A tender, relatable set of works on experiencing and overcoming heartbreak.
Paradiso presents a collection of poems about love, loss, and healing.
The book’s first section, “thunder,” uses a storm metaphor to describe a tumultuous relationship’s end, while the second, “daisy,” explores the speaker’s emotional growth following that painful experience. In the opening poem, “passing storm,” Paradiso describes a love that shakes the speaker awake, lights up her eyes, and opens her up to love; then the energy shifts, and lies and games tarnish the relationship. In the aftermath of the failed romance, the speaker in “running” wonders if starting over in a new city would provide relief, writing, “i’ll fill my head with different thoughts / there won’t be the promises you whispered / your touch / or other precious things that can’t be bought.” The pitfalls of technology in modern relationships are the foci of “virtual disconnect,” in which texts, photographs, and screens keep love interests at a distance. The speaker laments that her ex preferred to be alone with their fantasies rather than reciprocate affection; after much introspection and mourning, the speaker comes out the other side, able to make beauty from the ashes. Among the lessons learned are to “see people for who they are / not who you wish them to be” (“slow down”) and to not “let the people / who don’t deserve your energy / take it from you”(“note to self”). Confident that they will find love again, the speaker in “my kind of peace” disavows lukewarm love and mixed feelings, instead seeking “passionate peace.” Some readers may feel that the book’s themes feel limited in scope, and that the storm and daisy motifs lack originality. However, others will find that the poet effectively blends raw vulnerability with empowering recovery, acutely depicting the difficulties of dating in the digital age, when reminders of one’s ex are online and unavoidable. Some readers are likely to find solace in lines such as “look past your heartache / see yourself as i see you / you’re not your bad experiences / you’re not your mistakes” (“look closer”). Simple, tasteful line drawings of female figures enhance the poems’ intimacy.
A tender, relatable set of works on experiencing and overcoming heartbreak.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2025
ISBN: 9798991217002
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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