Slim and scattered, but tasty, even exotic: a good supplement to Camille Paglia’s Break, Blow, Burn (2004), which delves...
Brief, illuminating journalistic pieces on poetry written for the Washington Post Book World over the last several years by poet and critic Hirsch (The Demon and the Angel, 2001, etc.).
For Hirsch, poetry is a conversation: with other poets, with history, with language, with cultures in restless movement. It puts us in touch with our daily doses of suffering, disaffection and alienation, as he notes in the introduction. Most helpfully, these short essays elucidate the life and work of poets little known, and translated with difficulty: e.g., from the German (Ernst Stadler, Nelly Sachs), Russian (Marina Tsvetaeva, Velimir Khlebnikov), Japanese (Ishikawa Takuboku), Serbian (Radmila Lazic), Slovenian (Edvard Kocbek), Hebrew (Aharon Shabtai, Yehuda Amichai) and Arabic (Palestinian Taha Muhammad Ali). Most comprehensively, they delve into Spanish-language poetry, including work by the author’s favorites, Pablo Neruda, Miguel Hernández and César Vallejo (whose compassionate voice holds particular relevance; Hirsch calls the Peruvian “a prophet pleading for social justice”). The collection sheds light on American poets who deserve more readers, such as the solitary George Oppen, and English poets obscure on these shores, such as John Clare and Charlotte Mew. Each of the essays contains excerpts from the poetry in question, although overall the selections are much too short to be satisfying. Some chapters present a theme, such as “The Poet as Mother” or “Sleep and Poetry” or “Baseball,” which all seem hasty and slapdash. Most of the final essays are paeans to contemporaries and friends.
Slim and scattered, but tasty, even exotic: a good supplement to Camille Paglia’s Break, Blow, Burn (2004), which delves more robustly into English-language poetry, and to Michael Schmidt’s scholarly The First Poets (2005), which treats the Greeks.Pub Date: April 3, 2006
ISBN: 0-15-101356-X
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2006
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
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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