Indefatigable literary estate agent Bruccoli (English/Univ. South Carolina, editor of the letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, John O’Hara, and Vladimir Nabokov) amasses the documentary chronicle of Dickey’s metamorphosis from “scarcely educated jock” to award-winning poet. Despite the wide range of addressees, including Robert Bly, Philip Booth, Donald Hall, Richard Howard, Randall Jarrell, Denise Levertov, and Robert Penn Warren, Dickey is on truly intimate terms—whether aesthetic or personal—with very few. Concerning his art, his most revealing personal statements typically occur in early correspondence with fellow-poet James Wright in the late fifties and the sixties: how Dickey is out to make “a poetry that gives us life: . . . the live imagination as it leaps instinctively toward its inevitable (and perhaps God-ordained) forms”; why he writes about a few significant personal experiences (usually concerning his family) “in order to understand these times and states, and to perpetuate them.” Elsewhere, he relates to Wright vivid descriptions of a brawling debate with Jarrell and a winter deer hunt with friends and his son Christopher, during which Dickey improvised ballads. Unfortunately, in his later (post-Deliverance) letters, his grand-old-man status affords him too many opportunities for self-regarding pronouncements, such as judging fellow Southern writers and young poets. The quotidian aspects of a poetic career—and Bruccoli bluntly describes Dickey as a careerist—are well-documented, from Dickey’s popular speaking engagements and academic postings, through mundane dealings with magazines and publishers, to putting down rivals and sucking up to critics. (In one of the more amusing two-faced incidents, Dickey calls John Hollander “a literary pimp and time-server” but later sympathizes with Hollander about “nit-pickers who balk at your poems.—) For the appetite for life that drives Dickey’s poetry, his letters to his son Christopher, though comparatively few here, are best. In disagreement with Auden, Dickey writes, “Poetry makes plenty happen; it can change your life,” as this passionate and ornery epistolary collection proves.
Pub Date: Nov. 14, 1999
ISBN: 0-375-40419-8
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...
Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.
The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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