Margaret Atwood's poetry is too good for the implicit condescension in the acclaim for her as a woman writing about women—and judging from her new book, she is getting better all the time. Her poems straddle the line where personal and general history meet. Even at her most intimate, she is—in the large—"The Woman Who Makes Peace With Her Faulty Heart": "We know that, barring accidents,/ one of us will finally betray the other." A 19th-century massacre of Quebecois by imported Scottish mercenaries also acquires a more general cast in her hands: "Those whose houses were burned/ burned houses. What else ever happens. . . ?/ . . . still hungry,/ they watched the houses die like/ sunsets, like their own/ houses. Again/ those who gave the orders/ were already somewhere else,/ of course on horseback." She is direct and scrupulously honest; her advice to her small daughter could be her own credo: "I would like to say, Dance/ and be happy. Instead I will say, in my crone's voice, Be/ ruthless when you have to, tell/ the truth when you can see it." Her work is not without flaws or faults: often predictable last lines; the mannered use of pause or full stop in the middle of a line, followed by an apparently pointless enjambment ("Nothing stays free, though on what ought/ to be the lawn. . ./ . . ./ outside the wire, there's the dying/ rose hedge. . ."). But when she is in top form—as in "Marrying the Hangman," a subtly political portrait of gender and power—she establishes her fight to be taken very seriously indeed.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1981
ISBN: 0671253700
Page Count: -
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1981
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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