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In talking to children about poetry, it’s often hard to explain exactly what poetry is. In fact, modern poetry has such a breadth and range, it’s hard to define it anyone.  In the 20^th century, poetry evolved out of rhyming and structure and became free – a way of expressing what rhyme can’t, what prose can’t, and what other written forms can’t quite capture.  And there’s a branch on the poet-tree where the shape of the words and the way words are placed on the page are as much a part of the poem as the meaning and metaphors.

I’m glad to have the book enormous Smallness: A Story of E. E. Cummings by Mathew Burgess and illustrated by Kris Di Giacomo, (Enchanted Lion Books, 2015) to help me explain the more intriguing aspects of poetry to children.  The book gently introduces the way e. e. cummings poetry evolved from his word play as a child.

The author, Matthew Burgess, teaches creative writing and composition at Brooklyn College, and has been a poet-in-residence in New York City public schools since 2001, and his sensitivity to language and story has made this book a delight to read.  The children I’ve read it to are drawn into the book and press in close to see the way the words take shape on the page, to see how words create shapes and are like a painting as well as a poem.

Kris Di Giacomo’s illustrations are textured and playful, bringing themes of Cummings work and life into the narrative.  There are birds, elephants, and bunnies cavorting throughout the book.  Di Giacomo used words in her layered work so that they fall like leaves from trees, swirl in snowflakes, and fly up on kite strings.

enormous Smallness shows how the loving support of Cummings’ family helped spur his creativity.  His father built him a treehouse, a little room of his own, where he could let his imagination run wild.  Father also spent time being an elephant for young Cummings to ride on.  His mother would transcribe poems Cummings imagined when he started reciting at age three.

Extended family, teachers, and classmates encouraged and inspired him.  He grew up secure in his own creativity.

And though he spent time as a prisoner of war during World War I, he kept his exuberance for life and language alive throughout his life.

The arc of this book curves around how Cummings became himself, held onto his sense of wonder through his life’s journey.

This is such a wonderful story for the kids I work with to hear.  Most of them have had childhood trauma but still retain that sense of wonder that is the birthright of every child.  Hanging on to it through life’s challenges can be hard.

The more books I can share with them on the many ways of keeping their exuberance for life alive, the better their chances of valuing the good things that are happening in their lives — not letting the good be overshadowed by the bad.

This picture was drawn by Reba, age 9 who loves birds:

And this one by Tomas age 5, who loved the story, and wanted to write me a letter about it.  He spent quite a long time creating his own imaginary letters and words and illustrations.  When I asked him what the words meant, he said in an exasperated tone, “I wrote it, you’re the one who’s supposed to read it.”

Well, the exact meaning is open to interpretation, but I know it tells a story of delight.  And if you’d like a longer story of delight, enormous Smallness is the book to read.

You can read more about Mathew Burgess here.  On his website, check out the book he recently edited, Dream Closet, which I’ll be reviewing soon.

Kris Di Giacomo has illustrated over 25 books.  You can find out more about her here.  And check out my review of the book she illustrated The Day I Lost My Superpowers.

Also, for another great book on the power of poetry, check out my post on the book Poet: the Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton by Don Tate.

Thanks for reading my blog.  May a little bird lift your spirits today.

~~~

This Blog is a Children’s Book Week Champion.  Children’s Book Week is May 2 – 8, 2016.  During that week I’ll be posting reviews of books voted “the best” by young readers, as well as special books for reluctant readers, and innovative new publications for children of all ages.  Plus, I’ll be re-posting book reviews of my favorites.  

Established in 1919, Children’s Book Week is the longest-running national literacy initiative in the country. Every year, commemorative events are held nationwide at schools, libraries, bookstores, homes — wherever young readers and books connect!

 

Children’s Book Week is administered by Every Child A Reader, a 501(c)(3) literacy organization dedicated to instilling a lifelong love of reading in children. The Children’s Book Council, the national non-profit trade association for children’s book publishers, is an anchor sponsor.

You can get free downloads of both the poster and the new bookmark on their website:

http://www.bookweekonline.com/ 

It’s April at last – spring and poetry are in the air.  I don’t always stay on top of national month themes but try to integrate all kinds of books by all kinds of authors into my blog.  I did set aside a few books to share for national poetry month, though, because poetry’s one of the reasons I’m the bookaholic I am today.

Poetry is such an organic form of telling our truth.  Not everything we know, see or feel fits neatly into narrative.  A poem can express what is deep and true in our hearts, even when we don’t entirely understand that truth.  Poetry honors and elevates pure emotions and images.  It ranges from highly structured forms to free and fragmented beauty.  It part of oral traditions as well as academic studies.

When I was working in radio years ago, I once asked a poet when he started writing poetry.  His answer was “when did everyone else stop?”

There’s a lot in our education system that inhibits and stops us from feeling free to express our deepest truths.  And there have been times when it was illegal for certain Americans to write poetry, or to write at all.

One of my favorite books published last year is about a poet who wrote in spite of those laws.  Poet: the Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton, by Don Tate, Peachtree, 2015, brings an important American poet out of the shadows and back into our hearts.

Horton lived from approximately 1798 – 1883.  He and his family were enslaved on a farm in Chatham County, North Carolina.  Tate’s book starts with the simple sentence:  “George loved words.”

Such a deep love of words is hard to hold back.  George struggled until he taught himself how to read.

He loved poetry best.  While he went about his work and tended his master’s cattle, he composed verses in his head.

Then tragedy struck.  His master sent him away from his family.

But George found a way to honor his pain and the pain he saw all around him.  He composed poetry in his head.  He sold his master’s fruits and vegetables at the University of North Carolina.  The students teased his shabby appearance and to soothe himself, he recited his poetry.

“Every eye grew wide and every mouth fell open at the sound of George’s voice, uttering beautiful verses.  Students were awestruck when they found out that he had composed them himself.”

He was then helped by the wife of a professor to learn to write.  He wrote poems that protested slavery.

In the afterword, Tate talks about the unique characteristics of slavery in North Carolina:

“North Carolina was home to one of the largest free black populations in all of the colonies.  Many North Carolinians supported antislavery organizations and the emancipation of slaves.  Plantations were smaller, requiring fewer laborers, and often less affluent farmers worked their land alongside their slaves.  In fact, peculiar as this may sound, slaves were sometimes considered family members.  No doubt, Horton benefited from this more open-minded atmosphere.

                “Life for an enslaved person was still not easy in North Carolina.  Slaves performed daylong, back-breaking work for no pay.  Their diet, provided by their owners, was typically poor, and their clothing inadequate.  Families could be torn apart and sold at any time, never to see each other again – as happened to George.  In the face of these adversities, Horton’s achievements were monumental.”

George was a white man’s property.  For the time George spent writing, he had to pay his master back.  He saved his money to buy his freedom and others tried to help him, but his master refused to sell him.

Then laws became stricter against teaching slaves to read or write.  George returned to slave labor.

George was 67 when the Civil War ended and he was finally free.

I love everything about this book.  It’s a story of coping with extreme hardship through literacy and self-education.  It’s a testament the power of poetry and language.  It explains the brutality of slavery in a way that children can understand.  And even if his story was lost for a while, that he wrote it down, made it available to future generations.

I’ve loved reading this book with children and the ensuing conversations that it provokes.  For several of the children I’ve read it with, this is their first book that discusses slavery or poetry.

I read it to two of the girls I mentor at Bridge Meadows, Monica and Karishma, ages 7 and 8.  When I took out the book, Monica didn’t want to hear it.  She said she hates poetry.  Karishma wanted to hear it, though, so we read it together.  Monica wound up very interested and engaged in it.  After I read it, she told me about Henry Box Brown, whose story she heard at school.

We also talked about poetry – how inter-related music and poetry is, how lyrics are like poetry.  We may even try to write some at our next meeting.

In the afterword to Poet, Tate tells about his experience writing this book and his hope “young readers will see themselves in the story of George Moses Horton – a person with talents and hopes and dreams, and a desire to be free.  Just like them.”  I think he’s succeeded in every way.  The drawings are engaging and expressive.  He uses strong lines and beautiful washes.  His writing style is clear and compelling.  He handles difficult material with finesse and honesty.

Poet has won numerous awards which you can read about here.  Tate’s website has great activity guides to go along with this book, as well as information on his other remarkable books.  He’s a wonderful writer and his illustrations just beam.

You can read an interview with him at the Ezra Jack Keats Award website.  Tate is the 2016 New Writer award recipient.

Here’s one of George Moses Horton’s poems that resonates with me.

George Moses Horton, Myself

I feel myself in need

Of the inspiring strains of ancient lore,

My heart to lift, my empty mind to feed,

And all the world explore.

 

I know that I am old

And never can recover what is past,

But for the future may some light unfold

And soar from ages blast.

 

I feel resolved to try,

My wish to prove, my calling to pursue,

Or mount up from the earth into the sky,

To show what Heaven can do.

 

My genius from a boy,

Has fluttered like a bird within my heart;

But could not thus confined her powers employ,

Impatient to depart.

 

She like a restless bird,

Would spread her wing, her power to be unfurl’d,

And let her songs be loudly heard,

And dart from world to world.

(Source: African-American Poetry of the Nineteenth Century: An Anthology (University of Illinois Press, 1992)

You can read more of Horton’s poetry here.  The Poetical Works of Georg M. Horton, The Colored Bard of North Carolina, To Which is Prefixed The Life of the Author, Written by Himself, George Horton, is available as a free download at Documenting the South, a website of the University of North Carolina, here.

Thanks for reading my blog.  I hope a poem blossoms for you today.

I belong to a book club where, at 55, I’m the youngest member.  The oldest member is 92 and there is another member who turned 90 this year.  I’m reluctant member of the group because I like to read spontaneously and don’t like having reading deadlines.  I don’t like having to finish a book I’m not immediately drawn into – there are too many other books barking for my attention.  But I go because it’s such an honor to be in the presence of these well-read, spicy, and insightful women.

Our most recent book was Wild by Cheryl Strayed, a book about grief, something everyone in the group is familiar with.  Once you’ve reached a certain age, you’ve survived devastating losses of loved ones.  It’s part of the price you pay for survival.

A few days before the group was to meet, I got the story book, Cry, Heart, But Never Break by Danish writer Glenn Ringtved, illustrated by Charlotte Pardi.  Robert Mouthrop translated this English version that was published recently by Enchanted Lion Books.

Ringtved has written over 40 books for children, most of them clever and funny.  This one, though, is about death.  He wrote it for his own children when his mother was dying, moved by the words she spoke to him: “Cry, heart, but never break.”  She wanted him to know that it was okay to mourn her loss, but that her time was over.  Life would go on.

Our book club was meeting in the early afternoon.  We meet at Bridge Meadows, the community I live in.  Later in the day, we had a “celebration of life” planned for a member of the community who had recently died at age 80.  She was a member of the book club, too.  Grief and loss were much in my thoughts, and on a lark, I decided to take Cry, Heart, But Never Break to the group and perhaps read it after the book discussion, depending on how it all went.

There was a brilliant discussion on grief.  We talked about the losses in our lives that most devastated us – sisters, brothers, fiancés, parents, spouses.  We talked about the way that we hold grief, how we never really get over it, it becomes a part of us.  We keep the story of the person we grieve alive.  Their story is ours.

One of the members grabbed a tissue and quietly wiped her eyes.  “My daughter is dying now of cancer,” she said.  Her daughter’s breast cancer has metastasized into her bones and other organs.  “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever been through,” the woman said, though she nursed her husband through 7 years of Alzheimer’s.  Her other daughter is that state of devastation, unable to accept that her sister, in her 50s,  is dying.  She’s always on the internet looking for cures, refusing to “give up.”  It’s exhausting for the mother, loving both of her daughters through this.

But she is taking time for self-care, getting out in nature, coming to our book club, doing tai chi, joining a writing group – and appreciating the time she has with her dying daughter.  The daugher’s lived longer than expected and each day is blessing.

After our condolences and offers of support, a meditative silence settled around us.  So I pulled out Cry, Heart, But Never Break, and asked if they would like to hear it.  They were happy to.

So I read it to them, slowly, holding up the pictures, and pausing for them to absorb both the bright colors and the somber, tender portrait of Death.

Death tells a story to 4 children who are trying to trick him into leaving their grandmother with them.  He wants them understand how necessary his work is.

 

“The children weren’t sure they understood Death fully, but somehow they knew he was right.”

 

There was a long pause after I read it.  One of the 90 year old women talked about her fear of death, but her daughter speaks to her of the cycle of life, how death isn’t to be feared so much, it’s part of life.  The book reminded her of that.

Another woman said it was a great book for adults, which is my belief about many children’s books.  We’re all still the children we once were.

They asked if I was going to read it to children.  Of course, but not in a group.  This is a book I think should be read to children one-on-one, with lots of time for discussion.

Later, when I was at the celebration of life for our departed friend, I thought about how sometimes I am blessed with a bit of convergence, where all that seems to be discordant and disconnected in life somehow suddenly flows together.  A bit of redemption washes over me.  I feel the great sorrows of others, of the world, but sorrow becomes an undercurrent to a vast river that quenches and sustains me.

Wise women who connect to life at its most painful, writers who bring us together in our grief and joy, life that blossoms all around us — how blessed I am to find such stories.

You can read another insightful review of Cry, Heart, But Never Break by Glenn Rigtved on BrainPickings here.

Enchanted Lion Books publishes books from around the world to expand the imagination of children and adults everywhere.  You can follow them on facebook or twitter.

Another wonderful book for children of all ages to help understand the life cycle and death is Little Bell and the Moon by Giles Paley-Phillips.  You can read about it here.

Life is short.  May you find comfort and perhaps some little flowers on this day.

Thanks for reading my blog.

 

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man.  It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible. ~~ Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

Ernst Haeckel ( 1834 – 1919) was a German biologist, naturalist, philosopher, professor and artist who discovered thousands of new species, mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms, and coined man biological terms.  He popularized Darwin’s work in Germany and used ilustration to help people visual minute forms of life.

Prestel Books has printed a series of books on his art, the latest of which, Art Forms from the Abyss, feature images from HMS Challenger Expedition.  Compiled and written by Peter J. le B. Williams, Dylan W. Evans, David J. Roberts, and David N Thomas, it aims to keep Haeckel’s artistic legacy alive.

This new collection features startlingly beautiful images created by Haeckel for the report of the HMS Challenger expedition, which circumnavigated the world from 1872–76, discovering and cataloging nearly 5,000 new species from the depths of Earth’s oceans.

Divided into three sections— Siphonophores, Medusae, and Radiolarians—these illustrations display Haeckel’s remarkable artistic skill and understanding of the architecture of organic matter.

The authors provide a brief history of the Challenger expedition, background on Haeckel’s scientific and artistic accomplishments, and information on each group of organisms.

In Haeckel’s life, there was debate on whether or not there was life in the ocean’s depths.  His work helped dispel that myth and his illustrations gave people a way of understanding the range unseen life.

The book’s introduction provides great insight into Haeckel’s life and the times in which he worked.  There’s a discussion of style, and the romanticism that influenced illustration style of the time.  There’s great information on how illustrations were finished and embellished.

The “wow” factor of this book is over the top.  I spent a lot of time studying the drawings while I was recovering from surgery.  The thought of unseen little creatures living all around us may be a bit scary when you’re sick.

But the beauty of these illustrations was so elevating that I rarely related it back to germs that might want to attack me.  This book emphasizes the  wonder of it all.

If you ever weary of the big world of strife and politics, or feel devoid of inspiration, spend some time with this book.  Nature’s adaptations and abstractions should help you get your perspective back.

The authors have a website Silent Plankton that features not only the works of Haeckel, but also contemporary “plankton inspired art.”  It’s fascinating stuff.

You can find Prestel’s other collections of Haeckel’s art on their website here.

Thanks for reading my blog.