Raw, bracing, thoroughly contemporary political verse.
A collection offers a cri de coeur from a poet who, after three years of the Donald Trump presidency, just can’t take it anymore.
As proof of his intellect, Trump recently rattled off a list of words: “Person, woman, man, camera, TV.” For the president, the list recalled a question on a cognitive test he had been talking about all summer—one that he “aced.” His answer to that question supposedly showed his sharp memory, but it also felt like a snippet of Trumpian poetry, as if e.e. cummings got strained through the brain of a Queens real estate mogul. Readers will likely think about Trump when reading the title of Williams’ new collection that references a Native American proverb but also sounds an awful lot like the president’s strange verse. The connection, it turns out, isn’t merely fortuitous, because the author’s poetry both reflects on and rages at Trump’s America. Sometimes, the link is quite direct, as in “The Poem To Trump All Others,” which captures the president’s perpetual braggadocio: “This poem will be so good / it’ll make your head spin. / You’ll be amazed at / how good this poem will be. / … / You won’t even remember other poems / because this poem will be the poem for the ages.” Elsewhere in the volume, Williams ruminates more broadly—not necessarily about Trump, but about life in the America the president is in the process of creating. So there is a piece on conservative consternation over the New York Times' 1619 Project, the paper’s reevaluation of American history in light of the pervasive influence of slavery. And there is “And Then Eminem Created Rap,” about hip-hop and cultural appropriation. One of the most effective of these wider-ranging pieces is “#metoo,” which opens: “You ask us / to unearth these hurts, / you say giving voice to the pain / will make us heal, dull the / jagged edges of / unholy theft / You misunderstand: / there is / no relief.” In the hands of a lesser writer, these ripped-from-the-headlines poems might feel convenient or undigested. Not so for Williams, who uses poetry both to channel her anger at the day’s political scene and to add urgency to her call to action.
Raw, bracing, thoroughly contemporary political verse.Pub Date: March 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61846-104-9
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Library Partners Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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