A passionate call for cultural and political awakening that leaves little room for discourse.
Schulte presents a poetry collection that critiques contemporary culture from a libertarian perspective.
These poems often rail against what the author sees as greed, elitism, progressivism, and complacency in the United States. In “Free Market Flop,” the author denounces the idea that socialist policies are the solution to economic issues, arguing that they stifle freedom, strip people of their rights, and create an “Au-Pair State.” The Orwell-inspired “Final Legs of Collectivism” critiques the power dynamics and hypocrisy of collectivism, claiming that its version of equality is anything but equal. “Elephants and Donkeys” portrays Washington, D.C., as a zoo and chastises Republicans and Democrats as power-hungry politicians who “feast on the public dime.” “Coastal Despots” takes aim at the wealthy on the East and West Coasts, regarding them as ignorant of ordinary citizens’ plights: “Not lookin for redistribution of wealth / just want a job to care for myself // Once upon a time, I was self-reliant / now I’m just a government client,” the speaker laments. “The Supremes” calls for the “meek” Congress to stand up to the Supreme Court justices and “Have some guts for once in your life.” Schulte takes the perspective of a woman looking for love in “Her Question”; she has a “long and explicit” list of must-haves for her mate, including being free of sexually transmitted diseases and having a full-time job and 401k; however, her most pressing question for a prospective suitor is, “Are you a Libertarian?” “Pork Me” uses a bacon metaphor to decry governmental spending: “We scream for budget cuts / The national debt a crime / Eager to slash another’s pork / As long as it doesn’t affect mine.” The poet concludes by urging readers to “Seek truth / with reason your guide.”
Schulte’s tone is direct and unapologetic, clearly conjuring a political climate of “Backs without spines / boxers without balls.” Occasionally, he interrupts his criticism to inject some humor, as in “Socrates’ Final Torment,” which reimagines Greek philosophers’ perspectives through a modern lens. “This hemlock is fair-trade, organic, / and patriarchy-free, right?” The poet can also be creatively referential, as in his take on “The Star-Spangled Banner” in “Privacy Redux”: “Oh, say can you see / what we once proudly hailed / A people chiefly self-governed, / as Jefferson hoped we would be.” However, some poems’ meanings are somewhat unclear, as in “The Supremes”: “Some prefer the Supreme Court / Some prefer the supreme burrito / I prefer the House and Senate.” Many poems take perspectives that don’t seem to consider the nuances of individuals and their circumstances; “Vomit on My Door,” for example, seems to categorize each person as either part of the “elite crew” or as a “boorish country bumpkin.” And although “Offend Me Please” ask readers to “Contest my ideas and beliefs / Make me a better person / Force me to deeply think,” the collection doesn’t seriously entertain any viewpoints counter to libertarian ideals.
A passionate call for cultural and political awakening that leaves little room for discourse.Pub Date: June 4, 2024
ISBN: 9798822949102
Page Count: 108
Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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