Ably and originally muses on Christianity and personal sacrifice.
A Chinese poet seeks answers in the sky and the soul in this debut collection.
This is not a book for the casual poetry fan; from the first page to the last, the poems are dramatic and deeply spiritual. “Breaking free from waves of sorrows / I leap ashore / Stars coronate me / beads of tears on hairs ribboned by light / I am owned by eternity,” writes Xueyan in her collection’s closing work and author’s note. Even the back cover, reserved for a brief bio, bears a “bio-poem.” The collection’s nearly 140 concise poems, arranged in four parts, dwell mostly on the nature of human devotion, the heavens, and the machinations of God, and they do not provide answers. Many entries reflect on mortality, painting humanity’s sacrifices with macabre strokes; in “Prophet,” Xueyan writes, “The halo hangs above me / a holy gallows / Enchanted by light / I ascend to the aureole / to the sacred execution of my mortal flesh / My eyes / my skin / my tongue / melt.” This abundance of unsettling descriptions, while compelling, occasionally overshadows the poems’ meanings. Other entries consider the lessons of Greek myths (“Prometheus’s Fire,” “Icarus”), the Bible (“Lilith Leaves Eden,” “The Crucifixion”), and religious history (“Jerusalem”).
Xueyan reverently explores Mary and Christ as tragic figures, and the imagery can be stark and memorable. The poet seems to suggest that brutality is cyclic and inevitable; snow and water appear again and again to signal both beauty and death. Poems on romance also address God: “A tear shed for love / is deeper than the sea / When I murmur your name to the winds / I am as clean as Yahweh’s bones.” Xueyan adroitly explores her themes, but not all of the poems feel necessary, and some of the shortest ones simply retrace what has already been expressed. Despite an overall somber tone, she finds occasional moments of levity: “After long journeys / two fish finally meet / love at first sight / They are going to kiss.” The closing section departs somewhat from the cosmic framing of the majority of the works and incorporates more mundane language; cigarettes, electricity bills, and the subway add grounded contrast with natural beauty and Messianic references, but they don’t always effectively mesh with the book’s more ethereal scope. Some poems fewer than 10 words (“Shortest Poem” simply says “Love”) don’t always justify their brevity, but the abrupt ends evoke the speaker’s restlessness. Part of the book’s intrigue lies in the author’s opacity and lack of personal details. The closing poem, “To Wake,” does the best job of distilling the poet’s seeming intended takeaway for her readers about the dissonance of Christian aspirations compared with the burden of everyday life: “Humans wake because they are hungry / not because they love the world.”
Ably and originally muses on Christianity and personal sacrifice.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-59498-092-3
Page Count: 173
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A beautifully produced, engaging homage.
Celebrating a beloved artist.
Published to coincide with a major exhibition of works by British-born artist David Hockney (b. 1937) at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, this lushly illustrated volume offers a detailed overview of the artist’s life and work, along with chapters focused on his various styles and subject matter, a chronology, and a glossary of the many techniques he employed in his art, including camera lucida, computer, and video. Contributors of essays include noted art historians and curators, such as Norman Rosenthal, who edited the volume; Simon Schama; Anne Lyles; James Cahill; and François Michaud. Growing up in the north of England, Hockney was drawn to the light and sparkle that he found in Hollywood movies. When he finally arrived in Los Angeles, the sunlit landscapes inspired him, and his new sense of artistic freedom concurred with sexual freedom: As a gay man, he felt liberated from the constraints that had weighed on him in Britain, even in the “relative Bohemia” of the Royal College of Art. Essayists reflect on his artistic interests, such as landscapes, portraiture, flowers, and the opera—for which he created boldly exuberant sets—as well as on his influences and experimentation. Michaud examines the impact on Hockney of a visit to Paris in the 1970s, where he became familiar with Henri Matisse and his contemporaries from museum exhibitions. In the 1990s, visiting his mother and friends in Yorkshire, Hockney painted both outdoors and in the studio, experimenting with various media—including the photocopier and fax machine—as he worked to render the woodsy landscape. As a companion to the exhibition, the volume offers stunning reproductions of Hockney’s prolific works. Enormously popular with museumgoers, Hockney, Rosenthal exults, “transforms the ordinary and the everyday into the remarkable.”
A beautifully produced, engaging homage.Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9780500029527
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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