For fans of Howe’s poetry and readers fascinated by artistic process.
Accomplished New England poet Howe (Sorting Facts, or Nineteen Ways of Looking at Marker, 2013, etc.) channels her personal story through a series of singular creative sources.
A meandering excursus on the work and correspondence of Wallace Stevens marks the first essay in this hodgepodge collection. From her perch in Guilford, Connecticut, Howe found that Stevens’ depiction of the icy Hartford landscape in “The Snow Man” resonated perfectly with the February chill at the quarry where she walked. In his correspondence of the 1940s and ’50s, Stevens recalled the fondness he held for his early Harvard philosophy professor (and former poet) George Santayana, who in turn cherished the thinking of Spinoza for the “courage, firmness and sincerity with which he reconciled his heart to the truth.” As the nonchronological essays unfold, Howe peppers them with extracts from the writings of early Connecticut observers such as Henry David Thoreau and the ten “unusually tall” sisters of Jonathan Edwards, as well as his widow, Sarah, which brought the author solace at the time of the abrupt death of her husband, Peter Hare, in 2008. Earlier access to Yale’s Sterling Library yielded rich research in the work of the Rev. Hope Atherton and meteorologist Charles Sanders Peirce, among other deceased local souls, allowing Howe to “take my life as a poet from their lips, their vocalisms, their breath.” In the long, tedious essay “Sorting Facts,” Howe examines the work of French documentary filmmaker and photographer Chris Marker, while “Frame Structures” returns to the history of Buffalo, where the author (b. 1937) lived early on as a child. Ultimately, this collection is a kind of working notebook for the poet to explore her research—e.g., on Melville or Ad Reinhardt—and it provides a window to her sources and inspiration.
For fans of Howe’s poetry and readers fascinated by artistic process.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8112-2246-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
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
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