A quirky exploration of the everyday icons of the digital realm and their symbolic meanings.
A book of poems about everyday digital symbols.
Price examines the deeper meanings underlying computer icons in this unconventional poetry collection. Combining technical insight and artistic expression, the poet focuses on 100 icons (of the available 3,000) from Google’s Material Design set, asking questions such as, “Is the image beautiful? Does the shape invite me to tap? Does the picture telegraph what the icon can do for me?” He considers how several of the icons we use daily are relics of the past, from an attachment’s paper clip (“reminder / Of paper pages”) to an email’s letter shape (“The stamp—how quaint!”). The transition from tactile to virtual and the related grief over the loss of a physical world are recurring themes in the collection. “Brush” considers the “ancient tool” that “says take me in your hand, / Feel the soft bristles, dip them, and paint.” Of the heart icon users rely on to “favorite” online posts, he writes, “How many meanings this sign enacts. / It performs as noun, verb, and glyph” (“Favorite”). The bell, that incessant “attention parasite” that notifies users of activity, reminds the author of “the brass dinner bell that called / My grandfather in from loading hay” (“Bell”). “Reply_all” earns the label of “The most dangerous icon of all,” provoking shame that “sends you racing back, / As you replay that one unthinking click.” Price ends on “Ampersand,” praising that “Elegant emblem / Ornate placeholder / Connective pointer.” These poems are short yet thought-provoking, inviting readers to slow down and consider the meanings of the icons they mindlessly tap all day long. Though the topic might seem at odds with poetry, Price blends the two seamlessly, as in “360,” based on the rounded arrow that allows users to rotate views on a map: “Imagination cannot show me such a tour. / This icon launches code, / Spins the Earth around its axis, / Turns a city street into a whirl, / And races like an angel around a volcano.”
A quirky exploration of the everyday icons of the digital realm and their symbolic meanings.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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