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WHY POETRY

Name: WHY POETRY
Author: Matthew Zapruder
ISBN: 978-0-06-234307-9

by Matthew Zapruder ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 15, 2017

To the poetry skeptics, what have you got to lose?

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Helping readers overcome their ambivalence about poetry.

As a fine poet in his own right and editor at large at the independent poetry press Wave Books as well as the poetry page editor at the New York Times Magazine, Zapruder (English/St. Mary’s Coll.; Sun Bear, 2014, etc.) is highly qualified to take on the age-old question. The author takes a personal approach, mixing memoir, analysis, and argument. As a high school senior in 1985, he dreaded the poetry unit. He picked W.H. Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts” to analyze. After reading the opening lines, “something just clicked,” and he understood “that there was something only poetry could do.” After graduate work in Russian language and literature, Zapruder decided to pursue a degree in creative writing and never looked back. Now, he wants to share his love and knowledge of poetry. Even if readers won’t feel like the “top[s] of [their] head[s] were taken off,” as Emily Dickinson described it, Zapruder hopes to show how “poetry creates the poetic state of mind in a reader” through a poem’s form, its leaps of association, and how it plays with the nature of language itself. He first guides readers through literal readings of three poems to demonstrate how to read a poem and dig down into its core to freely enjoy the poem for what it is. Zapruder’s writing is accessible, easygoing, and welcoming, as if he’s sitting right there talking us through the poems. Throughout, he uses numerous poems to clearly explain how each achieves something unique. His discussion of the enigma of line breaks is first-rate. He writes about how he fell in love with W.S. Merwin’s dark and often surreal collection The Lice (1967) and how a Frank O’Hara poem, “A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island,” now helps him “in this time of crisis, and beyond.”

To the poetry skeptics, what have you got to lose?

Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-06-234307-9

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: April 30, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017

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.