Cummings, and Langston Hughes, as revealing counterpoints to the newer poems. Unlike the strings of cryptic non sequiturs in much Master of Fine Arts—bred poetry, these poems are decidedly reader-friendly without compromising their literary artistry. Along with their inventive language and dazzling metaphor, their accessibility and immediacy pack a wallop.
A fine anthology of some of the best contemporary poetry around.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-917320-58-3
Page Count: 202
Publisher: MHO & MHO Works
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A sexy, bittersweet reverie of love relayed in brief, powerful bursts of poetry.
A breathtaking collection of tender poems about love and loss.
Darlington (China Bus, 2017, etc.) is a man of few words, but in this slim book of untitled verse, he proves that those few words are enough. He depicts love as “a feast of goosebumps / laid out for curious taste buds” and “a party / posted signs: / NO RE-ENTRY.” He woos readers with a speaker’s recollections of staying up all night reading The Love Poems of Lord Byron with a beloved and later finding torn-out pages from that volume hidden in other books. Another speaker reminisces about a girl who likes “small tomatoes / as they pop in her mouth / simple cotton undies / and a good pizza crust.” Yet another poem tells of a weekend camping trip, complete with mushroom foraging and a visit from a bear at breakfast. Even when a speaker is in a relationship, he senses its inevitable end; one poem discusses keeping written tabs of a love’s delicious details: “now my house is / full of such notes / so many that in a / strong breeze / they’re like butterflies / releasing from a / garden / each one / some part of you.” When a relationship ends, a sorrowful speaker seeks the advice of the sun, the moon, and the sea in a poem that offers solace but no answers. Darlington is a master of brevity, and each poem in this collection is like a time capsule, packed with nostalgia and sensual description. Of a secretly kept photograph, he writes, “You are flushed from sex and / the afternoon sun runs like butter / down your spine.” Even the sparsest poems are explosively potent, such as: “stay / like this / a moment / our costumes fallen to the floor.” Darlington takes full advantage of white space on the page, effectively playing with line breaks and indents to create a game of hopscotch for the eyes while simultaneously filling the soul.
A sexy, bittersweet reverie of love relayed in brief, powerful bursts of poetry.Pub Date: May 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-71905-049-4
Page Count: 70
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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