Clever, boldly innovative social commentary.
This debut chapbook of poetry and diagrams offers a caricature of contemporary capitalism.
Lessard’s unconventional work combines absurd poetic statements with technical diagrams resembling Google Patents applications to present an imagined “instrument for distributed empathy monetization.” Readers are given a diagram of the instrument, which is worn in a similar fashion to an oxygen mask. Then an introduction provides a heavily abstract description of the instrument’s inspiration and purpose: “The model is dependent on subject. Subject ingested as data, we begin monetizing in the customer’s voice.” This is followed by a detailed yet poetically abstract summary of the instrument’s various parts: “Fabricast-grade contact (2 cm), electroformed with cumulus shape; nimbus tolerance.” A questionnaire is included that poses such queries as “What can we do when ghosts borrow our skin?” Other pages feature instructions on how to test the instrument: “TEST: Lay across the unspoken; invite lace vocabularies to travel your form.” A closing feedback form asks readers to rate the mechanism on a sliding scale, which begins with Snow and ends with Rain. Lessard’s book may appear overwhelming or perplexing to some readers at first, but a closer examination reveals that the poet is mimicking the planning strategies and language of corporate institutions to emphasize the absurdity of their dialectical approach. The statements made are generally nonsensical: “According to recent tests, sentiment can be extracted at rates comparable to the hydraulic fracturing of angels. Meat, peeled back.” But they communicate a chilling sterility indicative of a capitalist age when human individuality is obsolete and corporate emphasis is placed on the faceless consumer understood only through algorithmic data surveillance. In this respect, the unnerving work has nuances of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four but with its lens trained on the 21st century. Lessard’s writing is not without humor. A deliciously surreal questionnaire will raise a chuckle: “The oversized stone that follows us up the hill. What is its flavor? Vanilla, please explain: / Not-Vanilla, please explain.” Given its unashamed strangeness, this book is not for everyone. Those who carefully peruse the volume will find it to be a courageously unique, exploratory work that shines an eerie new light on corporate practices.
Clever, boldly innovative social commentary.Pub Date: April 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-7343065-3-8
Page Count: 30
Publisher: KERNPUNKT Press
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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