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HOMESICK FOR HEAVEN PART 3

Name: HOMESICK FOR HEAVEN PART 3
Author: Stephen Feinland
ISBN: 978-1494364236

by Stephen Feinland ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 7, 2014

A compilation that may appeal to readers looking for light poetic fare with just a hint of depth.

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A collection of poems that covers everything from quotidian life events to the nature of religious wisdom.

In this third book of his poetry series, Chairman Steve once again reflects broadly on the nature of human life, with a particular focus on the role religion plays in it. Many of the poems here, particularly those grouped in the “New York Metaphors” and “Light and Sweet” chapters, parse specific aspects of human experience, and sometimes they resort to cheekily comic modes of explanation; for example, “sex is a spider,” “death is a door,” and, apparently, “privacy is a banana.” However, the themes that connect the bulk of the poems are religion, faith, and prayer. The author ruminates again and again on what a religious life entails, and on the many ways that human frailty disfigures it: “Human fear obscures God’s plan, / So we don't see the perfect man, / But hearts yearn on until eyes see / Man that rejoices trouble-free.” It’s difficult to find any systematic reflection on spirituality within the work; instead, the book seems to accept a less dogmatic and less institutional interpretation of communion with God. It’s also eclectic, and includes several quick comments on the mundanities of life. One of these poems, for example, is essentially an ode to the author’s underemployed exercise bike. The subject matter can turn sweet, as well; “My Crazy Obsession,” for instance, is a delightfully tender love poem. The poems largely follow a uniform meter, and the monotonous cadence may eventually wear down readers’ patience. The poems might have been improved if the author didn’t consistently restrict himself to such a limited rhyme scheme. Still, the book remains a breezy, often funny, and sometimes philosophically challenging collection.

A compilation that may appeal to readers looking for light poetic fare with just a hint of depth.

Pub Date: June 7, 2014

ISBN: 978-1494364236

Page Count: 154

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: May 7, 2015

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION

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THE DEFEAT OF THE MIND

by Alain Finkielkraut ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 28, 1995

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If you never made it all the way through Allan Bloom's ponderous bestseller, The Closing of the American Mind (1987), then this short and provocative book, first published in France in the same year, is the perfect way to catch up with the larger issues in the culture wars. Like Bloom, this reformed French radical provides the philosophical contexts for the current battles over multiculturalism, social constructionism, and postmodernism. Unlike Bloom, Finkielkraut (The Imaginary Jew, not reviewed, etc.) doesn't deplore popular culture, except when it's treated with the same reverence as the great works of Western civilization. Extremely lucid, this polemical meditation on the history of ideas diagnoses decline from Herder's historicism and concept of national cultures, which later transformed into the Germanic cult of origins, and the rise of the social sciences. Classic ideas of liberty were subsumed by collectivism—a struggle well illustrated by the battle over Alsace-Lorraine: Do individuals have any say in their national feelings? Along the way in this grand historical debate, transcendent ideas of art (as Good, True, and Beautiful) also fell into disrepute, so that the two notions of ``culture'' (the aesthetic and the anthropological) collapsed into one. Romantic ideas of nationalism transform in our time into the radical anti- individualism of post-colonial thinkers such as Fanon, who rejects cosmopolitanism for ``identity politics.'' Finkielkraut, unlike Bloom, attends to the materialist explanations for decline—the rise of consumer capitalism and the triumph of youth culture. Finkielkraut's celebration of the French Enlightenment tradition seems a far more rational prescription than Bloom's dyspeptic Platonism. Despite Finkielkraut's Gallic disregard for Anglo-American thought and his translator's clueless introduction, this passionate essay is a welcome moment of brightness in the increasingly murky debate.

Pub Date: April 28, 1995

ISBN: 0-231-08022-0

Page Count: 176

Publisher: Columbia Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995

Categories:

PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES

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THE CULTURE OF HOPE

A NEW BIRTH OF THE CLASSICAL SPIRIT

by Frederick Turner ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 25, 1995

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Turner recycles some material from earlier university press books for this, his grand synthesis that promises to overcome the stalemate in the culture wars. Proponent of a ``third way'' or ``centrist'' position, Turner (Arts and Humanities/Univ. of Texas, Dallas) rehearses the standard complaints about our culture in crisis. Unlike traditional conservatives, though, he ventures a prescription that goes beyond nostalgia for faith and values. A sober critic of the so-called avant-garde, Turner posits a ``radical center''—``a return to classical forms, genres and techniques in the arts'' that is grounded in the latest research in anthropology and science. Turner fancies his ``reconstructive postmodernism'' a new paradigm on the intellectual horizon, and it's hard to imagine anyone familiar with all the disciplines he brings together in this fascinating, if exhausting, book. A cogent critic of anti-foundationalist thought (be it feminist, Marxist, or linguistic), Turner reaffirms the need for hierarchy in the arts, for logic over force, and for beauty over relativism. His multiculturalism is truly pan-cultural, discovering the transcendent in all cultures. Turner's idea of a ``natural classicism'' is remarkably transparent—he locates classical forms in nature itself. Some of his other ideas are a bit obscure, and his tendency toward unrelieved abstraction will turn off sympathetic readers. Turner's immediate cure for cultural malaise is nothing less than a four-page manifesto that is certain to provoke debate, and his discussion of biology is sure to be used against him, despite his distinctly un-``bell curvish'' ideas. Turner's fictional ``fable for the future''—a brave new world that resembles the utopian cyberspace of the Tofflers—flirts with kookiness. A superb critic of trendy feminist and multicultural ideas, Turner deserves a hearing in the ongoing debate: He's Apollo to Camille Paglia's Dionysus.