An impressive, eye-catching poetry collection unafraid to experiment and take risks.
Poitevin’s first English-language poetry collection explores such diverse matters as life in New England, academia, and OpenAI/GPT-4.
“October leaves / pile up like scattered drafts of some design” the author writes in “Raking” as fall sets in, “aching on this byway to December...” Even so, he still has more in life to conquer, finishing the job with “my feet still two good inches off the ground.” The moodiness of academic life intrudes, as Poitevin, a mathematics professor, is annoyed by a shared office, pesky students, and Red Sox chatter in “Nostalgia for Quieter Times”; he longs for the halcyon days of grad school at the University of Illinois: “I miss your silence as mine rages, / beloved Alma Mater.” The poet writes with playful curiosity about philosophy and its relationship to his discipline, responding to Borges in “Divertimentum Orinthologicum” (“I start to prove that He does not exist, / but N being hyperfinite, I desist”). Hyperlocal concerns meet the great beyond in “Take-Out,” in which a mistaken employee thinks she has seen the speaker’s late father order lemongrass tofu (“I pondered / that lemony but sweet juxtaposition: / myself and my dead father’s apparition”). In “Beneath the Bedroom Skylight” Poitevin writes of looking to the heavens with his partner: “We peek / beyond Andromeda and dream a wolf / gazes at us with quasar-eyes and loops…” The poet writes beautifully of his Marblehead, Massachusetts stomping grounds, and his verses about landscapes and family churn with the energy of an unrelentingly curious and feeling soul. By contrast, he ponders artificial intelligence in “GPT-4 Responds to a Detractor,” in which the AI program derides the “arctic soul” of its human critic. Technical poetic innovation animates this collection; one poem is made up entirely of three-letter airport codes, another is about a cat genome, and a group of palindromes provides a brief, passing fancy. The careful way that he pulls meaning from the place he is in, and the family he has there, is in evidence throughout and makes this a cohesive and inspiring collection.
An impressive, eye-catching poetry collection unafraid to experiment and take risks.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2023
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 84
Publisher: Penteract Press
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.
A French art historian’s English-language fiction debut combines the story of a loving relationship between a grandfather and granddaughter with an enlightening discussion of art.
One day, when 10-year-old Mona removes the necklace given to her by her now-dead grandmother, she experiences a frightening, hour-long bout of blindness. Her parents take her to the doctor, who gives her a variety of tests and also advises that she see a psychiatrist. Her grandfather Henry tells her parents that he will take care of that assignment, but instead, he takes Mona on weekly visits to either the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, or the Centre Pompidou, where each week they study a single work of art, gazing at it deeply and then discussing its impact and history and the biography of its maker. For the reader’s benefit, Schlesser also describes each of the works in scrupulous detail. As the year goes on, Mona faces the usual challenges of elementary school life and the experiences of being an only child, and slowly begins to understand the causes of her temporary blindness. Primarily an amble through a few dozen of Schlesser’s favorite works of art—some well known and others less so, from Botticelli and da Vinci through Basquiat and Bourgeois—the novel would probably benefit from being read at a leisurely pace. While the dialogue between Henry and the preternaturally patient and precocious Mona sometimes strains credulity, readers who don’t have easy access to the museums of Paris may enjoy this vicarious trip in the company of a guide who focuses equally on that which can be seen and the context that can’t be. Come for the novel, stay for the introductory art history course.
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9798889661115
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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