A well-focused snapshot of the current state of the art for art’s sake. As always, though, the collection is...
The venerable Pushcart Prize turns 30. It’s looking pretty good, though it could probably stand to lose a little weight and get some more fresh air.
It’s a year of anniversaries: Threepenny Review, one of the usual suspects in the anthology’s pages, is 25, as is the Sonora Review, a student-run contender; Ontario Review is 30; City Lights Books is 50; and so on. As always, Henderson and a small army of volunteer editors scour the literary journals and other outlets to turn up a fine assortment of poems, short stories and essays. Some have the factory sameness of MFA-program-generated work, to be sure, with a self-regarding, anxious feel (“Manhattan, Joy thought, was just a moment’s cinder in the eye of eternity.” “Am I making sense? Or am I the family disgrace my father says I am?”). Most of the pieces are satisfyingly strong, though, with something to say and some memorable way to say it. Brian Doyle’s meditation on the heart, and love, is a standout: “You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant, felled by a woman’s second glance, a child’s apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road, the words I have something to tell you . . .” Tess Gallagher, E.L. Doctorow, Ted Kooser and other mainstays turn in fresh-sounding pieces, while there are delights from comparative newcomers such as Cynthia Shearer, whose Faulknerian novels seem to draw on her service as a guide at William Faulkner’s house-turned-museum (“ ‘Show me where he drowned his wife in the pool,’ said an elderly lady one time. ‘You’re perhaps thinking of William Shatner,’ said the grad student on duty that day’).
A well-focused snapshot of the current state of the art for art’s sake. As always, though, the collection is hernia-inducing; smaller would indeed be beautiful.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2006
ISBN: 1-888889-42-X
Page Count: 550
Publisher: Pushcart
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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