With as much myth-making as metrical analysis, poet Hughes's diverse pieceswhether on Shakespeare, Sylvia Plath, war poetry, or Norse mythscohere into a provocative, bewitched view of poetry. In Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being (not reviewed), Hughes formulated a central, universal myth of multiply incarnated warring male (rational) and female (creative) deities. Here he employs a similar critical apparatus with the atavistic figure of the Shaman-poet, complete with initiation rites and ecstatic trances, to everything he reads. Dylan Thomas, Wilfred Owen, Yeats, Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, and Serbian poet Vasko Popa receive this unique treatment, and if it tends to level individual poetic talent, it heightens certain aspects in common, such as the formation of the imagination in conflict. The formation of Hughes's own poetic ideas unfolds in essays on the imagination, for and about children, and book reviews that absorb and transmute such subjects as ``primitive'' poetry, the ballad form, superstition, and environmentalism. Hughes's central myth, idiosyncratically exploiting Freud and Jung, views ``Westernized civilized man'' as ``the evolutionary error'' that has tried to suppress the Natural Goddess through rationality; specifically in England, he sees puritanical Protestantism ousting quasi-pagan Catholicism during the Reformation, and Britain finally losing its fables and mother tongue to Enlightenment neoclassicism. His themes unite in an extraordinary essay on Coleridge's conflicted imagination. This tour de force excursion through Coleridge's three famous visionary poems recasts his biography in a Shaman's mold while articulately examining his style and subject. Conversely, Hughes's essays about Sylvia Plath are sometimes strained, but those sparely and protectively written ones about her estate yield to a vivid reconstruction of the drafts of ``Sheep in Fog.'' Allowing for characteristic poetic license, the reader finishes Hughes's best pieces with a renewed understanding of poetryand a rekindled passion for it.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-13625-0
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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