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PARTHENOPI

Name: PARTHENOPI
Author: Michael Waters
ISBN: 1-880238-95-0

NEW AND SELECTED POEMS

by Michael Waters ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 20, 2000

Occasional bright spots, however, can’t redeem an overwrought and overwritten collection.

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Culling from six previous volumes, Waters has erected a monument to sentimentality and narcissism. Practically all of his “subjects”—Miles Davis, snakes, apples, hummingbirds—are exposed as excuses to talk about himself. They are reduced to mere props, and a reader wishes he had followed the example of Moore or Bishop (whose descriptions illuminate, rather than obfuscate, their subjects), instead of compulsively tossing in formulaic epiphanies and self-disclosures. Waters displays more evidence of effort than of craft: in two syllabic poems he refers to the counting of syllables and, never content to let nouns stand alone, he gussies them up with adjectives, often as many as three at a time (the earth is “this green, / incorrect, forever dying planet”). Keats’s influence is apparent, sometimes to an embarrassing degree (“I clumped up the knoll to the kiddie-loud / pool”), and his descriptions tend to crowd out whatever else might be happening in the poems: sliced cucumbers are “watery wheels, columns of coins”; cognac is “sage and flame,” “blunt amber,” “mulled / smoke, brassy phosphor.” Waters is capable of restraint: “Romance in the Old Folks’ Home,” despite the corny, condescending title, is genuinely sweet, due to the fact that the poet’s own memories and poetical “insights” do not intrude. He refers (ironically, one suspects) to “those minor poets who endlessly / exalt the vast stupor of childhood,” but some of the better poems do just that with humor and heartbreak. In “The Conversion of Saint Paul,” he recalls how one Sister Euphrasia had “pasted Easter seals on my skull . . . pretending to air-mail me to China” and how later, during a school play, she adjusted his underwear, then “whispered Jesus / would be judging [his] performance.”

Occasional bright spots, however, can’t redeem an overwrought and overwritten collection.

Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2000

ISBN: 1-880238-95-0

Page Count: 179

Publisher: BOA Editions

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2000

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.

"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

Pub Date: June 15, 1951

ISBN: 0316769177

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- SEEN & HEARD
Salinger Focus of NYPL Exhibit

- SEEN & HEARD
NYC Mayoral Candidates Name Favorite Gotham Books

- APPRECIATIONS
Holden Caulfield: Forever Young

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JURASSIC PARK

by Michael Crichton ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 7, 1990

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Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.