Review: A Whale’s Tale
Combining fiction with zoological information, in A Whale’s Tale, Daniel S. Janik explores the undersea world of the Pacific Humpback whale. The book is described on the back as a “Read-Aloud, Color-Me-Please Book.” It follows a particular whale from his birth until he begins his own family. The idea for this book is a noble one: to interest children in the natural world through a character with whom they can identify. The narrative, however, could pose problems for young readers, whether they’re reading it themselves or listening to an adult. Some of the...
Read MoreReview: Chansons of a Chinaman
As he writes in the poem “The Calm Clam,” poet Changming Yuan yearns “to be a voice empowered / For all around me.” In his collection, Chansons of a Chinaman, he strives “To translate my loud pain / Into a muted pearl,” to reconcile his Chinese ancestry and his American life. To do so, Yuan, whose work has appeared in Wild Violet, draws from history, mythology and natural imagery. In natural images he finds personal comfort and resonance, as demonstrated in the poem “Name Changing.” Here, he defends his choice not to Anglicize his name, which...
Read MoreReview: A Tiara for the Twentieth Century
Write what is hardest to say, my poetry instructor in grad school used to urge us, and Suzanne Richardson Harvey does precisely that. In A Tiara for the Twentieth Century: The Collected Poems of Suzanne Richardson Harvey, the poet tackles subjects ranging from motherhood, family relationships and aging to bulimia, AIDS and homelessness. Whether approaching a big issue (such as the aftermath of Chernobyl in “The Wheat Fields of Chernobyl”) or celebrating small marital moments (in “The Merits of Dining at Home”), her phenomenal word choice enables her to find the...
Read MoreReview: Dig Up My Gold
By the time anyone has reached 70 to 80 years of age, he or she will have accumulated a wealth of stories. At some point, a friend or family member is likely to suggest, “You ought to write a book.” Of all those people with interesting stories, only about 10 percent probably have anything worth writing about, and only a fraction of them are capable of turning their stories into a worthwhile book. I say this by way of explaining why so many memoirs — especially those which are independently or self-published — tend to fall flat. In Arthur Birkby’s case, he does relate...
Read MoreReview: Genuine Men
On the surface, Genuine Men: Journeys in Stories and Stills sounds like a promising project. Photographer Nancy Bruno set out to depict the lives of men from a variety of backgrounds and ages, and to share their views on what it means to be a real man. Unfortunately, for a book centered around photography, the portraits fail to impress. Considering that the photos are black-and-white, most are also low contrast, in an uninteresting palette of medum grays. The framing of these photos often fails to make sense, which could have been addressed during the print-making. All serious...
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