Like so many other prose writers, sf eminence Le Guin appears to regard verse as an opportunity to run amok—she abandons narrative, syntax, and punctuation for glib nursery rhymes and a mythopoeic beat: "sun dance/ stone dance/ bone dance/ one dance." Sometimes this can have the inadvertent appeal of the work of a talented child: "Let me go sideways sideways/ Let me go sideways shifty Lord/ there is doors Lord doors/ opening sideways." Or: "God's stomach/ rumbles like a drum/ when I jump on it/ when I dance on his chest he snores/when I dance on his gut he farts. . . ." Not all these poems are quite so boisterously runic; some quietly describe country walks, Celtic ruins—or moments of self-reflection: "At a quarter to fifth the clock struck/ Lost, lost in a sweet voice,/ Lost so many times/ that I lost count, and so believed,/ and came to live in the house of grief." Now and again, welcomely, the good writer prevails over the inept poet—but these occasions are too rare to redeem the volume as a whole.
Pub Date: March 1, 1981
ISBN: 0060908483
Page Count: 108
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1981
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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