A cogent, skeptical collection that examines those whose stories are erased or preserved.
In Teresi’s collection, he examines inequities, hierarchies, and history.
In the opening poem, “Reading Osip Mandelstam in Zion National Park,” Teresi notes that the park’s very name comes from “the decisions of bureaucrats / And missionaries who ignored and redacted the indigenous words / Renamed this place after the Jerusalem fortress David conquered.” He quickly moves from the lasting effects of colonialism to the park’s unique beauty: “The quaint vulgarity of human architecture has no blueprint for this.” The tension between humankind and the natural world continues throughout, with Teresi frequently observing how humans have treated one another across time. He uses a few recurring structures, so indicated by their titles: for example, the “reading” series features the narrator studying the work of historical figures while visiting national parks. In “Reading Osip Mandelstam in Zion National Park,” Teresi adeptly juxtaposes the Zion National Park’s open landscape with the “windowless rooms” that held Mandelstam, a poet who was exiled and then imprisoned by Stalin’s regime. The collection also includes a series of conversation poems between two asynchronous figures. The boxer Mike Tyson explains aging and the perils of fame to the Romantic poet John Keats, “Most men must take a few punches / To win, but not you and me, John,” and Mayan gods pity Supreme Court Justice John Roberts and his court decisions. Other poems use the same phrases but ordered in two different columns and grapple with humanitarian issues, like the deaths of refugee migrants or the whitewashing of history. These stylistic choices work well, grabbing the reader’s attention and underscoring the overarching theme of interrogation.
How people justify their decisions permeates the book. Teresi writes, “We think it mercy to forge one narrative / By removing another.” The “we” collectively implicates humanity in a long timeline of atrocities. Often, the justifications or motivations Teresi presents trace back to the divine and the ways various religions have used gods—Christian, Greek, or pre-Columbian—to serve personal interests. Here, a self-serving religious figure faces the consequences of his actions: A minister preaching about the Tree of Knowledge is later killed by a tree in a car accident. Teresi also grapples with how new generations are unaffected by prior wrongs. In “We Call it Wisdom,” a poem about teaching students about war’s effects, children react with laughter. Teresi’s work has the frankness of someone who, as one of his speakers believes, “suspects nothing natural holds / On to vulnerability with nostalgia.” The author also employs imagery of damaged flora, fauna, and landscapes to explore how developed nations have collectively ravaged the planet. These verses allow readers to draw their own conclusions about the costs of human progress and even consider what no longer exists: “The ground is woven with the diaphanous swelling of where a birch once was…it is there, even after the ax, even after the hollering rot of a stump.” Overall, Teresi’s collection offers a cleareyed, inventive take on the effects of power.
A cogent, skeptical collection that examines those whose stories are erased or preserved.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9781636281704
Page Count: 104
Publisher: Red Hen Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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