The intriguing contours of a relationship are laid tantalizingly bare in these thoughtful poems.
This collection of poetry describes the downward arc of an unpredictable love affair.
“You enter, / capture me like a riptide I can’t escape,” writes Trozzolo, recalling the overwhelming power of the first encounter of a relationship that the poet asserts is fictional. From lust to longing, infatuation to infidelity, Trozzolo examines the internal workings of a love affair. The tenderly mordant poems open with a short, italicized commentary intended to define a specific moment in the relationship. For instance, prior to “Multitask,” the author states dryly: “We stayed together—almost committed. I was never your priority.” The poetry that follows attempts to capture a snapshot of these shifting emotional sands. In this case, the first stanza’s opening reads tersely: “Sounds like you’re giving / dictation as we make love.” The poems tackle everything from dangerous sexual infatuation (“You lure with your sweetness / and kill the future so beautifully”) to the dispiritingly hollow moment when a lover says, “Let’s be friends”: “There has never been / anything platonic about us.” As the collection closes, the poet is left to wrestle with the memory of a love that could never last. Trozzolo offers a refreshingly unique perspective on the ecstasies and endgames of romance. It is fascinating to observe the gradient of emotional intensity shift as the volume progresses. The opening crackle of sexual energy dissipates into flat reportage, as attentively captured in “How Was Your Day?”: “All I hear are low notes and misery. / Tell me instead of boats and clouds, / of speed and sex and dreams and bad ideas.” The hope of a return to more fulfilling days lies cleverly embedded in the poems but is never fully revived. Trozzolo is a master of the laconically poignant statement, distilling the complexities of entering couples’ therapy into two impactful lines: “Here we sit six feet apart, separated by heat and memories.” There are occasions when the writing can prove cloyingly clichéd: “You lean in close and whisper, ‘Follow me.’ Instantly I know I will never forget you.” But this can be excused since romance itself trades heavily in clichés. Still, this is sharp, emotionally observant writing that elegantly captures the bittersweet remembrance of bygone love.
The intriguing contours of a relationship are laid tantalizingly bare in these thoughtful poems.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 37
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
An exquisitely original celebration of American Blackness.
A potent series of “notes” paints a multidimensional picture of Blackness in America.
Throughout the book, which mixes memoir, history, literary theory, and art, Sharpe—the chair of Black studies at York University in Toronto and author of the acclaimed book In the Wake: On Blackness and Being—writes about everything from her family history to the everyday trauma of American racism. Although most of the notes feature the author’s original writing, she also includes materials like photographs, copies of letters she received, responses to a Twitter-based crowdsourcing request, and definitions of terms collected from colleagues and friends (“preliminary entries toward a dictionary of untranslatable blackness”). These diverse pieces coalesce into a multifaceted examination of the ways in which the White gaze distorts Blackness and perpetuates racist violence. Sharpe’s critique is not limited to White individuals, however. She includes, for example, a disappointing encounter with a fellow Black female scholar as well as critical analysis of Barack Obama’s choice to sing “Amazing Grace” at the funeral of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was killed in a hate crime at the Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. With distinct lyricism and a firm but tender tone, Sharpe executes every element of this book flawlessly. Most impressive is the collagelike structure, which seamlessly moves among an extraordinary variety of forms and topics. For example, a photograph of the author’s mother in a Halloween costume transitions easily into an introduction to Roland Barthes’ work Camera Lucida, which then connects just as smoothly to a memory of watching a White visitor struggle with the reality presented by the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. “Something about this encounter, something about seeing her struggle…feels appropriate to the weight of this history,” writes the author. It is a testament to Sharpe’s artistry that this incredibly complex text flows so naturally.
An exquisitely original celebration of American Blackness.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9780374604486
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
© Copyright 2023 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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