We expect anything and everything from Robert Graves, but even so it's a little difficult to think of him addressing the London School of Economics or our own Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1963 he lectured at both places, respectively on money ("Mammon") and science ("Nine Hundred Iron Chariots"). In dealing with these subjects his technique is typically Gravesian: a deep brew of etymological and historical probings, a collection of cross-references from the literary past to the most Journalistic present, an admission with Socratic irony that he knows nothing about such-and-such, and then a startling summation in which poetic myth and a matriarchal culture are somehow seen to be the only refuge for modern man. With his wit, his Olympian lucidity, and his mischievous asides, he disarms the reader or listener, leaving only the haziest suspicion of legerdemain or irrelevancy. His "Three Oxford Lectures on Poetry," especially the last, "The Poet in a Valley of Dry Bones," are among the wisest and most biting of his discussions concerning craft, sensibility and inspiration, while "Intimations of the Black Goddess" investigates his own (and generally most recent) poetry against the background of myth, the man-woman relationship, the dictates of the White Goddess and so forth- a complex affair about which one expects Graves will soon have much more to say. The two remaining essays, "Real Women" and "Moral Principles in Translation," are lesser efforts. An admirable gathering.
Pub Date: June 18, 1965
ISBN: 0304923656
Page Count: -
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1965
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
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