An often lyrical work that offers more meditation than instruction.
Dargis (Pit Stop in the Paris of Africa, 2013) explores the concepts of healing energy, quantum theory, and the higher self through memoir, prose, and poetry.
When the author began studying integral health at the California Institute for Human Science in Encinitas, she struggled to keep up. With no background in science, she realized that only through poetry could she understand the material. She synthesized the information through the process of writing sonnets, which informs the poetry in this primer. It will be hard for readers who are new to quantum theory to see the science in Dargis’ ruminations. Still, there’s plenty of lyricism for the layman to appreciate. She structures her observations into three sections, mimicking the three-card spread she uses during an oracle-card reading. The first section covers the subject of trauma and Dargis’ humanitarian work with African refugees. In a prose piece, “Bound by my Footsteps,” she describes walking past a war memorial at night, sharing a moment with a man “presumably from a different place and a different time, our expressions seemed eerily the same.” Much is made of unspoken bonds between people, and this section is the most firmly grounded in everyday reality. In the second section, however, Dargis explores the infinite possibilities of the present moment. Poems here run the gamut, discussing meditative feelings during yoga or musing on the power of the mind to transform things. The third section highlights intuitive communication with the spirit world; in the titular poem, a woman crosses an intersection and observes the moon hanging in a sunlit sky, joyous to have worked a half-day. In Dargis’ descriptions, fleeting feelings loom large, as does the importance of being in the present moment. In “Fun with Physics,” for example, she describes a truck arriving at her doorstep; the driver opens the hatch and “Inside lay millions / Of multicolored puzzle pieces. None / Were boxed.” Much like the woman who receives this mysterious trove, readers will find much beauty in this book, but little guidance. As a whole, though, she presents a meditative but fast-moving snapshot of her spiritual journey, creating an effect like skipping stones in water.
An often lyrical work that offers more meditation than instruction.Pub Date: July 28, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-692-69197-7
Page Count: 78
Publisher: Indie House Pres
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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