A stirring collection of poems about love’s destructive powers.
Hanson documents the pains of love and abuse in this debut poetry collection.
The author may have been doomed from the start; as the first poem in her collection begins, “I grew up in the hallways of my father’s anger, / his mood a thermostat nobody could regulate.” Across these poems, the speaker wonders if her father’s temperament influenced her later attraction to abusive men. She describes a boyfriend flying into a rage when she put too much cilantro in a cheese dip: “His anger fueled the entire drive, and he was on a full // tank: hitting the dashboard, jerking the wheel to scare / me, jabbing his lit cigarette in my face, while I cradled / the offending crockpot warm against my stomach, // trying to cry as quietly as possible.” The poet examines the many forms love takes and the many different ways it can make a woman feel. From the shame of being a mistress who breaks up a friend’s marriage to the terror of leaving a man about to kill her to the expansive joy of being in a safe and loving relationship, Hanson deftly explores the overlapping and often contradictory emotions that can characterize a romantic endeavor. She excels at choosing moments of symbolic resonance, as evidenced in “As I Tend to My Succulents, I Hear My Father Say I’m Doing It Wrong.” The poems are at their best when she pushes into the murkiest corners of her own romantic psyche, as in “You Are Always Free To Run,” where she articulates with unsettling clarity why, rather than running away from her abusive partner, she ran toward him: “When I first saw the crack, when / I first heard him say the / words that kicked in the door, / I said, Listen, listen this is / your chance, love is so / ready, and I ran with arms stretched wide, / our hearts and our past broken fully open.” The book reads more like a memoir than a straightforward poetry collection, which only deepens its impact.
A stirring collection of poems about love’s destructive powers.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781959694182
Page Count: 134
Publisher: Inked Elephant
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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