A must for poets and students of poetry and a good start for initiates seeking to understand the constituent parts of its...
A wonderful collection of the great Irish poet and critic’s learned yet down-to-earth prose.
Here, Nobel laureate Heaney (Electric Light, 2001, etc.) takes us on a tour of his intellectual concerns over the course of three decades. Culled from three past collections, including The Redress of Poetry (1995), as well as journals, newspapers, and lectures, the pieces tend to fall into three categories: autobiography, poetry, and politics. No matter the topic, however, Heaney retains the style, focus, and metaphors that make his verse so popular. His writing is always rooted in the everyday, as when he compares memory to village wells and bogs of Ireland, which preserve the sacrificial bodies of men dumped in them. At times these passages may give pause to the reader lacking an English degree. He comments of T.S. Eliot’s images, for example, “They are not what I at first mistakenly thought them: constituent parts of some erudite code available to initiates.” More complicated passages like these, which may beg re-reading, still make their mark because Heaney makes readers feel they are being included in such a welcoming and warm lesson. Some will grow tired of his conservative close readings, no doubt. Whether analyzing Sylvia Plath or Robert Burns, he takes an exacting, line-for-line approach that isn’t as flashy as more recent critical schools. But Heaney is a poet first, and his critical technique reflects his interests as a writer. He is less daunting when discussing the situation in his native Northern Ireland. There he describes the conflict between Catholics and Protestants from the perspective of the victimized citizenry, never as an aloof academic.
A must for poets and students of poetry and a good start for initiates seeking to understand the constituent parts of its erudite codes.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-374-15496-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
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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