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
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
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
