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DEAR FOLKS

Name: DEAR FOLKS
Author: Richard Leighton
ISBN: 978-1-63524-381-9

A MEMOIR FROM 500 LETTERS

by Richard Leighton ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 5, 2016

A charming epistolary recounting but one that may have a limited audience.

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A debut memoir in letters that covers more than four decades of correspondence and recollections.

Leighton was a prolific letter writer, exchanging hundreds with his mother and father starting in the 1940s. In the newly written letters to friends and relatives collected here, he draws on these older missives, as well as others that he wrote to his wife in the ’50s during their engagement and to his daughter, Kim, when she traveled overseas in the ’70s and ’80s—a sum total of 501 letters (despite the book’s subtitle). From these scattered sources, a surprisingly clear chronology surfaces in this book, chronicling a life of rich personal and professional pursuits. The author was born in western Maryland and largely grew up across the street from a Methodist church. He attended nearby Western Maryland College and earned an M.D. from the University of Maryland before becoming a Navy lieutenant and flight surgeon, which allowed him to travel widely in Asia. He eventually became an academic and rose to the level of dean at the Medical College of Ohio. Leighton’s story also covers his travels with his wife before she died from melanoma in 2009. The author’s unwavering devotion to his family shines through in every letter, and his desire to preserve and communicate its history is endearing and admirable. However, the assemblage of letters here can be confusing at times, as it’s not always clear how the recipients are precisely related to the author. Also, they chronicle an exhaustive but personally idiosyncratic tale that likely won’t appeal to those who don’t already know the author well. Leighton’s prose is clear, if mechanical, and the letters generally follow a repetitive formula, beginning with the same introduction: “I’m writing to you….” As a result, this memoir is sure to be cherished by the author’s family members, but it doesn’t strike a more universal chord.

A charming epistolary recounting but one that may have a limited audience.

Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-63524-381-9

Page Count: -

Publisher: LitFire Publishing

Review Posted Online: April 26, 2017

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

by William Strunk & E.B. White ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1972

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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A LITTLE HISTORY OF POETRY

by John Carey ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020

Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.

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A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.

In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.

Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.