A meditative collection on the restorative nature of herbs.
Maril charts the connections between herbs, cooking, and memory in this collection of poetry and prose.
Nothing stirs a memory quite like an herb fresh from the garden. The deep green color, the smell, the taste; for Maril they bring to mind a lifetime of dishes, from childhood spaghetti to new culinary experiments. There’s mint, the “troublemaker in the garden” seizing “every inch of available space.” Parsley, served as part of the Passover meal and dipped in salt water, “A table ritual for everyone / Our food dipped in tears.” Basil tastes like summer, cilantro like “the universe.” Rosemary grows all year and has a dozen uses. (“Did you know rosemary tea makes an excellent hair rinse?”) Maril’s garden and kitchen proved sanctuaries during the pandemic, a place to reflect and create in a time of confusion and destruction. While slicing into the “asymmetrical curves” of tomatoes and spicing “pleasant, bland, refreshing” cucumbers with salt, pepper, and vinegar, she considers the time her mother bought a bargain dress at a department store, and how Maril found it years later when sorting through her mother’s things. Or the time she complimented a painting by her father when she was a girl—a painting of a man holding two balloons leading a woman on a white horse—which he gave to her as a housewarming gift years later. In these poems and micro essays, Maril ably mingles sense and memory, nature and biography, to sketch out the parameters of her world. The essays ruminate on specific memories or objects, like this one about her grandmother’s repoussé pitcher: “I like the concept of pushing outwards to stand one’s ground. I think of push-ups. Opposing gravity…The garden shapes on the pitcher’s midsection are yielding yet firm.” The poems are nearly as conversational. “The grass came up to our waists. / Bare armed, we swam through dandelions and choke weed / Ignoring welts and scratches.” It’s a quiet book, but one in which many gardeners and cooks will likely see themselves.
A meditative collection on the restorative nature of herbs.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781957224343
Page Count: 68
Publisher: Old Scratch Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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