Tender yet mournful writing by a sharply observant poet.
In his second book of poetry, Defibaugh explores love and loss and living with a disability.
Defibaugh began writing in his early teens, or roughly when he was confined to a wheelchair as a result of Duchenne muscular dystrophy. His debut collected 16 years’ worth of poetry, from his amateur beginnings to his later, more mature verse. This second book also deals with coming to terms with illness but with a greater sense of self-assuredness and poetic dexterity. The collection is divided into three parts—“Virginia Beach, 1990,” “Red Flags,” and “Broken Shells”—which underscore a coastal theme prevalent throughout. The collection opens at a point of innocence when the poem “Virginia Beach, 1990” offers a tableau of a small child making sand castles: “She’s flipping over / a fifteen-cent sand bucket, / her first real castle, / hastily constructed under / a flimsy yellow sun.” In a nod to imagism, Defibaugh deftly captures a fleeting and serene moment in the child’s life that is unselfconsciously carefree, soon to be interrupted by the turbulence of experience. He presents the trials of life in various forms that include stifling parental authority in “Bars”: “Being guarded isn’t the freedom / she was born deserving.” “Selective Service Exemption” links disability and estrangement in the phrase “how to love without being loved.” Defibaugh’s poetry has a cumulative impact. The poem “Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy” charts the progression of the poet’s illness from his diagnosis at age 4, remarking: “Pines replaced peers repulsed by awkward moving. / Nature disregarded disability.” Elsewhere the comfort of exploring nature is torn away by further deterioration: “By fourteen, I could not navigate the forest / Or even hobble from room to room.” Admirers of Defibaugh’s debut collection will note that this one has fewer moments of levity here, and excursions into comedy can prove mordantly dark. In “vs. Modern Medicine” the poet notes: “Waiting for a cure is silly; / this chair will be my resting place, / and I’d settle even sooner / if it had a higher voltage.” This is a deep emotional excavation of hardship, carefully conceived and keenly executed from the author of Dynamic Parts (2014).
Tender yet mournful writing by a sharply observant poet.Pub Date: Dec. 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-69078-827-0
Page Count: 58
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Strangely stuffy and muted.
The little-known story of the Black woman who supervised J. Pierpont Morgan’s storied library.
It's 1905, and financier J.P. Morgan is seeking a librarian for his burgeoning collection of rare books and classical and Renaissance artworks. Belle da Costa Greene, with her on-the-job training at Princeton University, seems the ideal candidate. But Belle has a secret: Born Belle Marion Greener, she is the daughter of Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard, and she's passing as White. Her mother, Genevieve, daughter of a prominent African American family in Washington, D.C., decided on moving to New York to live as White to expand her family’s opportunities. Richard, an early civil rights advocate, was so dismayed by Genevieve’s decision that he left the family. As Belle thrives in her new position, the main source of suspense is whether her secret will be discovered. But the stakes are low—history discloses that the career-ending exposure she feared never came. There are close calls. J.P. is incensed with her but not because of her race: She considered buying a Matisse. Anne Morgan, J.P.’s disgruntled daughter, insinuates that Belle has “tropical roots,” but Belle is perfectly capable of leveraging Anne’s own secrets against her. Leverage is a talent of Belle’s, and her ruthless negotiating prowess—not to mention her fashion sense and flirtatious mien—wins her grudging admiration and a certain notoriety in the all-White and male world of curators and dealers. Though instructive about both the Morgan collection and racial injustice, the book is exposition-laden and its dialogue is stilted—the characters, particularly Belle, tend to declaim rather than discuss. The real Belle left scant records, so the authors must flesh out her personal life, particularly her affair with Renaissance expert Bernard Berenson and the sexual tension between Belle and Morgan. But Belle’s mask of competence and confidence, so ably depicted, distances readers from her internal clashes, just as her veneer must have deterred close inquiry in real life.
Strangely stuffy and muted.Pub Date: June 29, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-10153-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Sure to enchant even those who have never played a video game in their lives, with instant cult status for those who have.
The adventures of a trio of genius kids united by their love of gaming and each other.
When Sam Masur recognizes Sadie Green in a crowded Boston subway station, midway through their college careers at Harvard and MIT, he shouts, “SADIE MIRANDA GREEN. YOU HAVE DIED OF DYSENTERY!” This is a reference to the hundreds of hours—609 to be exact—the two spent playing “Oregon Trail” and other games when they met in the children’s ward of a hospital where Sam was slowly and incompletely recovering from a traumatic injury and where Sadie was secretly racking up community service hours by spending time with him, a fact which caused the rift that has separated them until now. They determine that they both still game, and before long they’re spending the summer writing a soon-to-be-famous game together in the apartment that belongs to Sam's roommate, the gorgeous, wealthy acting student Marx Watanabe. Marx becomes the third corner of their triangle, and decades of action ensue, much of it set in Los Angeles, some in the virtual realm, all of it riveting. A lifelong gamer herself, Zevin has written the book she was born to write, a love letter to every aspect of gaming. For example, here’s the passage introducing the professor Sadie is sleeping with and his graphic engine, both of which play a continuing role in the story: “The seminar was led by twenty-eight-year-old Dov Mizrah....It was said of Dov that he was like the two Johns (Carmack, Romero), the American boy geniuses who'd programmed and designed Commander Keen and Doom, rolled into one. Dov was famous for his mane of dark, curly hair, wearing tight leather pants to gaming conventions, and yes, a game called Dead Sea, an underwater zombie adventure, originally for PC, for which he had invented a groundbreaking graphics engine, Ulysses, to render photorealistic light and shadow in water.” Readers who recognize the references will enjoy them, and those who don't can look them up and/or simply absorb them. Zevin’s delight in her characters, their qualities, and their projects sprinkles a layer of fairy dust over the whole enterprise.
Sure to enchant even those who have never played a video game in their lives, with instant cult status for those who have.Pub Date: July 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-32120-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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