James Dickey, fresh from winning a National Book Award and an appointment as Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress, has also recently been enshrined in one of Life magazine's pictorial essays where the Dow Jones rating was a smashing "presently the hottest of emerging U.S. poets." Is Dickey being groomed as the All-American successor to Robert Frost? The collection here contains Dickey's three previous volumes and a sampling of later work, including "Falling," his most adventurous experiment in the "open" structure since "The Firebombing" of two years ago. While Dickey's themes remain fairly constant—fugitive intermingling with nature, family, childhood, the wartime experience—he has been steadily, if subtly, breaking off from his early well-constructed mode and reaching out towards the rawer, shapeless "conclusionless poem" with the line-breaks, shots of rapid quasi-cinematic images, and a dramatic action which is both of the everyday and a kind of mystic discovery of, or rebirth into, the phenomenal world. Masculine, compassionate, essentially conservative, Dickey's poems are incarnations of remembered joy and pain, a quietly intense celebration of the senses, an acceptance of the inherently tragic yet wonder-awakening landscape of man—the qualities, in short, of a good national poet circa the sixties.
Pub Date: June 1, 1967
ISBN: 0819560553
Page Count: 315
Publisher: Wesleyan Univ. Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 22, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1967
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
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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