In that vein, two recent anthologies can in fact be recommended with little comment. Both generated abroad, they flow from...
The Academy of American Poets, who initiated the designating of April as poetry month, hoped above all for one thing: more readers of verse. And one of the best ways to introduce poetry to wider audiences is the anthology, which, until recently, was seen simply as the repository of an editor’s favorite poems. Contemporary anthologies, though, have narrowed in focus, implicitly arguing for new schools and styles, or, worse, these increasingly bulky collections have come to exploit multiculturalism in its lowest form: today no group, however defined by ethnicity or gender, goes unrepresented.
By asking Harold Bloom to select the best poems from Scribner’s annual Best of the Best American Poetry series, editor David Lehman correctly assumed that Bloom would seize the opportunity to ride his hobbyhorse. And he does so with a vengeance in his delightedly bilious introduction to this selection of 75 from 750 poems. Bloom rightly chastises the multicultural avatars of correctness – what he calls “the school of resentment” – for the destruction of “aesthetic and cognitive standards” in judging poetry. What you might overlook in Bloom’s spirited prose, though, is his own agenda: a reductive and determinist aesthetic that leads him to prefer, among other things, poetry difficult for the sake of being difficult, poetry that discusses Bloom’s beloved notion of anxiety, and poetry that aspires to prophecy – or how else explain his inclusion of Allen Ginsberg’s risible poem? At the other end of the anthology spectrum is Robert Hass’s Poet’s Choice, a collection that grew from this former poet laureate’s weekly columns syndicated in over 20 newspapers. Hass’s contribution to “a shared, literate public culture” involved selecting poems mainly from new books and commenting on them in simple prose. The result, though, is often dumbed-down lit-crit: chatty little introductions that, at best, remind readers to use their dictionaries. The selections do include a number of canonical poets (Keats, Hardy, Frost), but most are poems that would make Harold Bloom gag. A Birkenstock populist, Hass doesn’t seem aware that Kingsley Amis did this sort of thing much better in a tougher venue – a British tabloid – and ended up with a terrific anthology of accessible quality verse, The Pleasure of Poetry.
In that vein, two recent anthologies can in fact be recommended with little comment. Both generated abroad, they flow from two of poetry’s common springs: love and madness. Norman Jeffares Irish Love Poems speaks for itself, while Ken Smith’s Beyond Bedlam needs a word of caution: these poems written “out of mental distress” may be, at times, extra-literary, but they are always compelling.Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-684-84279-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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