Review: A World Full of Poems

Selected by Sylvia M. Vardell

Illustrated by Sonny Ross

Available now from DK Children

Review copy

It can be easy to think of poetry as boring and stilted, though I think Amanda Gorman provided a recent reminder of the power and vitality of poetry. A World Full of Poems aims to introduce children to a range of poetry. Family and Friends, Feelings, Science and Art, and Body and Health are just a few of the topics covered.

In addition to the variety of content, the poetry is appropriate for very young children to elementary school children. (Though more lean to the very young side.) The authors come from many countries and represent several different ethnicities. There's classic poetry from Emily Dickinson and Robert Louis Stevenson next to new poetry by Linda Sue Park. Many different forms of poetry are represented, especially those that appeal to children. Shape poems, sound poems, silly rhymes. 

Sylvia M. Vardell is a professor of children's literature and clearly has a depth of knowledge in the field. Though I'm sure parents reading to their children will find poems they like collected within this anthology, these poems seem selected strictly for child appeal. The illustrations by Sonny Ross are also very child friendly. They're bright and bold and I'm sure many children will be captivated by a picture and drawn into the poem the picture was created to accompany.

Although A World Full of Poems is grouped into thematic categories, I think it is best encountered by browsing to random pages and reading a few poems at a time. I do have a few small quibbles. For instance, the Family and Friends section includes three poems that are specifically about fathers and none about mothers. Overall, however, I think this is a wonderful introduction to poetry for young readers.

There's also a helpful index as well as several activities included in the back.

Review: The First Free Women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns

Translated by Matty Weingast
Foreword by Bhikkhuni Anandabodhi
Available now from Shambhala
Review copy

The First Free Women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns is a new translation of selected poems from the Therigatha, or Verses of the Elder Nuns, a Buddhist religious text from about 80 BCE, written shortly after the life of Buddha. The women who wrote it had once been rich, poor, mothers, daughters, wives, sex workers, but all came to walk the Path and become Buddhist Nuns.

I have not read any prior translations of this text, though I am now curious about picking some up to compare the renditions. Weingast's goal, as laid out in his introduction, is not to provide an academic translation, but one that maintains the poetry of the originals for a contemporary audience. I appreciate that he is up front that this is a translation that takes liberties. He did consult the Buddhist Nun Bhikkhuni Anandabodhi (who wrote the foreword) in his work.

Though The First Free Women is a slim volume of less than 200 pages and most of the poems fill a mere fraction of the page, this work took me several nights to read. These are poems that spoke to me, and made me think. Few sophisticated literary techniques are used, but poetry can be plainspoken and still ignite the mind with its ambiguities.

I am not Buddhist, but I feel there was still much for me to find within these pages. These women are focused on their religious journey - how they came to it, whether they questioned it, their advice - but each poem offers a fascinating glimpse into their lives.

Weingast's introduction notes that Buddhist Nuns still aren't accorded the respect of Buddhist Monks and that they have had to fight for ordainment that sometimes isn't recognized. I do not know who could read these words and think women less than men. But I know the world, and I do not doubt it.

The First Free Women is a fascinating read, and I am quite glad it found me.

Review: Ghosting

By Edith Pattou
Available now from Skyscape (Amazon)
Review copy

I love Edith Pattou's young adult fantasy novels and I'm a big fan of novels in verse, so I couldn't resist giving GHOSTING a try.  It is a contemporary novel about the last night of summer before school starts again.  A group of (semi-) friends heads out: Emma, Maxie, Felix, Brendan, Chloe, and Anil.  There are also two more narrators: Emma's younger sister and a strange boy with a shotgun.

(Okay, and a few poems from the police chief.)

It's very obvious from the beginning of GHOSTING that something is going to go awry.  There's a building tension, right up to the point where it all explodes.  But there's also lots of little human moments between the six teens who are mostly just trying to have a little fun.  Even the cruel Brendan is very humanized.

Some might be put off by the free-verse format, but I think it is well done.  Most of the voices are pretty distinct, and the directness of the address works.  There's a clear logic to how a series of not-that-bad decisions lead to tragedy.  I will admit though that I felt the authorial strings at time.  The way Faith (the little sister) arrives on scene felt blatantly artificial.  And Walter (the boy with the shotgun) felt like a caricature, which was a shame given how deeply the other teens were drawn.

I think GHOSTING will appeal to fans of Ellen Hopkins and Laurie Halse Anderson.  It has a similar feel, both realistic and concerned with social issues.  I'd recommend GHOSTING for the upper YA range, given some of the violence in the novel.

48HBC Review: A Time to Dance

By Padma Venkatraman
Available now from Nancy Paulsen Books (Penguin Random House)
Review copy

Veda is a Bharatanatyam dancer in Chennai who has just won an important competition, one that could maybe convince her parents that she's serious about becoming a professional dancer.  A car wreck on the way home destroys her foot, and her leg is amputated below the knee.  Veda struggles to recover when she's offered the chance to join a medical trial and get an advanced prosthetic.

I know the barest bit of Bharatanatyam from my lessons on South Indian music.  Author Padma Venkatraman allowed me to visualize it, despite my unfamiliarity.  She describes the poses and feelings beautifully.  As Veda learns to dance again, she comes to a new understanding of the meaning of the dance.  The spiritual and religious meaning of Bharatanatyam is explored, as well as what that means for Veda and her own relationship with Shiva.

A TIME TO DANCE is told in verse (a wonderful form for describing dance).  However, Venkatraman's long, fluid lines read almost like prose.  This is not a book that will trip up a reader unfamiliar with or intimidated by poetry.

Dance is not the sole focus of A TIME TO DANCE.  Veda's family is very important to her, particularly her beloved Paati.  She struggles to hang out with her friends the same as she did before the accident, and doesn't know how to handle the overtures of friendship from her former dance rival.  She crushes on the doctor who gets her into the prosthetic trial and her new beginning dance teacher, who is her age.  Then, of course, there is Veda's relationship with her body.  She loved its strength, but she feels like she lost her beauty when she lost her old dancing ability.

I highly recommend A TIME TO DANCE.  Veda is a compelling heroine who undergoes a complicated personal journey, and Venkatraman's writing is gorgeous.  It's also an intriguing glimpse into another culture.

Note: It took me 50 minutes to read A TIME TO DANCE.  This review took me 15 minutes to write.

Review: Freakboy

By Kristin Elizabeth Clark
Available now from Farrar, Straus and Giroux BFYR (Macmillan)
Review copy

Kristin Elizabeth Clark certainly has ambition.  Her debut novel, FREAKBOY, tackles the gender spectrum - in verse.  I love novels in verse and I love novels that address LGBTQ issues.  I had very high hopes for FREAKBOY, which can be a bad thing for a book.  But I think Clark met her ambitions.

Brendan Chase is a fairly normal guy.  He's on the wrestling team (and isn't that good) and has a girlfriend (who is a better wrestler than him).  He loves Vanessa, knows that he likes girls in that way.  At the same time, he likes girls in another way.  But as he starts to explore his feelings, he also rejects the easy explanations.  Because being a guy doesn't feel wrong all the time.

His quest leads his path to intersect with Angel's.  She's got it pretty together and is volunteering at a local youth center to help other kids out.  Her path was hard, but she's making it.  At first her story seems tangential, but I liked how her and Brendan's stories became more and more involved.  (After getting a little frustrated that it seemed like the two were just going to keep barely brushing by each other.)  I also liked that their relationship was platonic.

It's a mentorship in some ways, a friendship in more, and a type of relationship that's rarely seen in fiction.  Angel is a transgender woman, something she knew about herself from a young age.  Her certainty offers a counterpoint to Brendan's uncertainty.  No one's journey to their identity is the same,

Meanwhile, FREAKBOY also explores the point of view of Vanessa.  She loves Brendan, but doesn't like that he's keeping secrets from her.  I liked that FREAKBOY doesn't villainize Vanessa.  She fights to save their relationship, but she also has valid reasons to end it.  She is her own person, with her own desires for a relationship, and she is entitled to those.

I think that poetry was a good choice for telling the stories in FREAKBOY.  Brendan, Angel, and Vanessa are struggling with things that are hard to say, emotions that don't verbalize well.  The poetry has an authentic flow to it.  It's not stiff and halting, but organic.  I do wish there had been a bit more differentiation between the three voices, but I could usually tell whose point of view a poem was expressing even without the headings.

FREAKBOY is the debut of a great talent and one that begins to fill a void in YA literature.  It's different, but it feels like a logical step from predecessors like Ellen Hopkins and Catherine Ryan Hyde.  I look forward to Clark's next book, because I can't wait to see what she writes as she grows as an author and storyteller.

Review: The Cool School: Writing from America's Hip Underground

Edited by Glenn O'Brien
Available now from Library of America
Review copy

When THE COOL SCHOOL was pitched to me, I feel in love with the concept.  A collection of writing by the original hipsters, about what it meant to be cool.  And not just the Beat poets, but jazz men and comedians and more, including people outside the movement who criticized it.  The pieces range from prose fiction to poetry to nonfiction, from excerpts to complete works.

I think Glenn O'Brien did a decent job of assembling a plurality of voices.  Names reoccur between pieces, giving a real sense of how the scene fit together and how people from different groups knew and thought of each other.  Figures like Bird, Charlie Parker, loom large as their trailblazing influence is taken in and reflected.  There are several black writers, and author there is no editorializing aside from short introductions to each piece, it is easy to see some of the tension around white men copying black slang, music, and attitudes.

There are several women included in the anthology, although not Carolyn Cassady, possible the best known female Beat generation writer.  The blurb mentions the "sexually excluded," but they were less in the anthology than I expected.  Allen Ginsberg is the most notable exception there.  (I triple checked the table of contents just to be sure I hadn't missed a piece from him.)

The writing is arranged by chronology, I believe, which works fairly well.  It allows for a clear progression of ideas.  Sometimes I wished for another arrangement, as Del Close's piece on vocabulary would've been great at the beginning.  I could read large chunks of THE COOL SCHOOL at once, but did prefer to take breaks.  While there are a great many voices on display, the anthology's raison d'être is pieces that explore the scene.  It takes awhile for any sameness to set in, but it does if one tries to devour the whole anthology at once.

I enjoyed THE COOL SCHOOL.  I am always in favor of primary sources, and I liked the range presented here, even if I did think the net could be cast even wider.  I was familiar with some of the writers, like Miles Davis, Frank O'Hara, and Lenny Bruce, but there are also several where I'll have to seek out more of their work.  THE COOL SCHOOL is a great introduction to a generation, and a nice reminder that the fifties weren't all poodle school and milkshakes.  There were people shaking things up and making their voices heard.

Review: The Lightning Dreamer: Cuba's Greatest Abolitionist

By Margarita Engle
Available now from Harcourt (Houghton Mifflin)
Review copy

THE LIGHTNING DREAMER: Cuba's Greatest Abolitionist is the story of Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, called Tula.  She grows up to be a poet, novelist, and playwright who combined abolitionist and feminist views in her writing.  As Margarita Engle wrote in her historical note, Tula "helped readers question the way they viewed slavery, interracial marriage, and the broader issue of voluntary marriage" (171, ARC).  Engle's novel in verse goes back to when Tula was a child to explore how she became interested in storytelling and radical subjects.

Using poetry to tell the story of a poet is a terrific choice.  The poems alternate between character's voices and the verse feels like the rhythm of internal thoughts.  It lends immediacy and potency to the emotions felt by the narrators.  It's also a good way to bring many points of view to the story without the head hopping becoming too confusing.  And the subjects addressed are full of nuance.  Tula's immediate concern is her impending marriage.  She's fourteen, old enough.  Marriage means giving up her freedom.  She isn't even supposed to be literate, but her brother and nuns helped her.

Tula's Mamá is one of villains of the novel.  She wants Tula to marry an old, rich man and will likely use the money from the marriage to buy slaves.  But the marriage is what she thinks is best for her daughter.  "Tula needs a wealthy husband/now,/right now,/before she tries to choose her own,/the way I did, without any regard/for her family's/finances" (79, ARC).

Engle, a Newbury Honor recipient, has strong control of the language.  Look at the excerpt above - the emphasis on time, on family versus family finances.  But it's not distracting language.  They're easy to read and clear, delivering a complex history in bites perfect for a young audience.

I found THE LIGHTNING DREAMER fascinating, even though I had never heard of Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda before.  Her story is sometimes harrowing and often inspiring.  I looked up some of her work as soon as I finished THE LIGHTNING DREAMER, eager to read her poetry.  I think the weakest part of the novel was a love triangle with a boy named Sab who was already in love with a girl named Carlota, which comes into play near the end of the novel.  Turns out they where made up based on speculation that the characters in Tula's first novel Sab where based on real people she'd met while exiled to a country estate.  It's not a terrible bit, but somewhat sappy compared to the rest.

THE LIGHTNING DREAMER is a lyrical, poignant look at an influential woman and artist.  This is the sort of book that could be broccoli (as in, "Eat your vegetables!"), but the style makes it quite palatable.  (Note: I actually love broccoli, but you know what I mean.)

Be sure to check out Clear Eyes, Full Shelves' Novel in Verse Week.

Review: Open the Door: How to Excite Young People about Poetry

Edited by Dorothea Lasky, Dominic Luxford, and Jesse Nathan
"Poets in the World" series editor Ilya Kaminsky, director of the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute
Contributions by Jim Trelease, Matthea Harvey, Jack Collom, James Kass, Kenneth Koch, Ron Padgett, Theodore Roethke, Eileen Myles, Phillip Lopate, Jesse Nathan, Jordan Davis, William Stafford, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Karen Volkman, Dorothea Lasky, Dave Eggers, Bertha Rogers, Michael Cirelli, Amy Swauger, Martin Farawell, Terry Blackhawk, Megan McNamer, Terri Glass, Pamela Michael, Kevin Coval, Jeff Kass, Matt Mason and Andrew Ek,  Patrick Oliver, Bob Holman, Robin Reagler, Susan Grigsby, Mimi Herman, Michael Dickman, Elizabeth Bradfield, Yusef Komunyakaa, Meghan and Liam O'Rourke, Eric Baus, Valzhyna Mort, Alex Dimitrov, Anthony McCann, Michael McGriff, Katie Ford, Matthew Zapruder, Debora Landau, Christina Davis, Dara Wier, Travis Nichols, Laura Solomon, CAConrad, Vicki Vértiz, Adam O'Riordan, Qurayash Ali Lansana and Georgia A. Popoff, Rebecca Lindenberg, Harriet Levin, Emilie Coulson, Stephen Burt
Available April 23, 2013 from McSweeney's and The Poetry Foundation
Ebook available here
Review copy

"How wonderful the struggle with language is." - Theodore Roethke

April, as you may know, is National Poetry Month.  You might follow Savvy Verse & Wit's blog tour and keep an eye out for Clear Eyes, Full Shelves Novel in Verse Week starting April 21.  This month two books are being released in a partnership between McSweeney's Books and The Poetry Foundation.  OPEN THE DOOR: How to Excite Young People about Poetry is the one that first caught my eye.  The blurb promises that it will be "useful for first-time and veteran teachers, as well as parents, babysitters, MFAs with no job, and anyone else with an interest in poetry's place in the lives of our younger citizens."  I count myself in a few of those groups and decided to give it a chance.

OPEN THE DOOR is divided into three sections:  essays, roundtable discussion, and lesson plans.  The essays are a mix of new and reprinted material about experiences working with children focusing on what worked and what didn't.  This section comes first and is the best place to start - it's very motivating.  One idea that came up more than once and made quite a bit of sense to me is to not force children to focus on spelling or grammar when writing poetry.  Get them to write and then help them to revise after.  Focusing too much on rules limits them.  Plus, there's value in revision.

The second section, the roundtable discussion, is a question and answer session with several people working in nonprofits providing poetry programs for children and teens.  The advice within will be most useful for people looking to start poetry programs, but I found it surprisingly interesting.  I particularly liked one answer that refutes OPEN THE DOOR's subtitle:

I'm not interested in exciting students about poetry so much as I am in giving them experiences of genuine substance and in helping them investigate the emotional turmoil of adolescence, which will allow them to mature into adults whose inner lives are rich enough to endure difficulties, challenges, and even tragedies . . . They have plenty of diversions in their lives . . . They have enough excitement . . . What they need is something that helps them not to turn away, but rather to turn toward the conflicts they face in their everyday lives.  This is what art, what poetry, does.  - 237, ARC, Amy Swauger

The third section is self explanatory.  The lesson plans included are short but sweet.  The majority provide a reading and a writing portion, although some suggest pieces of music or such instead of readings.  I think this section is of more use to teachers than the layman, although some guardians who want to bring poetry to their kids might prefer such clear guides.  All in all I think that OPEN THE DOOR will appeal most to teachers, but I don't think the blurb is wrong.  There is wide appeal here.

OPEN THE DOOR presents a wide range of perspectives.  Most of the contributors are American, but not all.  They are women and men of many sexualities, races, and social classes.  It's nice to hear a range of voices in a discussion of how to empower others to use their voice.

I also like that OPEN THE DOOR provides clear answers to what to do next.  There are suggestions of other books and poets to read and organizations to investigate in addition to the exercises provided within the pages.  It's a terrific starting point for anyone who wants to share poetry with the young.  I think OPEN THE DOOR does a wonderful job of accomplishing its goals.

Review: My Book of Life by Angel

By Martine Leavitt
Available now from Farrar Straus Giroux (Macmillan)
Review copy courtesy of Mrs. Yingling Reads

I really enjoy novels-in-verse.  The good ones are propulsive.  The poetry invites you to linger over the way things are said, yet pushes you along to flow of the words.  I find it very easy to slip into the rhythm of the story in a way that rarely happens with prose fiction.

National Book Award Finalist Martine Leavitt tackles tough topics in MY BOOK OF LIFE BY ANGEL, much like YA-novel-in-verse-heavy-hitter Ellen Hopkins.  The narrator Angel is sixteen, working as a prostitute in Vancouver.  She ran away to live with her boyfriend Call, who unbeknownst to her was a pimp.  He got her addicted to drugs and convinced her that she wouldn't ever be welcome in her home again.  It's a series of events that's happened to far too many girls.

But two events happen that give Angel the strength to go cold turkey.  The first is the disappearance of Serena, a more experienced hooker who watched out for her.  The second is the appearance of Melli, a mute eleven year old who Call wants to turn out.  Angel is not so inured to her life that she's okay with that.  She works double shifts and keeps turning down the drugs in order to protect her young charge.  But as long as Melli is with Call she'll never be safe.

There is a noticeable shift in Angel's narration as she becomes more coherent and able to think more clearly about multiple things at once.   The poetry always felt like a logical way for Angel to express herself.  One of the things that makes the most impact on her during her time with Call is PARADISE LOST, Milton's epic poem, which a john makes her read aloud.

MY BOOK OF LIFE BY ANGEL is for mature readers only.  It deals with prostitution of underage girls, drug abuse, and murders that go ignored.  They are all concepts people have to deal with eventually, but some younger readers may not be ready to handle the intensity of the novel yet.  I had trouble with the end note, which discusses the real court cases and disappearances that inspired MY BOOK OF LIFE BY ANGEL.

This is a good book for anyone looking for a contemporary dealing with the darker side of modern life.  I expect fans of the aforementioned Ellen Hopkins will really enjoy it.

National Poetry Month Blog Tour: The Romantics

Serena, of Savvy Verse & Wit decided to create a blog tour in honor of National Poetry Month. You can find a list of all the participating blogs and their topics here. Today, I'll be discussing the Romantics.

Nowadays, when asked to think about poetry, most people's minds will leap almost immediately to the Romantics. Blake, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats . . . you can't escape school without reading at least some of them. But, you might not really be reading them.

The Early Romantic Period lasted from the French Revolution (1789) to the electoral victory of the Whigs (1830). During this time, a monarchy would be overthrown, then there would be a counterrevolution, and then a monarchy restored. The Industrial Revolution was just gaining steam. It was the beginning of what we think of as modern times. People couldn't believe how quickly things were changing. It was a new world.

A new world needed new literature. The Romantics were the rebels of their day. It's all in the name: At its most positive, romantic means natural, optimistic, ideal. At its most negative, it means dangerously deluded by an illusions. Neoclassical writers, like Thomas Gray, used high diction, personification, and frequently alluded to the classics. The Romantics wanted, instead, to speak to everyone in a direct manner. Do not think of the Romantics as boring, the most poetic of poets. They were outsiders determined to change the system.

So how do you read the Romantics?

1. Read Milton. I'll be honest, I've only read some of his sonnets and excerpts of PARADISE LOST. But while the Romantics had many different ideas about what made good poets and good poetry, they'll all agreed that Milton was the biggest thing since sliced bread. Reading the Romantics without knowing Milton is like reading a hagiography without knowing the Bible. You may enjoy the story, but you'll have no idea how many allusions are being made. (Alluding to Milton is totally different from alluding to the Greeks, y'know.)

2. Learn the poetics. All of these men approached poetry from different ideas about theory, and each of their theories are key to interpreting their poetry.


William Blake:

-Check out the incredible Blake Archive. There is No Natural Religion and All Religions are One lay out his basic theology and argumentative process well.
-Blake was an engraver by trade. He never printed his poetry without the accompanying image; the visual and text were one. Sometimes the picture is an important clue not to take his words at face value.
-Blake had what some would consider a blasphemous view of Christianity. He felt that redemption could be achieved during life, not after death. The first stage of life is innocence, wherein naivety lies in bed with ignorance, then experience, wherein disillusionment can blind one to the world's good. The ideal is to move beyond experience and realize we can all be Christ on Earth. (When you get down to it, Blake is a little wacky.)

William Wordsworth:

-Preface to LYRICAL BALLADS, 1802 edition
-After he split with Coleridge, Wordsworth rearranged the LYRICAL BALLADS and added a preface, which details his desire to be a man speaking to men, in the language of men. He used common, rural subjects because he felt they had an inherent morality lacking in the city.
-Wordsworth had a thing for nature. It was one of the sources of imagination, though superseded by human connection.
-His sister Dorothy also wrote, though she didn't think of herself as a writer. Her GRASMERE JOURNALS often detail the same occurrences as some of Wordsworth's poems. Much can be determined about their priorities by comparison of their accounts.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

-In the Biographia Literaria, Coleridge calls BS on Wordsworth. He also manages to formulate what will be modern literary criticism, including coining the term "willing suspension of disbelief."
-Coleridge believes the principle object of poetry is pleasure, which is greater than truth. The power of a poet is an ability to see the connections between two objects and transform them into each other, using imagination. (Think metaphor.)

Percy Bysshe Shelley:

-In A Defence of Poetry, Shelley answered his friend Thomas Love Peacock's satirical essay ("The Four Ages of Poetry") seriously.
-For Shelley, language is not just what separates men from beasts. It is the essence of how people think and needs to be constantly renewed as old phrases die. Poets keep language alive.
-Our thoughts develop through metaphor, through imagination. Shelley believed "the great secret of morals is love," or empathy, and thus we need poetry to treat our imagination so that we can be good.

John Keats:

-Though Keats died before he could write a coherent treatise on poetics, his letters show the evolution of his thoughts on poets and poetry. The letters to his brother and sister-in-law, George and Georgina Keats, are particularly important as they most often contained the drafts of Keats' poems.
-One of the important concepts he introduced is "negative capability," or the ability of a poet to accept the uncertainties of life.
-Keats really, really hated didatic, polemical poetry. He felt that poetry should seem like the reader's own thoughts. As such, he was not impressed by Wordsworth. (Shelley also disliked Wordsworth, because of Wordsworth's change in feeling after the Reign of Terror.)



I highly recommend THE LONGMAN ANTHOLOGY OF BRITISH LITERATURE, VOL. 2A. It works to give a full picture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century through its literature. It includes a wide range of writers, including the less studied Charlotte Smith and Felicia Hemans. I was going to recommend a good YA text on the Romantics, but it is unfortunately out of print.

Now, I'll finish with my favorite romantic poem.

The Sick Rose

O rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

--William Blake

Ask yourself: is the worm destroying the rose's life, or is the rose destroying the love of the worm?

ETA: I forgot to add important #3. Yes, the Romantics had a lot going on behind their words. Reading their poetry can be an incredibly rich experience. But there are many ways to enjoy it, even just reading aloud and hearing the sound. Wordsworth particularly believed in the resonant power of meter. So have fun!