A monotone collection of high-minded poems.
Parihar praises the natural world and contemplates the self in this poetry collection.
There’s an art to assembling a poetry collection. Parihar addresses this topic in a poem entitled, appropriately, “A Poetry Collection,” musing how poems on different topics work together to form a whole: “Each poem a window to a different world, / Where emotions unfurl and truths are unfurled. / From the depths of despair to the heights of love, / The collection resonates, like a dove.” Parihar does indeed offer many windows on disparate subjects, from the grandeur of nature to the ghostlike anxieties that creep up on him at night and even the particular struggles of the American middle class. The poet’s chosen form overwhelms the content of the poems, however. All 71 entries are composed of four-line stanzas with mostly AABB rhyme schemes. The effect is demonstrated by this trio of sequential offerings that celebrate three American cities: “The Manhattan” begins, “In the heart of a city that never sleeps, / Where dreams take flight and secrets keep, / Stands Manhattan, a beacon of light, / A skyline of wonder, a mesmerizing sight.” Next, “Los Angeles” starts with “In the land where sunshine reigns supreme, / Amidst the palm trees and silver screen, / There lies a city of dreams untold, / Where stories unfold, and legends behold.” And finally, “Chicago”: “In the city by the lake, where the wind whispers tales, / Chicago stands proud, where ambition prevails. / A skyline of steel, rising tall and bold, / In the heart of the Midwest, a story unfolds.” The repetition of this structure flattens all that it touches, blending poems together so that all differentiation dissolves. It would be one thing if the lines rang out, but the rhymes often feel forced. To revisit the stanza about poetry collections: Emotions unfurl, but truths are unfurled? Why? Does a dove resonate? Parihar has clearly enjoyed composing these poems, but he’ll need to try a bit harder—and maybe even vary his form—if he expects others to enjoy them as much as he does.
A monotone collection of high-minded poems.Pub Date: March 25, 2024
ISBN: 9798320766812
Page Count: 141
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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
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