Cicadas by Ann O. Squire

I loved the book. It was just what I needed. I had ordered the book for a child and the pictures were good, too Thank you. The author did a great job.

Cecily Cicada by Kita Hlmetag Murdock and Patsy Helmetag Murdock

What a sweet and wonderful book. The rhythm of the text is so very pleasant to hear, and the words are so delicately chosen. The illustrations are textural watercolors. They are lively and colorful and a perfect complement to the fun text.

I was inspired to buy this book as a result of the recent emergence of the 17-yr cicadas where I live. After seeing them in my yard, and watching them hatch from their shells in their lovely brilliance, it is hard not to appreciate these critters as they follow their destiny.

This books celebrates the life cycle of the cicadas – and symbolically the cycle of life for every being. I highly recommend this book!!

Cicada Summer by Andrea Beaty

11-year-old Lily has a secret she has to protect at all costs, which is easy because she doesn’t talk anymore. This sweet story tackles heavy topics–guilt, crime, grief–but also has a good dose of humor in some parts. I liked it, but I can’t say that anything in particular stood out to me as great.

Listening to the Cicadas: A Study of Plato’s Phaedrus (Cambridge Classical Studies) by G. R. F. Ferrari

For twenty-five hundred years we assumed Phaedrus was a badly put together dialogue, an early work, a botched job. Only recently have we decided to take a different tack and think about it as though it were a Masterwork. This is probably the result of literary criticism which places Phaedrus, on the basis of it’s literary similarity to other works of that period, not at the beginning of Plato’s career, but at the end of the middle period when he was at the height of his powers. It seems ironic that a book that claims that one of the deficiencies of writing is a book’s inability to defend itself against misinterpretation should suffer such a fate.

When we assume that the Phaedrus is well written and the author is cogent, then we get commentaries on it like this one that takes the imagery, myth and eroticism of the Phaedrus seriously and explicate it brilliantly. Ferrari covers all the various aspects of the Phaedrus, showing that the parts do make a consistent whole, even a beautiful and profound one. Plato’s aim is to show how rhetoric and philosophy differ from each other, as do their practitioners. This he does by having the two interlocutors present three speeches and then speak about the speeches. The speeches are about love, authentic and inauthentic.

What Plato does in Phaedrus cannot be called psychology, it must be called psychomythology. The problem is to comment without demythologizing (Socrates denounces demythologizing as activity for the wise man with nothing better to do). Rather, Ferrari respectfully explicates the myth as myth (unlike Pirsig in Zen and Motorcycle Maintenance), achieving a clarity and fertility of interpretation that is very persuasive. It has to be persuasive because in the end he takes on Jacques Derrida and his famous interpretation of Phaedrus “Plato’s Pharmacy” (In his book “Dissemination”).

Because of the profoundity of its subject matter, this book is no easy read. But Ferrari helps us out by avoiding academese and writing in a clear, even elegant style. One seldom reads a book so completely satisfying as this one

Cicada by Mark Nickels

In a poem entitled “Shells,” Mark Nickels says, “I’ve been praying without knowing it.” In this we catch an intimation of his poetry’s incantatory power and synthesizing force. However, what we cannot guess from this quote is the massive grandeur that comes through even his shortest of poems. With a sweep like a Mahler symphony, it is hard to quote his work in brief, although, at times, his poems have beautifully quotable lines, such as, “The oranges are a refinement of everything the dirt knows.”

The mystical undercurrent of his work comes to us under the peculiar banner of the confessional. Unlike other poets whose mystical explorations are distanced by scholarship or stylization, or are simply a cultural impulse, Nickels’ interest is from natural affinity, which means from the most personal point of view. It is this fusion of a confessional voice with a natural mystical affinity that I find unique to his poetry. It is as if self-examination discovered the universal at its center. For instance, he opens the poem “Ludlow Café,” with the line, “A voluptuary of unknowing, I huddle/in a vast wool coat.” I can think of no other poet who conjures such an image, it’s as if the anonymously written mystical text “The Cloud of Unknowing” had actually been authored by Oscar Wilde. A witty tack to take, but also quite profound.

Consequently, the speakers of Nickels’ enchanting poems shift and change, as in his poem “Cicada” where the speaker, in one section, is in the present, and in another section, is in the year 1669 untying a woman’s bodice. Or, time itself shifts as in “Astor Place Opera House Riot” or “Spiral Maneuver” where the poet tells us,

. . . last Tuesday
rhymes with the same day
in 1124, because the moment
is adjacent, contiguous to the other
on a clear, winding helix of days.

Here we find another theme peculiar to Nickels-at least, peculiar for a modern poet-for in spite of his obvious fascination for the multiplicity of things, he does not share the modern faith in the fragmentary.

In “Waterfall Effect,” he tells us, “A poem is a record of the way the world rhymes with itself.”

Certainly in a world which the poet George Oppen called, “The shipwreck of the singular” we need to hear the message that, in fact, the world rhymes with itself, and we have a record of that rhyming in Nickels’ poetry: musical, mystical and integral.

The Cicada’s Song: A Novel by Matthew V. Johnson Sr

As a student of African American History, I consider Cicada’s Song to be a classic piece of literature on social life among African Americans, particularly in the South. Dr. Johnson’s unique portrayal of life in the African American community touches upon all facets of life, i.e., family, religion, hopes, tragic losses, and aspirations of humanity. Having read this book, I believe that Dr. Johnson’s work sheds some needed light on particular social conventions and attitudes, which are often considered taboo in the South. I highly recommend this book to all persons who desire to be entertained, informed, and inspired.

The cicada by Ross E Hutchins

This book was designed for younger readers but educates both the child and the adult about the life cycle of the 17 year cicada (Magicicada). It is nicely illustrated by Arvis L. Stewart for anyone who has an eye for fine details. If you want to learn the basics about the cicada, then this is a must read for you. For the book explains the hardships of the insect’s nymphal life, it enemies, and about its brief existence above the ground. The author also explains some of his scientific notes as the book’s conclusion as well as explaining the “Brood” which the book’s story evolves. I first read this book at the age of 11 which opened my eyes and ears to summer’s little tree musicians. Up until then, I never truly knew what they were or what those odd shells were that I found clinging to the side of tree trunks. Had I never found this book in my local library, I would have probably never gave a second thought to nature’s best orchestra.