B. Frank

I know: one is not supposed to review one’s own book, especially not a book that hasn’t been published nor was ever intended to be. But I am not reviewing a book but an idea, and it’s an idea that I recommend to everyone. And, after all, in my library this is a book I treasure, or rather a set of books, for I’m not quite sure how many volumes there are altogether. So, against all the rules, here is the review.

Most people don’t “read” poetry anthologies. Even poetry readers don’t ordinarily “read” poetry anthologies from cover to cover, beginning with p. 1 and going forward page by page. In poetry anthologies, or even collections by a single author, we tend to browse. We find a poem here or there that attracts us. If we like it, we may read it more than once. If we really like it, we may return to it time and time again. In the old days, we would have copied it down, in a scrapbook or our commonplace book, using our best calligraphy, maybe illustrating it or drawing a fancy border around it. Nowadays, of course, we photocopy. Copyright? A single copy of a single poem for a single reader should not be a problem. Teachers and scholars are permitted to make single copies for study or teacher-planning.

Teaching eighth graders, trying to engage their interest in poetry, I discovered the natural value of browsing. Each student was invited to browse in the poetry section in the 800’s of the Dewey Decimal library, selecting one poem that they recommended I read aloud in class or study with them or permit them to perform. If a poem they recommended was one of my selections, the student earned extra credit. (Eighth graders, in those days, in that school, lived for extra credit.) From that point on, I decided that the study of poetry should always involve students in browsing, scanning many poems, finding poems they really liked and would like to share.

Click forward a few years. I am now teaching a graduate course on Literature for Children and Youth, intended for teachers and librarians. Fiction (novels and short stories), even drama and creative dramatics come easy. We explore thematics, reader response criticism, close textual reading, free reading, sustained silent reading, guided individualized reading, alternatives to traditional book reports, reading rationales (in part designed to deal with potential censorship), and the list goes on. But poetry—well, students just aren’t interested in poetry, I hear them saying. Teachers, many of them, aren’t very interested in poetry either, I suspected. Too many of them remember being required to memorize poems they didn’t like and recite them before their whole class. Or they remember “reading between the lines,” finding subtle and, to them, hidden meanings in complex poetry included in surveys of British and American literature. Or, like the public at large, they think of poetry like greeting card verse, pretty rhymes about pretty things—flowers and starlight and Nature (with a capital N) and love. Especially love. Not what the children or adolescents in their classes would likely receive positively.

So, once again, I involved the class in browsing. Examine poems wherever you find them: in libraries, in bookstores, in magazines, in homes and friends’ homes. All forms, including free verse. All kinds of topics, motorcycles, hospital rooms, blackberry picking, skyscrapers, dandelions, going to the movies. I brought in examples to emphasize variations, and invited them to do the same. Single poems, at first, to share with one another in small groups.

All this led up to the major assignment. The class as a whole was to construct a (hypothetical) anthology, something like Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle and Other Modern Verse (q. v.). Each teacher was to find three to five poems on a single topic or theme, poems that appealed to them and would likely appeal to their students, poems in various forms, with different points of view and styles, but relatively recent poetry reflecting the real world. Each teacher was to copy the poems in an appropriate format and write a very brief, very informal introductory statement.

To illustrate my point, I did the assignment first. The topic I chose was basketball. (If you knew much about me, or my obsessions, you were not likely to be surprised at that.) “I never dreamed of making the winning touchdown or the game-saving tackle,” I began my introduction. “I never aspired to drive in the winning run or pitch a no-hit game . . . But I did want to make the first team in basketball. In the sixth grade. In junior high school. In senior high school. I never did.” I began my collection with “Foul Shot” by Edwin Hoey. This one ends when the ball “Dives down and through.” Then a response by a student, called “Basket,” in which “the ball / HITS / Bounces / Falls / to the / Floor.” You have to see this one printed on the page to appreciate the kerplunk. There follows “Reggie” by Eloise Greenfield, in which a kid brother “Thinks he’s Kareem / And not my brother”; John Updike’s better known and more serious, “Ex-Basketball Player”; and “The Jump Shooter” by Dennis Trudell, about another, happier ex-basketball player still shooting hoops.

When the poems came in—the result of twenty teachers’ browsing—I couldn’t have put together a better anthology for children and youth. There were poems on school, television, bedtime, rabbits, seeds, summer, parents, looking back, the South, the elderly, music (several of those, but all different kinds of music), Harriet Tubman, and war. I chose to open the anthology (and award our “Pulitzer Prize” to a section entitled “The Giving of True Names.” At first it looked like it was going to be a group of poems about cats, but it turned out to be about names, building up to T. S. Eliot’s “Naming of Cats,” and concluding with Lucille Clifton’s “the making of poems,” comparing the poet’s task with “adam and his mother” giving true names.

Browsing had worked again. All these teacher became poetry aficionados. One turned in six sections for the anthology. We proved the point (without hectoring) that poems come in many forms, on many topic, with many styles. I chose a phrase from T. S. Eliot’s “Burnt Norton” for our title: “Garlic and Sapphires in the Mud.” I still enjoy “my” book, but I wholeheartedly recommend the idea. Whether you want it published or not, put together your own anthology, alone or with your reading group or your family. My next one may be My Life in Poetry or perhaps Poetry in My Life.… (mehr)