An engagingly written contribution to poetry scholarship, although it could have examined Seeger’s contradictions more...
This biography tells the life story of American poet Alan Seeger, best known for a poem published after his death in World War I.
Seeger, the uncle of folk singer Pete Seeger, died at 28 in the Battle of the Somme on July 4, 1916. Although few of his works are remembered now, “I Have a Rendezvous with Death” gained fame; it was one of President John F. Kennedy’s favorite poems. In this biography of Seeger, Hill (Elihu Washburne, 2013) offers a well-researched account that draws in part on material in Harvard University’s Alan Seeger Collection. Hill draws a vivid portrait of Seeger’s idyllic, dreamy boyhood. From an early age, Seeger was determined to reject conformity and live life to the fullest. At Harvard and then in Greenwich Village, he pursued a bohemian life of art, poverty, and freedom; he then moved to Paris in 1912, where he became frustrated by publishers’ rejections of his poetry. In 1914, he joined the French Foreign Legion, and Hill says that he took well to military life, “beaming with joy” at the prospect of battle. After his death, Seeger’s poems—almost miraculously preserved—were published and “greeted with almost universal acclaim,” writes Hill, although according to the Poetry Foundation, the reviews were mixed, citing Seeger’s immaturity as an artist. This is a very readable, well-sourced biography, overall. However, Hill doesn’t question Seeger’s obsession with death in battle, calling his “a glorious legacy as one of history’s most inspiring ‘war poets.’ ” It might have been fruitful to compare him with other poets, such as Wilfrid Owen, who so bitterly and powerfully lacerated the idealism that inspired men to undergo trench warfare. Also, Seeger’s old-fashioned language seems thin compared to the richness and complexity of his Harvard apartment-mate T.S. Eliot’s later work. Could Seeger have achieved more? Maybe—but his sought-for rendezvous with death put an end to that possibility.
An engagingly written contribution to poetry scholarship, although it could have examined Seeger’s contradictions more closely.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-973794-96-7
Page Count: 203
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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