An urgent interrogation of historical and political horrors.
Marrero explores authoritarianism, mass delusion, and cultural decay in this collection of political poetry.
Across 11 poems, the book’s speaker both observes and mourns the death of democracy, the spread of misinformation, and how ordinary people get swept up in dangerous ideologies. The poet opens with the titular poem, inspired by W. H. Auden’s “September 1, 1939.” Like Auden, the speaker is stationed at a dive bar, “where my glum double drank on / this date,” contemplating the “tragedy” of modern times. “Foreboding” compares fear to “corrosive sparks” that fall over a “frantic and frightened” world. “A Star Is Born” describes the rise to power of Joseph Goebbels, “Minister of Propaganda, / arbiter of taste and truth,” who proclaimed that the repetition of a lie will eventually lead to people believing it. Public affairs and personal lives alike are upended by an unhinged, narcissistic leader in “Psychopathic God.” Followers honor this maniac with “blind loyalty,” going so far as to sacrifice their own lives and liberty, in “Acolyte Credo.” Soon, a grandiose plan for a “master race” solidifies, demanding “whole new worlds to command and / exploit” in “Diktat.” The author ends the book with “Mass Resignation,” asking, “Is this the model / of unenlightened order / we strive to emulate?” In this timely book, Marrero uses unsettling historical references, including Hitler’s rise to power and the propaganda of Nazi Germany, as cautionary tales for the present. The poet paints a vivid, if grim, picture of the consequences of collective amnesia, writing how it “keeps the fires kindled / for the next generation to pass the legacy.” Sensory descriptions like that of the “dense cigarette fumes” [9] of a watering hole ground the ideas in physical space. The language can be considered overwrought or entirely apt in lines like, “Hordes kin of the incendiaries and bigots / Yeats decried / pack the Platz, hail the madcap cant / prescribed today.”
An urgent interrogation of historical and political horrors.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2025
ISBN: 9782959327858
Page Count: 46
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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