Judiciously annotated with a biographical glossary of correspondents and an indispensable chronology, this volume may well...
Letters illuminate the life of an iconic American poet.
As Sheehy (English/Edinboro Univ.), Richardson (English/Doshisha Univ.) and Faggen (Literature/Claremont McKenna Coll.) note, in the 1980s, Robert Frost (1874–1963) received a blow to his reputation from a castigating biography by Lawrance Thompson. The publication of Frost’s letters, which follows collections of his prose (2007) and notebooks (2006), contributes to a reassessment of the poet’s stature and significance. The collection begins with 12-year-old Frost’s endearing note to a “childhood sweetheart” and ends with the poet at 46, his prestige established by acclaim from such critics as Ezra Pound and William Butler Yeats, whom Frost met in England in 1913. He liked Yeats: “[H]is manner is like that of a man in some dream he cant [sic] shake off.” Pound, though, tried to bully him. “The fact that he discovered me gives him the right to see that I live up to his good opinion of me,” Frost remarked. The best among these hundreds of letters reveal candid self-reflections. Feeling like a “fugitive,” he retreated to farming “to save myself and fix myself before I measured my strength against all creation.” He brought to his writing “an almost technical interest” in the cadences and rhythms of people’s speech. If he was not gregarious, still his friendships were deep: When poet Edward Thomas was killed in battle in 1917, Frost was disconsolate. Thomas, he told British writer Edward Garnett, “was the only brother I ever had.” Frost shows himself to be playful, sly, caring and supremely serious about his art in his letters to poets Amy Lowell, Louis Untermeyer, Edward Arlington Robinson and Harriet Monroe; publishers Alfred Knopf and Henry Holt; former students; his daughter; and many friends.
Judiciously annotated with a biographical glossary of correspondents and an indispensable chronology, this volume may well inspire a Frost renaissance.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-674-05760-9
Page Count: 822
Publisher: Belknap/Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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