A sensory journey that starts on front porches and goes on to encompass galaxies.
A collection of poems that situates ordinary gestures in the vastness of time and space, where the body, nature, and the cosmos intersect.
Denby’s poems almost always begin at ground level—with a crosswalk in “A Man Yawning,” a kitchen more grown than built in “A Poet Going Blind,” or a poolside bench in “One Street in This Planet Neighborhood.” Descriptions of these everyday settings then spiral out into larger meditations on time and space. Rather than getting lost in airy metaphysics, the poems instead favor a sinewy, tactile lyricism, best illustrated in “Ribbed Cages,” in which Vermonters carry “pines in their spines” and “Petunias blush hemoglobin, marigolds no longer move. / Bones grow there—stone bones, // radish bones, wheat bones, and dogs have begun to sprout.” Denby splits the collection into three sections in which thematic iterations of water and music recur as metaphors for the cords binding people to others around them and the vastness of the natural world. The third section takes these connections even farther, reaching out into something that can only be described as galactic in scope. Even in these verses, Denby never loses earthbound details, and the poems employ a gentle humor and a willingness to play with language that borders on punning. The author evinces an innate kindness toward all the works’ subjects, from a child’s understanding of the importance of a bee to a pair of twin sisters’ harmless yet fascinating disagreement about their mother’s last moments. Denby’s collection is a stirring example of Gaston Bachelard’s concept of intimate immensity, in which instructions for facing down a coyote or observations about the ways shadows play while writing can open a door to temporal or cosmic reflection. Occasionally, the collection suggests naivete, as in a flight of fancy about George Washington reincarnating in the present day and obsessing over groceries—a poem that lacks satisfying context. Fans of poets like Mary Oliver will appreciate the work’s immersive contemplative quality and the way the poet reliably pulls readers back to the physical realm, always returning to tactile sensations and experiences.
A sensory journey that starts on front porches and goes on to encompass galaxies.Pub Date: May 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781639809998
Page Count: 90
Publisher: Kelsay Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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
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