An open-hearted but premature collection of Covid-19 poetry.
A topical collection offers joyful and mournful poems from quarantine.
A poet isolated and housebound by Covid-19 will inevitably write some pieces about it. In this brief collection, Robbins includes 23 poems occasioned by the pandemic, divided into three sections for the first three months of the outbreak. They begin with hopeful images and gestures, as here, from the opening of the first poem: “The sun doesn’t know / there’s a Coronavirus. / He shows up daily— / not burning, but smiling, / warming.” Even when one of the poet’s childhood friends contracts the disease, Robbins finds a way to cast it in an inspirational light, evoking her cohort’s great talent for dancing when they were girls: “She will laugh, and I will, with her, / and just see if her warrior T-cells don’t / inexplicably leap, legs open in a split, / like no cells anyone has ever seen, magnificent, / breathtaking, like her leaps when she was ten. / And she will heal.” In one piece, the poet chips her tooth biting into a chicken thigh but is afraid to go to the dentist due to the outbreak. In others, she is compelled to write odes to friends who have not survived the disease. “Coakley’s Crayons,” one hopeful lyric, discusses a neighbor girl who, having little to do while stuck at home during the pandemic, draws an optimistic picture of the world with the poet’s pastels. Robbins is effective at communicating direct, concentrated emotions even if she sometimes does so in trite language. “Lockdown Affirmation” achieves its slogan-y effect with some rather obvious rhymes: “I am strong, I am smart. / My survival’s now an art, / My goal not simply to survive / But please, to find a way to thrive.” The book darkens somewhat as it goes on and the severity of the pandemic becomes more apparent. “April Is the Cruelest Month” reads like an angry tweet: “Eighty thousand dead / in the US / and still not enough / testing.” For the most part, the poems feel like first drafts: The sentiments are a bit on-the-nose, and their attempts to capture the magnitude of the event mostly read as unsure and overly earnest (particularly given that people are now quite a bit past the first three months, temporally and psychologically). Even so, Robbins strikes upon a few honest moments, as in the simple “Toilet Paper”: “It’s back! / You can get it! / At last!”
An open-hearted but premature collection of Covid-19 poetry.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 44
Publisher: Shining Tree Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An important dialogue at a fraught time, emphasizing mutual candor, curiosity, and respect.
Two bestselling authors engage in an enlightening back-and-forth about Jewishness and antisemitism.
Acho, author of Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man, and Tishby, author of Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth, discuss many of the searing issues for Jews today, delving into whether Jewishness is a religion, culture, ethnicity, or community—or all of the above. As Tishby points out, unlike in Christianity, one can be comfortably atheist and still be considered a Jew. She defines Judaism as a “big tent” religion with four main elements: religion, peoplehood, nationhood, and the idea of tikkun olam (“repairing the world through our actions”). She addresses candidly the hurtful stereotypes about Jews (that they are rich and powerful) that Acho grew up with in Dallas and how Jews internalize these antisemitic judgments. Moreover, Tishby notes, “it is literally impossible to be Jewish and not have any connection with Israel, and I’m not talking about borders or a dot on the map. Judaism…is an indigenous religion.” Acho wonders if one can legitimately criticize “Jewish people and their ideologies” without being antisemitic, and Tishby offers ways to check whether one’s criticism of Jews or Zionism is antisemitic or factually straightforward. The authors also touch on the deteriorating relationship between Black and Jewish Americans, despite their historically close alliance during the civil rights era. “As long as Jewish people get to benefit from appearing white while Black people have to suffer for being Black, there will always be resentment,” notes Acho. “Because the same thing that grants you all access—your skin color—is what grants us pain and punishment in perpetuity.” Finally, the authors underscore the importance of being mutual allies, and they conclude with helpful indexes on vernacular terms and customs.
An important dialogue at a fraught time, emphasizing mutual candor, curiosity, and respect.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781668057858
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon Element
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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