As contemporary as "Sonic Boom" (John Updike) and the Beatles ("Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," "She's Leaving Home"), this selection of modern poetry is comparable in quality and appeal (if not in appearance) to A Gift of Watermelon fickle. Stages in the human life cycle are the basis for grouping: the Family, Childhood, Isolation, Identity, etc.—twelve sections altogether. Besides poets frequently anthologized (cummings, Hughes, Frost, Sandburg) and poets included in several recent collections (Philip Booth, Leonard Cohen, James Dickey, Denise Levertov, Karl Shapiro, William Stafford), folk singers Tom Paxton and Woody Guthrie are represented. From Wolcott Gibbs' four-year-old son comes a captivating lyric: "He will just do nothing at all./ He will just sit there in the noon-day sun./ And when they speak to him;—/ he will not answer them/ because he does not wish to/ And when they tell him to eat his dinner/ he will just laugh at them. . . ." From the Dissent section comes Donald Hall's bitter observation: "I shot my friend to save my country's life,/ . . . The State (I learned too late) does not exist;/ Man lives by love, and not by metaphor." LeRoi Jones in the group of Love poems has a left-handed compliment "For Hettie": "My wife is left-handed,/ Which implies a fierce de-/ termination. A complete other/ worldliness. IT'S WEIRD BABY." A sound choice—you'll hear vibrations.
Pub Date: Aug. 15, 1970
ISBN: 0440981719
Page Count: 174
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1970
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A delightfully captivating swatch of autobiography from the author of Kiss. Kiss, Switch Bitch and many others. Schoolboy Dahl wanted adventure. Classes bored him, there was work to be had in Africa, and war clouds loomed on the world's horizons. He finds himself with a trainee's job with Shell Oil of East Africa and winds up in what is now Tanzania. Then war comes in 1939 and Dahl's adventures truly begin. At the war's outbreak, Dahl volunteers for the RAF, signing on to be a fighter pilot. Wounded in the Libyan desert, he spends six months recuperating in a military hospital, then rejoins his unit in Greece, only to be driven back by the advancing Germans. On April 20, 1941, he goes head on against the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Athens. On-target bio installment with, one hopes, lots more of this engrossing life to come.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1986
ISBN: 0142413836
Page Count: 209
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1986
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Paulsen recalls personal experiences that he incorporated into Hatchet (1987) and its three sequels, from savage attacks by moose and mosquitoes to watching helplessly as a heart-attack victim dies. As usual, his real adventures are every bit as vivid and hair-raising as those in his fiction, and he relates them with relish—discoursing on “The Fine Art of Wilderness Nutrition,” for instance: “Something that you would never consider eating, something completely repulsive and ugly and disgusting, something so gross it would make you vomit just looking at it, becomes absolutely delicious if you’re starving.” Specific examples follow, to prove that he knows whereof he writes. The author adds incidents from his Iditarod races, describes how he made, then learned to hunt with, bow and arrow, then closes with methods of cooking outdoors sans pots or pans. It’s a patchwork, but an entertaining one, and as likely to win him new fans as to answer questions from his old ones. (Autobiography. 10-13)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-32650-5
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
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