Of interest to Howard’s admirers and students—and anyone with patience for formal concerns, close reading, and “alien...
Well-crafted essays, forewords, and afterwords on poets and poetry by the critic, translator, editor, and poet.
Howard brings sterling credentials to bear; as he writes in an lecture from 1996, with a mixture of irony and pride: “I am not merely a poet, though I am that, and I am not merely a critic of poetry, though I am that. . . . I address you now as a man who has scrutinized the current product (product!—I use the word with a certain compliant twinge) in extenso for thirty dutifully attentive years.” So he has. But not just the current product: the collection opens with a sparking essay, from 1973, on Emily Dickinson, who was just then being rediscovered and needed her champions in a rhymeless time. Howard’s consideration is highly illuminating, and it well illustrates his magpie technique of turning up glittering oddments: here, for instance, he stops briefly to ponder Dickinson’s evident discomfort with the letter n, “as they have always seemed unfinished M’s,” closing that essay with a modest plea to allow a writer idiosyncrasies and tics that might otherwise bore or provoke us, for these may well “turn out to be that writer’s solution to his own problems of composition and utterance.” Elsewhere the noted translator of Baudelaire and other French writers turns his attention to Francophone literature, and especially on writers who are not much read today, such as Marguerite Yourcenar (Howard’s magpie finding: she irritated Virginia Woolf), Claude Simon, and even the irreplaceable Stendhal. These admiring pieces, for those who care about such things, constitute a welcome antidote to John Miller and Mark Molesky’s wooly anti-French screed Our Oldest Enemy (see below), and in any event they ought to awaken interest in those writers, which would be a grand service to them. Elsewhere still Howard praises then-new poets such as J.D. McClatchy, the writings of Brassaï, the power of storytelling, and kindred matters, giving variety to an altogether satisfactory collection.
Of interest to Howard’s admirers and students—and anyone with patience for formal concerns, close reading, and “alien eloquence.”Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-374-25885-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2004
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
© Copyright 2025 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.
