Given Dante’s own fascination with the relationship of poets to one another, this exuberantly showcases a vivacious dialogue...
A chorus of voices unites to sing the praises of l’altissimo poeta—Dante.
Hawkins and Jacoff present the homages of 28 poets, living and dead, to their great 14th-century Italian forebear. In an interesting editorial choice, the collection is divided between the odes of poets living and poets dead. The dead speak first, and their voices include such luminaries as Ezra Pound, William Butler Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Jorge Luis Borges, W.H. Auden, Robert Lowell, and Howard Nemerov; the living, whose voices have been commissioned to speak, include Seamus Heaney, Charles Wright, W.S. Merwin, Robert Pinsky, Rosanna Warren, Mary Baine Campbell, and Edward Hirsch. Given the multiplicity of poetic styles, periods, and themes that these poets address, reading their reactions to Dante provides revealing insights into a long and twisting poetic lineage that reaches from the medieval to the postmodern, as well as highlighting the ways in which Dante speaks to contemporary social issues. Auden, for example, ponders the meaning of Dante’s love for Beatrice in order to consider questions of human sexuality and the ephemeral beauty of Miss America. The consistent theme throughout is the intensely personal reaction that these 20th-century poets feel for Dante: T.S. Eliot’s introspective “What Dante Means to Me,” Daniel Halpern’s discovery of Dante in a youth hostel in France, and Jacqueline Osherow’s “She’s Come Undone: An American Jew Looks at Dante” all describe the ways in which Dante speaks to modern readers on an individual basis. The collection succeeds in capturing Dante’s genius by limning both the universality and the singularity of his appeal.
Given Dante’s own fascination with the relationship of poets to one another, this exuberantly showcases a vivacious dialogue between the living, the dead, and their Dante.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-374-23536-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2001
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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