Lomas’s translations are smooth, and as close to idiomatic English as one should ask. The poetry itself is well worth the...
Though Holappa’s first collection of poems was published in Finland in 1950 and he has produced a large body of work since then, in poetry and in prose, this volume represents the first of Holappa’s writings to be translated into English. Clearly, few readers will miss the Finnish originals and fewer still will be able to comment on the accuracy of Lomas’s translation, but the Holappa that emerges here is urbane, measured, and able to address an admirable mixture of themes and dilemmas. The foreign reader immediately recognizes the unfamiliar ground merely by listening to a list of Holappa’s fears in “The Last Time But One”: “There’s no hope / If arctic erosion will crush into sludge the land / I belong to.” Ecological disaster is a consistent worry, but Holappa is perhaps primarily a love poet. His poems do not aim for subtlety, and yet they can charm in their brusque simplicity: “I listen to Jung on the radio, / pricking my ears at death and folk tales. / My dog barks at imaginary noises. / The point is: I want your love.” In this poem and others, love often figures as a quasi-apocalyptic force whose bare naming always risks overstatement. The lover is usually far away, sometimes impossibly far, as distant as the poet from his readers. Holappa’s poems do lack a certain tonal range; they often sacrifice nuance in the name of probity. This is no doubt an unfashionable strategy for American poets at the moment, but its rarity here makes of Holappa’s limitations a modest opportunity to read differently and see our own habits in a clearer light.
Lomas’s translations are smooth, and as close to idiomatic English as one should ask. The poetry itself is well worth the effort it demands.Pub Date: June 5, 2000
ISBN: 1-901233-47-2
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Dedalus
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
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
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