THE COLLECTED POEMS

Name: THE COLLECTED POEMS
Author: Stanley Kunitz
ISBN: 0-393-05030-0

by Stanley Kunitz ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2000

At the close of “The Layers,” Kunitz promises himself and the reader: “I am not done with my changes,” foreshadowing the...

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Kunitz published his first volume (Intellectual Things) in 1930, the same year in which Eliot wrote “Ash Wednesday.” But the trends and trademarks of modernism largely passed Kunitz by. The poems of his early collections—long out of print and offered here in generous proportions—can be difficult and thorny, but their hermeticism is less formal and syntactic than cognitive and cosmic, derived not from Eliot but Blake (whose work Kunitz has edited). Here, Kunitz addresses himself to the themes that have always been important to him—the passage of time, the high and low tides of romantic love, the inscrutability and grandeur of the natural world—but these treatments lack the nuance of later works: “Dissolving in the chemic vat / Of time, man (gristle and fat), / Corrupting on a rock in space / That crumbles . . . ” There is something oddly thin and abstract about that gristle and fat (as well as that “Corrupting”), and Kunitz’s mature poetry works to toughen his early, somewhat jumbled philosophy into increasingly homespun wisdom. By the time of the fine, longish “Journal for my Daughter,” written in response to demonstrations protesting the Vietnam War, Kunitz achieves a balance between his poetic self and its historic, or mortal, plight. From this point on, he gains in rhetorical power and surety of feeling, with high moments including “The Testing Tree,” “The Wellfleet Whale,” and “Halley’s Comet.”

At the close of “The Layers,” Kunitz promises himself and the reader: “I am not done with my changes,” foreshadowing the theme of his late poem “Proteus.” In his collected poems we have Kunitz’s book of transformations and may eagerly guess what happens in the next chapter.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000

ISBN: 0-393-05030-0

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2000

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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CARRIE

by Stephen King ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 1974

King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...

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Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).

All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.

King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."

Pub Date: April 8, 1974

ISBN: 0385086954

Page Count: 216

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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by Stephen King & Peter Straub

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NEVER FLINCH
by Stephen King

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YOU LIKE IT DARKER
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- PERSPECTIVES
Appreciations: Carrie Turns 40

- SEEN & HEARD
Stephen King Used ‘Carrie’ Advance To Support Mom

- BOOK TO SCREEN
New ‘Carrie’ Series in the Works at Amazon

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.