A set of poems about the failings of the healthcare system rendered in extremely graphic imagery.
A poet traces a harrowing hospital experience in this linked collection.
Author hall writes in the voice of their protagonist, Ashton, who’s plagued with medical anxiety (“i’m constantly thinking of every inch of me”), which may be hypochondria but could be a more serious malady. A bump appears on their neck, and the situation spirals into a visit to the hospital to see Dr. Reynolds, but once Ashton is in the waiting room, their reality and sanity begin to fissure and fracture. The hospital goes into lockdown, with no explanation; other strange things begin to occur, which may be hallucinations: A body on a stretcher begins to boil; a nurse collapses, looking “all crispy black & reeked.” Ashton remains determined to get their checkup, but they soon spiral into a breakdown—a rolling rhythm of peaks and valleys as the collection unfolds. Rather than titles, the poems have timestamps, beginning with Ashton’s night terror at 2:59 a.m. and flowing into other events throughout the day, often just minutes apart; the stamps become confused, even illegible (“?1:44:5? ??” and “0?:?4 ??”), and the poems follow suit. A disembodied voice speaks to Ashton in italics as their mind frays. At times, words scramble on the page, stretched apart by space or frenzied together. Overall, this is a body horror collection that will challenge many readers, as the poet’s use of graphic imagery (“from my skin burst a leg, a tarry black / & bristled appendage, / then another. the searing edge / of a blade peeling flesh”) is simultaneously revolting and intriguing, and continually compels one to ask, “Is this real?” Through the perceptions of Ashton, the poet reveals how a system and its stewards can make even a single hospital visit apocalyptic, as one fights for autonomy at every turn: “To finally work up the courage to seek help,” hall writes, “once more, & to end up trapped, helpless,” reflecting the difficulties that marginalized people can have as they assert themselves.
A set of poems about the failings of the healthcare system rendered in extremely graphic imagery.Pub Date: June 14, 2023
ISBN: 9781957537603
Page Count: 225
Publisher: Brigids Gate Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2024
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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