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
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
An expertly crafted rendition and a welcome invitation to younger readers to immerse themselves in the ancient past.
“Sing to me, O Muse, of the rage of Achilles”: a rousing graphic rendition of Homer’s great epic.
It’s a blood-soaked poem of primeval war, one ostensibly fought over a certain daughter of Zeus who turned the wrong head—“Or possibly an apple, or a lot of gold, or control of trade routes”—that brought vast armies to the plains of Troy. In a fight personified by two heroes, Trojan Hector and Greek Achilles, there’s more than a little graphic violence here—but nothing other than what Homer himself described, as when Achilles’ spear finds Hector’s neck, followed by Achilles’ intemperate curse: “Your corpse goes to the dogs.” That’s not very sporting, and of course Achilles gets his comeuppance. Hinds allows that his version is not complete, but all the best bits are there, and he provides some helpful interpretive hints—identifying the principal helmeted Greek and Trojan warriors with subtle alphabetical designs on their breastplates, for instance. The best graphic panels are the ones that show the war’s vastness, with a two-page spread of those famed thousand ships crossing the Hellespont, another panel showing the Greek army spilling out onto the plain, “like the great flock of migrating birds that take wing in the meadows by the stream of Caÿster—as numerous as the leaves of a forest.” An author’s note and page-by-page notes provide further context.
An expertly crafted rendition and a welcome invitation to younger readers to immerse themselves in the ancient past. (map, bibliography) (Graphic adaptation. 10-adult)Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7636-8113-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
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