Heartfelt and moving poems that are sometimes too generic.
This third installment of a poetry series chronicles a woman’s growth, her relationships, and her philosophy.
As in her two previous volumes, Vernikovsky offers rhyming verses that she centers on the page. The poems are grouped by topic, such as “Family & Friends & More,” and sometimes signal progression, as when “The Painful Moments in Life” is followed by “Beyond the Pain to Magical Moments.” For each of the book’s nine sections, two versions of the same photograph illustrate the theme, one with normal opacity and the other semitransparent. (The photos are uncredited.) Many verses express being caught up in feelings of failure and frustration, often described as “turmoil,” “mayhem,” or “churn.” The speaker feels pressured by her own high expectations of herself, ruminates on past and present difficulties, or feels oppressed by the world’s problems. The remedy, Vernikovsky asserts, is to “decide only to focus on the good parts,” because “Only the expression of joy and happiness should stay / In the memories we create each and every day.” Besides ignoring negative moments, it’s important to “replace them with many more of laughter and glee.” The idea of positivity as a spiritual/psychological approach has many adherents, and like-minded readers will find inspiration in these affirmative verses. For others, though, a refusal to engage with the shadow could feel like superficial denial rather than wholeness.
Few poems in the collection go beneath the surface or supply vivid poetic images for readers to connect with, instead using generic and vague metaphors, such as the often repeated “journey.” The verses provide abstractions that state feelings or ideas rather than showing them, as in “Time is Passing—Emotions strong, lasting”: “Life is beautiful, sensual, amazing”; “Our feelings are so huge”; “This unimaginably amazing feeling.” Similarly, tired clichés substitute for fresher language, such as “Be all that you can be” or “Cut like a knife.” The poems about departed friends or pets are more effective, as in “My Tunte,” which recalls a woman who will, poignantly, “never be older than thirty-nine.” Clearly an animal lover, Vernikovsky touchingly recalls a beloved cat in “Nitro”: “All he knew is that I was home and it was time to eat and play / Towards the end it was more eat than play.” These concrete details of lived experience better conjure up the poem’s subject for readers. But inattention to detail can make the collection feel sloppy, as with some erratic punctuation in “Journey Back”: “Fight..to come out of the dark, / This time,,- YOU are the one that is leaving your mark..” More inattentive still, several poems are repeated, sometimes with different titles. “The flow of life” appears twice, for example, and one verse appears three times as “My Dreams,” “Give it meaning,” and “My Dreams (Give it meaning).”
Heartfelt and moving poems that are sometimes too generic.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-953791-36-8
Page Count: 186
Publisher: Goldtouch Press, LLC
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2021
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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