Poetry Books

I was intrigued and amused to see another reviewer say her children were obsessed with "Scranimals" -- because that's the same reaction we got with our kid!

Jack Prelutsky evidently knows the secret of how to captivate children, especially when teamed up with illustrators like Peter Sis. Nearly every Prelutsky book that enters our home gets the same treatment: fascination, amusement, and above all, lots of reading and re-reading.

One might say that this is not Prelutsky's most ingenious work, since it's basically a single concept stretched out into a series of variations, not all of which are equally clever. But there's more to it than that. The illustrations are compelling and fun. And much of the poetry is more highly-crafted than one might expect, given the silly first impression the book makes.

A great example is the description of the "Bananaconda" (that word alone always makes ME laugh!) in which the author slathers syballant syllables in silly sequences. I took the opportunity to point out to our first-grader how a poet describes things differently than other kinds of writers.

I then read it aloud to demonstrate that point, sssimply by exsstending each of the esses on the page. At that point, most kids can make the connection between the sound of the words, and their understanding of "S" as the sound made by a snake -- something many of them learn in preschool, if not earlier.

And of course those words were written ABOUT a snake. For a kid to learn that words can have multiple layers of meaning, and to learn that concept at such an early age... well, that's really something. And Prelutsky is one of the best at delivering that kind of depth, even when combined with utter silliness.

In short, Scranimals is definitely a worthy addition to any child's collection, at nearly any age.

During the story a boy and a girl went on a trip the Scranimal Island. They saw a lot of animals such as the RHINOCEROSE, a group SPINACHICKENS, a caravan of CAMELBERTA PEACHES, a lonely POTATOAD, one CARDINALBACORE, couple of HIPPOPOTAMUSHROOMS, talkative PARROTTERS, a sweet PORCUPINEAPPLE, fierce BROCCOLIONS, a nimble ANTELOPETUNIA, an unsuccessful STORMY PETRELEPHANT, content TOUCANEMONES, then the vicious RADISHARK, a yellow BANANACONDA, the fast OSTRICHEETAH, a shy PANADAFFODIL, and the playful MANGORILLA and his friend the ORANGUTANGERINE. The extinct AVOCADODO wasn't smart, strong, or fast, it is no wonder you are extinct.
This book is my favorite picture book because all the animals were mixed up. The craziest animal was the PORCUPINEAPPLE because it was cute and the poem was funny.

My daughter says: "This book is lovely and funny" ... "it makes me smile because it is fun. I love reading this book with my mum."

This book is anything but traditional. Scranimals by Jack Prelutsky is a book that allows its readers to be silly. A book of poetry that describes different mythical creatures that live on "Scranimal Island". I think this book is especially good for the present day kid because a child is constantly forced to conform in everyday life; conform to rules, chores, school work, etc. This book goes outside the box and challenges there imaginations with animals that are clearly a fantasy, but they enter this world of make believe and can leave the compliance behind.

During the story a boy and a girl went on a trip the Scranimal Island. They saw a lot of animals such as the RHINOCEROSE, a group SPINACHICKENS, a caravan of CAMELBERTA PEACHES, a lonely POTATOAD, one CARDINALBACORE, couple of HIPPOPOTAMUSHROOMS, talkative PARROTTERS, a sweet PORCUPINEAPPLE, fierce BROCCOLIONS, a nimble ANTELOPETUNIA, an unsuccessful STORMY PETRELEPHANT, content TOUCANEMONES, then the vicious RADISHARK, a yellow BANANACONDA, the fast OSTRICHEETAH, a shy PANADAFFODIL, and the playful MANGORILLA and his friend the ORANGUTANGERINE. The extinct AVOCADODO wasn't smart, strong, or fast, it is no wonder you are extinct.
This book is my favorite picture book because all the animals were mixed up. The craziest animal was the PORCUPINEAPPLE because it was cute and the poem was funny.

One of the reasons we read is to remind us we are not ordinary. We are beautiful, complex, brilliant, and flawed at any given moment. Mary takes us deep into the parts of humanity we crave: the excitment of desire, the edge of fear, the loveliness of sorrow, the pull of longing, the danger of love, the disconnects...
She captures us with unique images and strong language and moves us toward a greater understanding of ourselves. Those of us who are seaching creativity are inspired.
We're all connected on this path--if only in imagination

Mary utilizes colorful phraseology in her deep and passionate verse. Her contemporary style evokes promise unlike those in similar fashion. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys avant-garde, thought inspiring poetry.

When reading Ms. Eastham's poetry I'm reminded of an impressionist or expressionistic painting. She uses words like an artist uses color. At times the ideas are clear and recognizable coming clearly into focus but more often this artist is not spelling out every detail for the reader. One has to use their imagination, creativity and experience as a human being here. These ideas take a moment to penetrate and sometimes require multiple readings in order to establish a connection. It's definitely an interesting read, one that will give you pause for thought.

Lovely, lovely words and feelings, images and emotion. Amazing writer you are, Mary. What an imagination and talent you have for moving your reader on a deep level.

"When asked to describe her childhood, she said it was like riding a bicycle through sand." Ahhhhhhh. Perfection.

Kissing Harrison sent me on a journey of emotion that comes from rich and authentic details. In the end, I ached for her lost love. Same with the title poem. Beauty, too. Loss and love, the two thematic threads tie the book together. Universal, thus evocative.

Undertones, deliberate? or not? hint at deeper themes. A man can't give her what she wants because another woman has already stolen his heart. hmmmmmmm

To love and to lose. Mary's book leaves me determined to live fully in love while thumbing my nose at the impending loss...

What a joy to find this book. Ms. Eastham has found the words for her heart. This is a lovely, special book of poetry that anyone who has thought they were living life will be surprised by. It touches in deep corners.

"Silver Pennies" was my elementary school poetry book filled with whimsical and delightful imagery of fairies and natural surroundngs. Compiled in two sections, Part I for first through fourth graders and Part II for fifth and sixth graders, many of the poems can be memorized. Others are wonderful for bedtime reading by a grown-up. The poems have charm and sensitivity to the world of children's imagination and speaks of a simpler time when we stopped to hear the fairies.

When Silver Pennies by Blanche Jennings Thompson was first published by The MacMillan Company in 1926, this beautiful collection of poetry for children was bound in cloth imprinted with the silhouette of a small child reaching up to the heavens towards a cascade of silver stars. The current publisher who claims a 1976 copyright is aptly named Buccaneer Books, for they have pillaged much of the charm of this book. The library cover is the dullest imaginable! For the price of this reprint, surely they could have reproduced the cover which so captured my imagination and that of so many other children in years past. I would have given this book all the stars in the world, had they kept those stars on the cover!

Silver Pennies has made terrific bedtime and quiet-time reading for our 3yo. The poems are short enough and entertaining enough to keep a little person's attention, and ours has already found some favorites.

After all the cutesy-wootsy, sanitized, dumbed-down kids' books I've read through, this is a delight.

Although the new cover looks more like a Book Of Shadows than a book of children's poems, the actual writing still has the charm of the original. Beautiful, optimistic, sentimental...a lovely trip back to what was good in my childhood.

A dear old friend gave this book (1952 ed) to me ten years ago. I was only 22 years old then and much to busy for poetry. She died a few years later. For ten years, I didn't pay it much mind. Then I had my first child and began to search among my books for poems that would be good to read at bedtime. To my delight, I rediscovered Silver Pennies. What a find! My husband and I read from it every night and our little 2 year old loves it. It's become almost a ritual at our house. I know my son doesn't understand all words, but the poems have a beauty all their own and he must appreciate it. I've read my favorites such as The Faithless Flowers, Rain in the Night, and Water Noises so many times that they're now committed to memory. I probably know at least a dozen of the poems by heart, which has been a real delight to my son when we are traveling or camping out and don't have books to read or light to read by. I just recite them to him in the dark -- he loves it and drifts off to sleep every time. My husband and I will always treasure this little book.

This review is long overdue. I was given this book by a mentor of mine in high school, fourteen years ago and have always kept it safe and reread it at least once a year. She has a very special place in my thoughts. Without her, I would not have written several poems of my own. I can relate to what the words are said here in this book. Sometimes I wanted what the pages describe to everyone who reads this book. Finally after years, I found that Special Someone and know that I am Something to Someone.

Javan,
I enjoy your books. I am looking forward to more. If you would increase the size of the letters and make them a little darker that would make it as comfortable to the eyes as it is to the mind. When a person goes through their second childhood ,as I am ,one doesn't see as well as the first time they read your books.

Thank you,
Harold Phillips

"At the end of each day
We should be
One step closer
To what we should be"

The pages are unnumbered and there are no titles. The pages like shadows of rippling water in a beautiful pond or dry desert sands blown across a vast escape are classically arranged and present poetic musings of a deep heartfelt nature.

The third poem is a profound start to a book of pure poetic longing. Javan expresses his inner turmoil over life's paradox. He expresses his need to seek balance between two extremes.

"For while some people have
A shoulder to cry on
It is the destiny of others
That they must cry alone"

A few poems are a prayer and others resemble a poet growing through changing life circumstances. The wisdom from a life well lived all while fighting the human condition and realizing the need for human connection.

Javan is a sensitive soul touched by beauty and he expresses his thoughts in poems that read like beautiful gifts from the heart. Now and then you meet someone amazing who sends you a poetry book of great meaning. "Something to Someone" is a beautiful gift where your soul can grow. Thank you!

~The Rebecca Review

These books have helped me through every difficult situation I have encountered. I am amazed that I can re-read them over and over and still be moved by the emotion and sincerity in the words. This is the best set of books I have ever owned.

I received this book among the four-book set of Javan's poetry as a Christmas gift in 2003 and didn't put them down until I was finished reading each of them. Then I read them again...and again...
The poetry within Javan's pages is elegant in its simplistic nature. Instead of intrepreting each with your mind, as with those of the more formal, literary (cold?) genre, you will find that you read them in the format intended - translated with the heart.
Sometimes it is in the simple that one finds the genius of something and I found this particular philosophy easy to think while reading Javan's verses.
I can understand the appeal of his books to a wide audience because Javan's are very open, honest and the life topics written about, apply to everyone - regardless of gender or station in life - never leaving a hint of bitterness in the afterthought of reading.
The story of Javan's journey to publishing sucess (located at is web site) is also interesting and inspiring.
I recommend any of the four books written by Javan, especially to any who never before thought they would enjoy reading poetry. Check out the prices of each book - they can't be beat and are well worth the value!

Jane Butkin Roth's book of poetry is wonderful. It reminds me of all the stages that I went through in my own divorce. Each poem shares a certain vantage point of those difficult and wonderful times. The poets know how to express their thoughts and emotions in such simply beautiful ways. I highly recommend it!

I'm hardly an unbiased observer, as the author is my younger sister. But Jane Butkin Roth has created a wonderful compilation of poems by women who have gone through the experience of divorce. As one might expect, the voices are diverse--some painful, some humorous, some terribly sad, others with a note of relief--yet all convey an intensity and an honesty not often found. I think this is probably the best single book out there for women who may be contemplating or going through a divorce.

This book is a far cry from the "male bashing" that one might expect. I found many of the poems poignant and uplifting. Divorce, like life, is not all black and white/good and evil. This book does a good job of demonstrating the many complex layers of divorce. What I liked best about this book is that each poem gives insight not only to divorce, but also gives a snapshot history of each marriage which allows the reader to care about the authors. I have bought several copies of WE USED TO BE WIVES as gifts for friends going through the divorce process and would recommend it to all going down this path on the way towards a new life.

As a family lawyer, for many years I listened to women who were getting a divorce.I wish I could have given a copy of this book to each of them. I think it would have brought them comfort and assured them that they were not truly as alone as they sometimes felt.I know that's what it will do for readers who are going through a divorce today.

Even though as a happily married man, I'm not exactly the target audience, I loved "We Used To Be Wives." It is a beautifully crafted book from cover to cover that is touching, disturbing, and uplifting all at the same time. Although some of the poems have a harsh, ugly edge to them, they end on a note of hope or beauty and even humor. And that's what I loved about the book. By helping heal the wounds of divorce, "We Used To Be Wives" grows hope out of ugliness and despair.

I have already shared this book at my Book Club, at a women's retreat, and with friends. What a joy to read.

this book is so lovely I only wish I had the means to give as a gift to all my most cherished friends. Mary Oliver has certainly given it to us. I lived 7 years in Provincetown, read clips in the newspaper and NEVER knew she also lived there...somewhere, tucked into a niche of beauty. Ms. Charley Stites

I really don't know much about poetry, except that I like that it seems to be less fettered by rules. I like it for its rhythms and possibility and for its hope. A friend showed me a poem of Mary Oliver's this spring, This Morning I Watched the Deer, and I thought more people will read poetry if they are shown this poem.

It's Mary Oliver. What else can I say? Her poems, along with those of David Whyte, provide comfort, consolation, encouragement, and thrills as I meander through my days.

Savoring Mary Oliver's poems bring me joy, they are a respite from the news of our times and a balm to my soul. The theme throughout this book is to pay attention, to stop and watch and be amazed.

Look and See
This morning, at waterside, a sparrow flew
to a water rock and landed, by error, on the back
of an eider duck; lightly it fluttered off, amused.
The duck, too, was not provoked,but, you might say, was
laughing.

This afternoon a gull sailing over
our house was casually scratching
its stomach of white feathers with one
pink foot as it flew.

Oh Lord, how shining and festive is your gift to us, if we
only look, and see.


Last night I attended a talk at The Wisconsin Book Festival by Rick Bass and Terry Tempest Williams. Their theme was to not only pay attention to the wonders of nature, but to pay attention to what is happening to it, local warming, the lack of water in the West, the disruption of migration patterns and habitat. Pay Attention.

I originally got this book at the library and my son loved it so I decided to buy the book instead of checking it out all the time. The book seems very scary at first but it has a great ending.

Wolf's Coming is just about the perfect scary story for little children. They ask for it over and over. Wolf is stalking through the woods while all the other animals are sneaking around, whispering cautiously to be aware. The conclusion is a surprising delight, yielding big smiles of relief and laughter. Don't miss this gem!

This book starts out scary with the big, bad wolf and then turns into something really cute. The simple rhyming on each page made it fun for my daughter to memorize. We originally borrowed this from the library (and read it daily for 2 weeks) and then returned it and the next day I heard her in her room reciting it to her animals so we had to buy our own copy.

Wolf's Coming has simple rhyming couplets with strong graphics and a suspenseful storyline. The book is my son's favorite and he now shouts out the lines on cue. We love this book and will purchase our own copy after the library copy's returned!

You'll howl with delight! From cover to cover "Wolf's Coming!" is filled with fun colorful characters and a story that builds with suspense in each turn of the page. My little book reviewer gives it two thumbs up! Great book.

This Bradley Hathaway book and CD are amazing. He is so real. I love it!

This book is cool because it comes with a cd combo. You can really feel the emotions when listening to Bradley read his prose. Highly recommend if you are a fan of indie poetry or just looking for something to listen to that inspires you. He talks about his faith in a way unlike most ive heard. its raw, its deep and it captures your attention.

There are no words for this book. Bradley Hathaway has captured the christian walk in a simple book of peoms.

Bradley's Book is absolutely amazing!!!!!!!!! I't is full of the honest truht about practicaly everything!!!!! I recomend this book for everyone ages from ages 1 to ages 1001!!!! It is deserving of your household and is calling your name... It opens the eyes to the simple beauty of God and his creations... You should buy it!!!!!!!!!!!

This book/cd is an excellent source of inspiration whether you are a Christian or not. Bradley's poems speak to the very basic issues that, I dare say, all of us encounter. From the need for a hug (my personal favorite) to the issue of what it means to really be a man.

The book is an excellent way to explain where the poems came from and a little more about what they mean. The book creates a context for the poems that help people understand the poems and not jump to conclusions about what Bradley "really" meant.

This book/cd offers an enjoyable collection of honest, insightful, and sometimes satirical, poems that will make you laugh, cry, and think.

I found the Poetry leaping off the pages
at me as the Poet so vividly describes them. They were
so real and descriptive, true to life. I found them honest,
dark and religouse.

I was so taken by the reality and true to life poems
that I have read in American poems an short stories.
Author has a way of cutting through the core, and
delivering them right to your heart, The poems I
read have inspired me to now start to write.
Besides my husband says im good.

American Poems hit right into my soul very moving and touching, the poet brings it to life. I found it true poetic
beauty

THE POETRY WAS LIKE SHADOWS OF OURSELVES.
ALWAYS THERE NEVER LEAVING,POETIC, VERSATILE
TRUE TO LIFE. LIKE A SHADOW THAT LURKS FOR
THE LIGHT. MOVING TOUCHING AND ALWAYS THERE.

I found the Poetry very Patriotic, There is no doudbt the Poet is tuned into the soul, Poetry that inspires the inner being of one self.

Enid Starkie's biography of Rimbaud, published nearly forty years ago, still stands as both the definitive narrative of Rimbaud's life and a model of literary biography.

Rimbaud was a rebellious, enigmatic, brilliant, and inscrutable poet who, in just four short years between the ages of sixteen and twenty, wrote the poetry which has made him a figure of mythic proportions, not only in French literature, but in the literature and history of Modernism. Starkie, in brilliantly lucid prose and with loving attention to every detail, tells Rimbaud's life story and connects that story to the writing of the poems and the evolution of Rimbaud's views on poetry and the task of the poet.

Influenced by his studies of Kabbalah, alchemy and illuminism, and writing in the long shadow of Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs du Mal", Rimbaud precociously enunciated his attack on the then dominant Parnassian school of French poetry at the tender age of sixteen. Starkie examines Rimbaud's original aesthetic doctrine in great detail; in her words, the poet must discover a "new language . . . capable of expressing the ineffable, a new language not bound by logic, nor by grammar or syntax." In Rimbaud's words, the "Poet" must make himself a "seer" by a "long, immense and systematic derangement of all the senses."

From this initial position, Starkie brilliantly details Rimbaud's turbulent relationship with Paul Verlaine and his descent into what one reviewer has aptly described as a "perpetual roister of absinthe, hashish and sodomy." Starkie painstakingly relates Rimbaud's poetry to his experiences with Verlaine in London and Paris. In particular, Starkie convincingly demonstrates, through careful exegesis of the poems and their correspondences with Rimbaud's letters and other biographical materials, that the "Illuminations" (perhaps Rimbaud's most brilliant poems) were written over several years preceding and following "Une Saison en Enfer". Starkie then goes on to demonstrate that the latter prose poems were hardly intended to be Rimbaud's "farewell to literature in general, but only to visionary literature." In other words, "Une Saison en Enfer" represents the rejection by Rimbaud of his original mind-bending iconoclasm--the liquidation "of all his previous dreams and aspirations"--in favor of a rational and materialist aesthetics. Of course, after completing "Une Saison en Enfer", Rimbaud's life moved in completely different directions and there is, unfortunately, no existing evidence that he continued his poetic endeavor after the age of twenty.

Starkie's biography captures the details of the remainder of Rimbaud's life--he died at the age of thirty-seven--with fascinating and attentive detail. And the remainder of his life, as related by Starkie, is a biography in itself--vagabond in Europe, sailor to the East Indies, gun runner and (slave?) trader in Abyssinia, and mysterious cult hero of the emerging French symbolist movement. Indeed, in 1888, more than fourteen years after Rimbaud's known literary career had ended, he received a letter from a prominent Parisian editor: "You have become, among a little coterie, a sort of legendary figure . . . This little group, who claim you as their Master, do not know what has become of you, but hope you will one day reappear, and rescue them from obscurity." Starkie scrutinizes all of these events with scrupulous attention to detail and accuracy.

This is truly a classic of literary biography! (One additional comment: Rimbaud's poetry and letters are quoted extensively in the original French. If you are not fluent in French, you should have Wallace Fowlie's English translation of Rimbaud's Complete Works and Selected Letters by your side as a reference.)

By the time Arthur Rimbaud had reached the age of nineteen, he had already composed dozens of fiery, visionary poems and prose pieces that shattered French concepts of style and content and exerted a vast influence over the role of the artist in the popular imagination. At twenty, however, he had burned many of his poems and had vowed never to write another line. He began to wander Europe and Africa, becoming a gunrunner, a slavetrader, a construction foreman. He was a rebel in the truest sense of the world and his motto could well have been "too fast to live, too young to die."

Rimbaud is a remembered for his outrageous behavior as much as for his amazing literary work. Drunk on absinthe, he would insult priests, other poets, casual passersby. He was both unkempt and anti-social, to say the least, but his influence on surrealism cannot be denied and such works as A Season in Hell have exerted tremendous influence over the literary community. Rimbaud's experimentation with language and with imagery is so astounding that the reader is left bewildered and amazed.

Rimbaud, in fact, established a new approach to writing. In a letter to a friend, dated 1871, he wrote, "the Poet makes himself a seer by a long, immense and systematic derangement of all the senses." Rimbaud's systematic derangement released all future poets from the bourgeois bonds of the good and evil of conventional morality. For the first time, perhaps, poets felt free to explore the powerful, unarticulated, subconscious regions of the mind. As Rimbaud, himself, wrote in "Alchemy of the Word," "I boasted of inventing, with rhythm from within me, a kind of poetry that all the senses, sooner or later, would recognize. And I alone would be its translator...I began it as an investigation. I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still." And so he did.

Enid Starkie, who devoted much of her life to the study of this fascinating young rebel, tells us that Rimbaud was disgusted by those who approached poetry as a hobby or a social activity only. These writers, he said, had the soul of a banker or and accountant. "The soul must be made monstrous." Rimbaud believed this with all his heart and he stated it in no uncertain terms. "I say the Poet is therefore truly the thief of fire!" Rimbaud, truly a man possessed of Promethean prowess and stature, also suffered endless torment. He was an outcast, rejected by society, but, though seemingly frail at times, he was really possessed of superhuman strength. It was this emotional strength that allowed him to produce poetry that was both astounding and lasting.

Starkie describes how Rimbaud, with his mentor and lover, the poet, Paul Verlaine, became the sensation of both Paris and London as he attacked and insulted poets of the day for, as he put it, murdering the language. He engaged in debauchery of the most astonishing kind, but it was a debauchery that led to a sublime state of artistic creativity seldom achieved.

Enid Starkie's biography is wonderful and eminently readable. It stands as the premier chronicle of Rimbaud's life and work. Anyone seeking to understand this complex young man and his equally complex work should read this book. It is, in fact, essential.

Although this is the only Arthur Rimbaud biography I've read, it seems to me very well-written and true to his life. Enid Starkie is perhaps the leading non-French expert scholar on Rimbaud and this long seminal work is very readable and comprehensive. I learned a lot about the life of the man who was one of my favorite poets in my teens. It's amazing when you consider that he wrote all his stuff before he was 20, and that he then suddenly stopped writing altogether. He became lost to literature in his quest to make money and become a successful business man (trader in Africa). One of the most intriguing things in the book is how it talks about "La Chasse Spirituelle" which Verlaine calls Rimbaud's masterpiece, and which has since been lost. I wonder what happened to this work, and it's a great pity that we will never be able to read it. One of the other many things I found interesting was that Rimbaud apparently changed his view on God when he was on his deathbed, as his relgiously devout sister Isabelle pleaded with him to be converted. The cocky and rebellious kid who tried to use alchemy and occult magic to become as powerful as God, who as a 16-year-old punk used to write (...) on the church door, was now in his late 30s a humble, broken, and resigned man who turned to God for comfort and salvation. That may have been important to the fate of his soul, but what is important to us is his written words. And even though Rimbaud only wrote for about 5 years of his life, his contribution to poetry is timeless.

(...)

The Enid Starkie biography is a moving and remarkable work. Nevertheless , it has some serious mistakes that the readers and mainly the lovers of Rimbaud must know. Starkie stained the memory of Rimbaud accusing him of having done slaves traffic. Detailed studies have proved that this was absolutely impossible. (You can read the books of Alain Borer, Graham Robb, Charles Nicholl...)
Starkie wants to show us a rimbaud that failed in Abyssinia. It seems that he deserved a punishment for having left the poetry. The truth is that Arthur Rimbaud was an excellent trader that made a little fortune.
A few moths ago I went to Charleville. There, the Rimbaud's museum has a place where important studies about Rimbaud are shown. In spite of the Starkie's play is very well-known, it has not earned a place there.

There is no doubt that Rimbaud presents a complex, almost contradictory metaphor for the life of the "Literary Voyant." He is embraced by various communities who identify with certain aspects or should I say phases of his life. I have read many essays, books, and bits and pieces on his life, poetry. As a lover of Rimbaud, I feel Starkie has captured the poet as no other. She looks into his mind and sees what others cannot see. This is the real Rimbaud, as real as we are ever going to know him. When I read this book, I always think of how Starkie closed her bio, with a little boat tossed drunkenly on the waves. Don't miss this book. It's what a literary biography should be, unbiased, thoughtful, and intelligent.