If this is the future of poetry in New York, then poetry has no future.
The contemporary poetry scene is livelier than ever, and nowhere more so than in New York City, as a cursory glance at the Poetry Calendar proves. But you’d never know it from Colby’s anthology. In theory Colby should know the hip young poets of New York well; he used to run the Wednesday night readings at the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church. Unfortunately, he has collected what appears to be the dregs of the self-anointed Next Big Things, the sort of mixture of gimmicky performance pieces, faux surrealism, and dogged doggerel that has become the depressing staple of the downtown scene. The writers herein range from the dimestore dada of Brenda Coultas and the editor himself to Anselm Berrigan’s fractured aphorisms tied together by ampersands to the tedious list-making rants of Kenneth Goldsmith and the inverted clichés of Mitchell Highfill. One gets every conceivable form of secondhand Beat writing, from the cut-up method to apparently drug-induced fantasias. Colby made an effort to seek out writers for whom poetry is really a side project, an interesting notion except when the results are the tedious drivel emanating from rock’n’rollers Lee Ranaldo (heavily derivative use of typography in the interests of “outraging” the bourgeoisie) and Mimi Goese (prose poetry that reads like a cross between Jim Morrison and Rod McKuen), and contributions from playwright Mac Wellman that can only be described as gnomic, surrealist fortune-cookie fillers. The only writers to emerge from this mess with their dignity intact are Maggie Estep, who contributes an amusing short story in dialogue about unrequited sexual longing, and Amy Fusselman, who offers some inventive embarrassing moments (like seeing her 72-year-old realtor perform at a strip joint).
If this is the future of poetry in New York, then poetry has no future.Pub Date: May 17, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-26335-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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