An unevenly executed set of poems with occasional moments of vivid imagery.
In Borders-Shoemaker’s latest collection, the poet navigates the gulf between the imagined and the real.
Such themes as traveling, searching, and looking for oneself in a foreign land crop up again and again in these poems, which, as the book’s title implies, includes several works set before and during a trip to Scotland. The title poem features an apprehensive speaker about to embark: “Where I think I belong / isn’t the case— / yet here I am, / bags beside me still.” The works are filled with feelings of self-doubt, ambivalence, and uncertainty, though there are triumphal moments of affirmation and self-recognition interspersed throughout. Here, the speaker finds a bit of themselves in the short “The Edinburgh Writers’ Museum”: “In those old streets then, / to this very moment, / the thoughts in Edinburgh / remain true: / my destiny is bound up in words.” The verses vary in length, though Borders-Shoemaker favors brevity, with many poems consisting of fewer than 10 lines. The best ones feature concrete images that place the reader in the scene, such as “a bench and a photo in St. Andrews”: “There I am— / in faded colors on a bench, / yet my laugh is just as vibrant / as the green soda bottle in my hand. / There it is— / that wild, golden hair— / matched with a love knot necklace. / If only those promises of green were eternal.” More often, though, the poems have a facile sensibility; the entirety of “I’ve seen what words can do,” for instance, reads, “Fear / often covers / my mouth / because I don’t want to harm.” The book contains 130 poems, and the stronger selections are diluted by the weaker ones, which tend to run together due to their abstract or self-help language. Yentzer’s occasional black-and-white photos of the poet wearing tams and sitting on horses add little to the work. Overall, a slimmer, more thematically focused volume would likely have left a stronger impression.
An unevenly executed set of poems with occasional moments of vivid imagery.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-958754-02-3
Page Count: 162
Publisher: Belle Isle Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A beautifully produced, engaging homage.
Celebrating a beloved artist.
Published to coincide with a major exhibition of works by British-born artist David Hockney (b. 1937) at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, this lushly illustrated volume offers a detailed overview of the artist’s life and work, along with chapters focused on his various styles and subject matter, a chronology, and a glossary of the many techniques he employed in his art, including camera lucida, computer, and video. Contributors of essays include noted art historians and curators, such as Norman Rosenthal, who edited the volume; Simon Schama; Anne Lyles; James Cahill; and François Michaud. Growing up in the north of England, Hockney was drawn to the light and sparkle that he found in Hollywood movies. When he finally arrived in Los Angeles, the sunlit landscapes inspired him, and his new sense of artistic freedom concurred with sexual freedom: As a gay man, he felt liberated from the constraints that had weighed on him in Britain, even in the “relative Bohemia” of the Royal College of Art. Essayists reflect on his artistic interests, such as landscapes, portraiture, flowers, and the opera—for which he created boldly exuberant sets—as well as on his influences and experimentation. Michaud examines the impact on Hockney of a visit to Paris in the 1970s, where he became familiar with Henri Matisse and his contemporaries from museum exhibitions. In the 1990s, visiting his mother and friends in Yorkshire, Hockney painted both outdoors and in the studio, experimenting with various media—including the photocopier and fax machine—as he worked to render the woodsy landscape. As a companion to the exhibition, the volume offers stunning reproductions of Hockney’s prolific works. Enormously popular with museumgoers, Hockney, Rosenthal exults, “transforms the ordinary and the everyday into the remarkable.”
A beautifully produced, engaging homage.Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9780500029527
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
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