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SYNTHESIZING GRAVITY

Name: SYNTHESIZING GRAVITY
Author: Kay Ryan
ISBN: 978-0-8021-4818-6

SELECTED PROSE

by Kay Ryan ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2020

An impassioned, sometimes prickly tribute to the poet’s art.

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The Pulitzer Prize–winning former U.S. poet laureate considers her craft and inspirations with a smirk and the occasional dash of snark.

The essays and reviews in Ryan’s (Erratic Facts, 2015, etc.) first prose collection reveal a careful poet who’s also careful not to take her job too seriously. Quite often, she responds with bemusement—if not outright laughter—at the confusions and ironies in work she admires, laughter being “one of the body’s natural responses to shock.” Marianne Moore’s abstracted verse is “at once ridiculous and immensely cheering”; Wallace Stevens’ poems “have a hilarity that isn’t funny, a joie without the vivre”; Annie Dillard is “hilarious...the terrible child experimenting upon the innocent parental flesh.” Reading the puckish Stevie Smith, Ryan declares, “it gives me so much hope, to see language get pantsed.” None of which is to say that the author is dismissive of understanding poetry in sophisticated ways; the book is rich in close readings of works by Smith, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, and Philip Larkin. Plus, her choices of metaphor are delicious: Moore’s inscrutable lines land “in one’s lap like inedible melons,” and she herself is a “pig for pleasure.” However, she also cultivates a sensibility of not wanting to delve too deeply into poems lest their magic be spoiled. That’s reasonable, up to the point where she takes it out on other writers, from a gentle chastisement of those who keep notebooks to a more aggressive field report from a writers’ conference, in which she felt an “abstract contempt for everyone in attendance.” Ryan’s love of poetry is palpable and intense, but she approaches writing about it as if it were, well, a bit of a joke. When it comes to poetry, she writes that “in order to listen we must be a little bit relieved of the intention to understand.”

An impassioned, sometimes prickly tribute to the poet’s art.

Pub Date: April 14, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-8021-4818-6

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Grove

Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.