A quiet meditation on grief and healing that features evocative imagery and stunning artwork.
Nature provides solace for those suffering loss and grief in Rikkers’ poetry collection.
The author lost her sister at the end of 2019; soon after, the world went into lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, compounding Rikkers’ already overwhelming loss with a sense of quiet loneliness. During this time, she began writing poems from the perspectives of plants and other natural elements, which she has compiled in this volume. Through her poetry, the author explores the complex emotional labor required by grief. In “Avocado Pit,” she uses the image of a sprouting seed punctured by toothpicks to evoke a wounded heart. The seed imagery reflects the idea of growth and healing after a significant amount of pain, which is a theme that carries through most of the book. Some poems show the work of healing from grief, while others, like “Roots,” speak of a need for connection. (“What do / they share? What do they know? What would we / learn if we could hear?”) Still others simply capture the quiet energy of nature, celebrating the plants that teach us so much about being quiet, strong, and still. Each poem showcases aspects of nature; Rikkers expertly connects these elements to a larger lesson about grief and loss that will also resonate with those who are simply seeking peace and calm. Unfortunately, some of the poems, particularly those that introduce the book, struggle under tight constraints that do little to encourage poetic rhythm—this effect can introduce a sense of claustrophobic anxiety to the work that’s antithetical to Rikkers’ intentions. But as readers move through the collection, the poems loosen up as the author experiments with form and subject matter, making this a promising debut. Radding’s stunning colored pencil and watercolor illustrations evoke a calm stillness and complement the poems nicely.
A quiet meditation on grief and healing that features evocative imagery and stunning artwork.Pub Date: March 24, 2026
ISBN: 9781636284729
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Red Hen Press
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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