The collection as a whole is whimsical, witty, apocalyptic, bold, revelatory, irreverent, visceral, horrific, and playful. At times, Hughes' poetic marriage of the earthy and the mystical reminded me of Walt Whitman. The book also calls to mind traditional Native American animal stories.

Many of the poems in "Crow" touch on the magic and power of words. The natural world is another key recurring motif. Hughes delivers some striking images and some interesting arrangements of words on the page--many poems really engage the eye. Many poems read like religious litanies. Overall, an impressive and enjoyable poetic achievement.

The stories create the atmosphere that one is sitting in one of the elderly story tellers living room listening to them.

This book is especially worthwhile for non-African-Amercians readers, because virtually all African-Americans that have roots in the south, know these stories all too well.

at their most effecftive, shamanistic rituals use p[hysical symbols to trigger and continue cycles of effect and reaction between the individual practitioner and the world-system as a whole. this book doesn't go into great depth in presenting the fundamental metaphysic of the native american heritage that fool's crow continued, but provides a rich and meticulously detailed account of demonstrations of its practice by a healer, teacher and leader.

this book may tempt immitators and pretenders; they might find themselves playing with fire. this volume should not be taken as a single source outside of the greater context of the heritage it celebrates and partially describes, but it can be a valuable supplementary resource for a careful student, or the agile and humble explorer.

The beauty of the traditional way of the Sioux is also captured in this book. Yet Fools Crow reaches to the heart of all people with the love he freely gives. Fools Crow's many gifts are laid out here - his healing ability, his compassion. It is made clear these are gift's that come from God, not man, and as are to be shared with all.

This charmingly illustrated children's book is perfect for youngsters of all ages, meaning the grown-ups who read it to the children will enjoy the tale and the telling as much as the little ones. Grown ups reading aloud may even break in to the song "Funiculi, funicula!" more than once!

Youngsters accustomed to hearing parents and grandparents split their speech with words from the old country will feel right at home in this fable. Consider that all the speaking parts in this fable belong to the animals, and they all live in Italy, of course, they'll sprinkle their exchanges with a bit of Italian. (Won't the grown ups delight in translating for the little ones!)

Even the rooster, who only has one word says it in Italian, "Chicchirichi!" Frankly, we've never heard a rooster crow in another language, but if they did, we're sure this is how they'd sound in Italian. (It's that willing-suspension-of-disbelief-thing, we ARE talking about a fable here!) But the best part of that rooster's cameo word is hearing Mom or Dad or a grandparent bringing the word to life, or life to the word and lighting up a child's face.

As the glossary at end of Andiamo, Weasel! explains, piccola is small. So the crow is small and needs the help of the weasel, who ends up being prodded by the title (Andiamo, Weasel!) and rarely succumbs to work after the corn crop is sown while they merrily sing "Funiculi, funicula!"

This fable works on many levels, one of which for the children reading it is to learn that hard work will be rewarded, and that even though they might be small, or piccola, they probably are much stronger than they realize and should stand up for what's right.

As interesting and fun as is the story, I could see reading this aloud and pausing to point out the rich detail capturing the Tuscan farm country. The piccolo crow wears a flower in her straw hat; the weasel wears a neckerchief (as if he could just as easily hold up the next stage coach!) that he later wears around his broken leg when there is work to be done. In the menacing rain corn husks like vipers whirl in the wind under dark clouds.

The piccolo crow enlists the help of a wolf to frighten the weasel into doing the right thing. The wolf could have been drawn to be more scary and imposing a figure - but let's not upset the friends of the wolves in the world. And the tenor frightened off the bandstand by the piccolo crow - why was he a fat, balding man with a handlebar mustache? Ooh fah!

But these minor points are no reason that you shouldn't run out now and buy a copy of Andiamo, Weasel! for every tot you know, from 1 to 101 years old. It's the stuff of which memories are made.

And quite frankly, it might not be a bad idea for adults to read, and think about the things that they want out of life.

I've heard that he does have other books coming out and I can't wait to read them. As the Crow Falls is a masterpiece. Off the wall, but brilliant.

This book is about many things, but should be read mostly for the sake of experiencing Berry's really fine writing. It is the story of Jayber's unrequitted love for a married woman, Mattie Chatham. It is a fictional memoir about faith, loss, farming, and finding one's place in the world. "I will have to share the fate of this place," Jayber writes about his declining community. "Whatever happens to Port William happens to me" (p. 143). It is also about bearing witness to dying farms and small businesses.

Jayber's memoir is filled with page after page of profound insights. For instance, about growing old and loss he writes: "I whisper over to myself the way of loss, the names of the dead. One by one, we lose our loved ones, our friends, our powers of work and pleasure, our landmarks, the days of our allotted time. One by one, the way we lose them, they return to us and are treasured in our hearts. Grief affirms them, preserves them, sets the cost. Finally a man stands up alone, scoured and charred like a burnt tree, having lost everything and (at the cost only of the loss) found everything, and is ready to go" (p. 353). Examining marriage, Jayber says: "I saw too how a marriage, in bringing two people into each other's presence, must include loneliness and error. I imagined a moment when husband and wife realize that their marriage included their faults, that they do not perfect each other, and that in making their marriage they also fail it and must carry to the grave things they cannot give away (pp. 193-4). About the pace of modern life, he observes: "The people are in an emergency to relax. They come for the peace and quiet of the great outdoors. Their eyes are hungry for the scenes of nature. They go very fast in their boats. They stir the river like a spoon in a cup of coffee. They play their radios loud enough to hear above their motors. The look neither left nor right. They can't slow down" (p. 331).

Although somber in tone, Jayber's story reveals that wonders do happen in life. Jayber learns we live our lives with questions, the answers to which must be lived out "perhaps a little at at time" (p. 54), or which may take longer than a lifetime for us to find. "This is a book about Heaven," Jayber explains. "I know it now. It floats among us like a cloud and is the realest thing we know and the least to be captured, the least to be possessed by anybody for himself. It is like a grain of mustard seed, which you cannot see through the crumbs of earth where it lies. It is like a reflection of the trees on the water" (p. 351). This book is Berry at his best, and one of the best novels I've read this year.

G. Merritt

Borrowing thematically from Mark Twain's "Huckelberry Finn," "Jayber Crow" is a twentieth-century version of an American everyman's journey of understanding and self-acceptance. Twice orphaned Jayber Crow never makes much money, never owns his own home, never marries. Yet this gentle self-made spiritual giant who savors his life while trimming men's hair truly loves his Kentucky home of Port William. Crow is a living embodiment of a Jeffersonian sensibility towards land; the protagonist extols the linkage between a respectful, near-reverential stewardship of the natural world and a sense of human fulfillment and grace. Berry's Kentucky is not a cliched Arcadia. Nature is often unpredicatable and tormenting. What redeems and renews the relationship between humans and land is respect, modesty and connectedness, three qualities Jayber Crow exemplifies his entire life.

It is not an accident that the man Crow admires more than any other, Athey Keith, epitomizes man's symbiotic, custodial relationship with the living earth. Nor is it accidental that the person who most tries Jayber's belief in the human condition, Troy Chatham, represents not only human cupidity, but alienation from and exploitation of the natural world.

Berry's physical descriptions of water, earth, plants, animals and climate are sensual delights, lushly detailed and enormously evocative. Place mingles with the idea of home; the physical absorbs the spiritual; the specific event gains universal significance. Because Berry imposes a modesty on Jayber Crow, readers discern a profound compassion for human frailties and a renewed faith in the imperative of connection. The novel is at its best when Berry reveals our common needs and drives for attachment: to our spiritual essence, to our brothers and sisters, and to our fragile, forgiving planet.

Echoing Serwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio," Berry's novel also selects a common man to serve as the unspoken but ackowledged subliminal repository of a town's secrets and identity. Jayber Crow, unassuming barber, shares and shapes the identity of Port William, either through his ministrations to men's hair, as gravedigger or as church sweeper. Regardless, the people of his community reveal themselves to him, and Crow perceives them as eminently human, flawed, incomplete and wonderful. The author's ability to represent the masaic of our national character through the people who form the boundaries of Jayber Crow's life is simply extraordinary. Nowhere is Berry's hopes for our national survival better manifested than through his depiction of Mattie Athey Chatham. Under the author's skilled handling, Mattie evolves far past a love interest into a symbol of redemption and reconciliation.

Wendell Berry holds an esteemed position as an interpreter of who we are, what we believe and what we hope to represent. "Jayber Crow" cements Berry's reputation as a celebrant of our democracy.

One very interesting aspect of Moore's plotlines during this period is how Swamp Thing himself often falls into the background of the stories, as the focus is on the horrors around him, and he makes dramatic Lone Ranger-like appearances to save the day. Even in "The End" Swampy is a minor presence, action-wise, then defeats the force of darkness simply by reasoning with it rather than fighting. In this collection's first tale, "Windfall," Swamp Thing only appears on one page, and the focus of the story is a psychedelic fruit that grew on his back. During this period of the series, things were changing artistically, as regular artists Stephen Bissette and John Totleben were often overworked or unavailable. Here Stan Woch and Ron Randall really make their presence felt, especially in the most tremendous story of this stretch, "The Parliament of Trees." This concept is surely inspired by Tolkein, and in turn I bet that Woch and Randall's visual creations were an influence on the producers of the recent "Two Towers" film. By the end of this collection Moore and his great team of artistic collaborators continue to teach us about the deep roots of the Swamp Thing character, and he's not yet done learning himself.

A Murder of Crows lures you in gently with three stand-alone stories that are reminiscent of Tales From the Crypt, but scarier because they are the quiet kind of horror that gradually build to frightening heights. From there you're launched headfirst into the muck of the massive 'Crisis' crossover DC used in the '80s to clean out its proverbial junk room of convoluted plots and multiple Supermans (There were somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 at the time), only your mind is not in the least bit boggled. Moore keeps things tidy (Plotwise anyway, some of this stuff is not for the squeamish) and the characters to a minimum so you always know what's going on with who and where. The depth he is able to go into as he bounces you from South American cults to British seances to Under-World War III will amaze you. For those Hellblazer fans out there, John Constantine's presence provides some serious magic of the non-Harry Potter variety as well as some wonderfully snarky commentary to lift the gloom a little.

You'll smirk, you'll cringe, you'll shudder and squirm.

You won't have a read you'll have an experience.

James O'Barr went through so much despair and sorrow during the writing of this book. And to think that something so beautiful and tear-jerking could come from his pain adds a more realness to it.

I've read this book about 4 times through and each time I read it, I fall more in love with it. The imagery the words create, the harsh- edged strokes from the pictures themselves, and the meaning behind the story, are what makes"The Crow" so magnificant

Sweet Hearts encompasses several generations of family history in compact prose. Thon mercifully provides a map of Montana and a family tree to help the reader keep track of the cast of characters. The characters' speech is also compact, demonstrating the strained communication among this family.

For the first fifty pages or so, my heart broke about once per page. An image, a turn of phrase, a single word would capture the bleakness inherent in these character's lives. I think that was necessary to open the reader up to the story, to prepare for what's to come.

This is a demanding novel in a number of ways. Most of all, the ending asks the reader to forgive the unforgivable. You can't just read this book as an intellectual exercise--you need to let it take you where it goes, to find compassion for all the characters. It is by no means easy or light reading, but I found it entirely rewarding. This book is worth all the effort.