A collection of poems attuned to the deeper currents of small-town America.
Trozzolo’s poetry collection finds fascination in the mundane.
The poems in this collection take in the outlines of daily life in small towns and imbue simple imagery with color and detail. The first piece, “Fly Over,” introduces the spirit of the poems that follow: “You know that game where you see a person, couple, or group and begin to make a story around them? It’s a great way to meet spies, murderers, vagabonds, lovers, and thieves.” From there, each page begins with a short introduction to the characters and locales that inspired the poem that follows. In “Quiet at the Library,” the speaker observes a red-haired librarian at work: “Amid this low racket, she reads—slow—absorbing the / shape of each word—careful turning pages as if separating the / ink to claim her story…” In “Overheard at Billy Goat Tavern,” depicting an adulterous couple before a reconciliation, the introductory prose explains: “It’s dark enough, and both old and young fit in. It’s almost closing time, and the couple across from me is conversing emotionally. I don’t want to eavesdrop…” At a motel parking lot, readers encounter another troubled couple: “Softly she blows smoke his way then kisses him / hard. He wants to complain, but she warned him, / said she would love him like a nomad—” (“Leaving the Travelodge”). Not all the poems feature scandalous subject matter (though many do); in the short-lined, end-rhyming tercets of “Missing at Creekmore Cemetery,” the speaker has come looking for the “James Gang” and found instead “a man praying.” Instead of eavesdropping, romanticizing, or storytelling, this poem empathizes with its subject’s lonely search for signs in the depths of mourning: “Is that her / Breath / On my face. // Is that her / Glance / And her lace.” This short collection of poetry is unpretentious and full of imagery and allusion. The subjects are not always people; a hawk by the river, a squirrel on the street, and a mannequin in a department store are all fodder for the author. The form and style of the work are as quaint as the small-town bars, diners, parks, and Main Streets the collection inhabits. It’s tempting to board a Greyhound bus to nowhere in particular after luxuriating in these verses.
A collection of poems attuned to the deeper currents of small-town America.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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
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