Poetry Logging
Sep. 16th, 2018 11:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckAlexander, Kwame. Animal Ark - Children’s picture book combining a poem with animal photographs. This includes photos of snakes and spiders along with much more cuddly things and much weirder things.
Brown, Calef. Flamingos on the Roof - Short, illustrated book of nonsense poetry aimed at kids. The rhymes and the rhythms here are the sort that tumble together and don’t let the reader go until the poem ends.
Cummings, e.e. in Just-spring - Picture book with one cummings poem. I don’t always get cummings’ work, and this was one that didn’t really work for me. I didn’t feel that the words and the pictures (paintings by Heidi Goennel) worked well together. Part of that is that I get cranky when there are too few words per picture.
Dotlich, Rebecca Kai. In the Spin of Things: Poetry of Motion - Short, illustrated book of poetry aimed at kids. Each poem focuses on a different thing that moves and on how it moves and interacts with the world around it.
Eady, Cornelius. Brutal Imagination - Short book of poetry. I’m not sure how much sense the first half of the book will make to readers who don’t remember Susan Smith and what she did. I do remember, in vague outline, so I knew she was real, her lies were real, her actions were real. I think that, for white readers like me, knowing that she was real matters because we’d like to think this sort of racist thing doesn’t happen, couldn’t happen. Then again, we may also try to argue that she was, even if real, somehow singular, an aberration, both in her murders and in placing the blame on a completely fictitious black man. Understanding that part of the book requires accepting that this is a normal part of our culture. The second half of the book is some of the poems that became a libretto for a jazz opera called Running Man. That needs warnings for racism, homophobia, murder, violence, drug use, and probably some other things I missed. It’s all death of hope stuff.
Edgren, Katherine. The Grain Beneath the Gloss - Short book of poetry. Some of these are place specific to parts of Michigan. I didn’t connect really well with most of these. They felt kind of monologuish in a way that poetry doesn’t always to me. Probably something that would work better for me at a different time or work well for someone not-me.
The Entrance Place of Wonders: Poems of the Harlem Renaissance - Short, illustrated book of poetry aimed at children. I think the only poet here whose work I had previously read was Langston Hughes. There are twenty poems.
Florian, Douglas. Omnibeasts - Short illustrated book of poetry for children. The author also did the illustrations. The poems didn’t work for me but might be better aloud.
Florian, Douglas. unBEElievables - Short illustrated book of poetry for children. All of these are about bees. I didn’t really like these much but suspect that they’d be better read aloud. There’s a lot of repetition of words and sounds.
Grady, Cynthia. I Lay My Stitches Down - Short illustrated book of poetry aimed at children. The poems all address aspects of slavery in the US. Each one uses a quilt pattern for inspiration and title. Each poem also contains references that the author says are intended to add layers the way that quilts are built in layers. I found the annotations about those references very interesting and was glad they were there.
Hayden, Robert. Words in the Mourning Time - Short book of poetry. I want to know more about the author's life in order to have more context for these poems.
Hoberman, Mary Ann. The Llama Who Had No Pajama - Short book of illustrated poetry for children. Most of these were about animals. I wasn’t really thrilled by style, but I think it might work for reading aloud. I just kept slipping and stumbling as I read which I didn’t enjoy much.
Ivengar, Malathi Michelle. Tan to Tamarind: Poems About the Color Brown - Short, illustrated book of poetry for children. These aren’t just generically about brown. They’re specifically about skin color in many different shades of brown and about taking joy in being those colors.
Jenks, Allison Eir. The Palace of Bones - Short book of poetry. The poems in the first section struck me as macabre. It wasn’t bloody/gross, more creepy and resigned. I’m not sure if that was intentional on the author’s part or if that was the result of my hanging out where people were talking about the Trick or Treat Exchange while I was reading it. I was kind of primed to think of zombies and ghosts and such. Later poems were more about aging, loss, and bad relationships.
Kampa, Courtney. Our Lady of Not Asking Why - Short book of poetry. These have a feeling of being half of a conversation about shared memories or stories told to an audience who isn’t listening at all.
Latham, Irene. Dear Wandering Wildebeest - Short, illustrated book of poetry aimed at kids. All poems center around different creatures at water holes in the grasslands of Africa. I liked this one.
Lewis, J. Patrick. Once Upon a Tomb - Short, illustrated book of poetry for kids. The poems here are short and jokey epitaphs combined with detailed and humorous pictures.
Lewis, J. Patrick. A World of Wonders - Short illustrated book of poetry for children. These are all geographically themed. I think someone doing acquisitions at the public library likes Lewis’s work because they’ve got a lot of these.
Livingston, Myra Cohn. Cricket Never Does: A Collection of Haiku and Tanka - Short book of poetry. The book is divided into four parts, spring, summer, autumn, and winter, and the poems are all nature focused. I’m not great at appreciating haiku because those snapshot moments really need a visual connection to create the mood.
Oliver, Mary. House of Light - Short book of poetry. I think I only processed about half of this as I read, but the other two books of poetry I tried at the same time were DNFs (Olds and Oates), so I was very glad to find a book I could actually read.
Powell, Lynn. Season of the Second Thought - Short book of poetry. I liked these for the most part.
Shange, Ntozake. Freedom’s a-Callin’ Me - Short, illustrated book of poetry for children. This book is a cycle of poems showing parts of the ordeal that slaves endured while seeking freedom. It’s very clear about the risks that they were taking and why they would.
Shange, Ntozake. We Troubled the Water - Short, illustrated book of poetry for children. The theme is the history of black Americans from the end of slavery to the Civil Rights Movement, complete with the ugliness and pain. Some children may find the illustrations disturbing because there are images of people who’ve been murdered. There’s an obviously dead body on the dedication page.
Singer, Marilyn. Mirror Mirror - Short, illustrated book or poetry for kids. These are fairy tale themed poems, and each is paired with another that uses the exact same words but in reverse order to give a different angle on the same story. The punctuation changes as do some of the line breaks.
Trethewey, Natasha. Domestic Work - Short book of poetry. The first half or so of the book contains poems about the work experience of black Americans from emancipation through the civil rights era. The latter part of the book has more daily life oriented poems.
Valentine, Jean. The Cradle of Real Life - Short book of poetry. These poems felt very sparse, as if I was seeing only the branches of a bush that ought to be covered in foliage. That didn’t work so well for me but might well be someone else’s jam.
Wong, Janet S. Twist - Short, illustrated book of poetry for kids. Each poem and its illustrations focus on one yoga pose. I think that the poems work better if one knows the poses and movements already because the ones I didn’t know were not really clear to me from the illustrations. The words focus on the natural forces and animals that give the poses their names.
Worth, Valerie. Pug and Other Animal Poems - Short, illustrated book of animal themed poems for children. I liked some turns of phrase here quite a bit.
Yolen, Jane. Ring of Earth - Short, illustrated book of poetry aimed at children. There are four poems here, each one a season from the point of view of a creature associated with it.
Zamora, Javier. Unaccompanied - Short book of poetry. There’s a lot of trauma here-- violence and fear of violence, loss of family, loss of home, constant awareness of precariousness and risk. A lot of the poems talk about experiences attempting an illegal crossing of the border between the US and Mexico. Repeatedly attempting. The date on the back of the title page is 2017, so I can’t tell how much is or isn’t a response to current horrors. The experiences are clearly older and clearly horrific; it’s just that things are getting worse.
Started but didn’t finish:
Florian, Douglas. Handsprings - Short, illustrated book of poetry for children. I’ve tried three or four of this author’s books, and none of them worked for me. I shan’t be getting more.
Ford, T’ai Freedom. How to Get Over - Short book of poetry. I found these difficult to parse. I’m pretty sure that I lack the cultural background to fill in the lacunae in the poems properly or even to comprehend all of the words being used. I got about 35 pages in before I admitted that this was beyond my reading ability.
Oates, Joyce Carol. Anonymous Sins & Other Poems - Short book of poetry. I just didn’t find the combinations of words here congenial.
Olds, Sharon. The Wellspring - Short book of poetry. I got about twenty pages into this, but I kept hitting poems about kids being horrible to each other just because they could be (from both sides). I couldn’t go on.
Brown, Calef. Flamingos on the Roof - Short, illustrated book of nonsense poetry aimed at kids. The rhymes and the rhythms here are the sort that tumble together and don’t let the reader go until the poem ends.
Cummings, e.e. in Just-spring - Picture book with one cummings poem. I don’t always get cummings’ work, and this was one that didn’t really work for me. I didn’t feel that the words and the pictures (paintings by Heidi Goennel) worked well together. Part of that is that I get cranky when there are too few words per picture.
Dotlich, Rebecca Kai. In the Spin of Things: Poetry of Motion - Short, illustrated book of poetry aimed at kids. Each poem focuses on a different thing that moves and on how it moves and interacts with the world around it.
Eady, Cornelius. Brutal Imagination - Short book of poetry. I’m not sure how much sense the first half of the book will make to readers who don’t remember Susan Smith and what she did. I do remember, in vague outline, so I knew she was real, her lies were real, her actions were real. I think that, for white readers like me, knowing that she was real matters because we’d like to think this sort of racist thing doesn’t happen, couldn’t happen. Then again, we may also try to argue that she was, even if real, somehow singular, an aberration, both in her murders and in placing the blame on a completely fictitious black man. Understanding that part of the book requires accepting that this is a normal part of our culture. The second half of the book is some of the poems that became a libretto for a jazz opera called Running Man. That needs warnings for racism, homophobia, murder, violence, drug use, and probably some other things I missed. It’s all death of hope stuff.
Edgren, Katherine. The Grain Beneath the Gloss - Short book of poetry. Some of these are place specific to parts of Michigan. I didn’t connect really well with most of these. They felt kind of monologuish in a way that poetry doesn’t always to me. Probably something that would work better for me at a different time or work well for someone not-me.
The Entrance Place of Wonders: Poems of the Harlem Renaissance - Short, illustrated book of poetry aimed at children. I think the only poet here whose work I had previously read was Langston Hughes. There are twenty poems.
Florian, Douglas. Omnibeasts - Short illustrated book of poetry for children. The author also did the illustrations. The poems didn’t work for me but might be better aloud.
Florian, Douglas. unBEElievables - Short illustrated book of poetry for children. All of these are about bees. I didn’t really like these much but suspect that they’d be better read aloud. There’s a lot of repetition of words and sounds.
Grady, Cynthia. I Lay My Stitches Down - Short illustrated book of poetry aimed at children. The poems all address aspects of slavery in the US. Each one uses a quilt pattern for inspiration and title. Each poem also contains references that the author says are intended to add layers the way that quilts are built in layers. I found the annotations about those references very interesting and was glad they were there.
Hayden, Robert. Words in the Mourning Time - Short book of poetry. I want to know more about the author's life in order to have more context for these poems.
Hoberman, Mary Ann. The Llama Who Had No Pajama - Short book of illustrated poetry for children. Most of these were about animals. I wasn’t really thrilled by style, but I think it might work for reading aloud. I just kept slipping and stumbling as I read which I didn’t enjoy much.
Ivengar, Malathi Michelle. Tan to Tamarind: Poems About the Color Brown - Short, illustrated book of poetry for children. These aren’t just generically about brown. They’re specifically about skin color in many different shades of brown and about taking joy in being those colors.
Jenks, Allison Eir. The Palace of Bones - Short book of poetry. The poems in the first section struck me as macabre. It wasn’t bloody/gross, more creepy and resigned. I’m not sure if that was intentional on the author’s part or if that was the result of my hanging out where people were talking about the Trick or Treat Exchange while I was reading it. I was kind of primed to think of zombies and ghosts and such. Later poems were more about aging, loss, and bad relationships.
Kampa, Courtney. Our Lady of Not Asking Why - Short book of poetry. These have a feeling of being half of a conversation about shared memories or stories told to an audience who isn’t listening at all.
Latham, Irene. Dear Wandering Wildebeest - Short, illustrated book of poetry aimed at kids. All poems center around different creatures at water holes in the grasslands of Africa. I liked this one.
Lewis, J. Patrick. Once Upon a Tomb - Short, illustrated book of poetry for kids. The poems here are short and jokey epitaphs combined with detailed and humorous pictures.
Lewis, J. Patrick. A World of Wonders - Short illustrated book of poetry for children. These are all geographically themed. I think someone doing acquisitions at the public library likes Lewis’s work because they’ve got a lot of these.
Livingston, Myra Cohn. Cricket Never Does: A Collection of Haiku and Tanka - Short book of poetry. The book is divided into four parts, spring, summer, autumn, and winter, and the poems are all nature focused. I’m not great at appreciating haiku because those snapshot moments really need a visual connection to create the mood.
Oliver, Mary. House of Light - Short book of poetry. I think I only processed about half of this as I read, but the other two books of poetry I tried at the same time were DNFs (Olds and Oates), so I was very glad to find a book I could actually read.
Powell, Lynn. Season of the Second Thought - Short book of poetry. I liked these for the most part.
Shange, Ntozake. Freedom’s a-Callin’ Me - Short, illustrated book of poetry for children. This book is a cycle of poems showing parts of the ordeal that slaves endured while seeking freedom. It’s very clear about the risks that they were taking and why they would.
Shange, Ntozake. We Troubled the Water - Short, illustrated book of poetry for children. The theme is the history of black Americans from the end of slavery to the Civil Rights Movement, complete with the ugliness and pain. Some children may find the illustrations disturbing because there are images of people who’ve been murdered. There’s an obviously dead body on the dedication page.
Singer, Marilyn. Mirror Mirror - Short, illustrated book or poetry for kids. These are fairy tale themed poems, and each is paired with another that uses the exact same words but in reverse order to give a different angle on the same story. The punctuation changes as do some of the line breaks.
Trethewey, Natasha. Domestic Work - Short book of poetry. The first half or so of the book contains poems about the work experience of black Americans from emancipation through the civil rights era. The latter part of the book has more daily life oriented poems.
Valentine, Jean. The Cradle of Real Life - Short book of poetry. These poems felt very sparse, as if I was seeing only the branches of a bush that ought to be covered in foliage. That didn’t work so well for me but might well be someone else’s jam.
Wong, Janet S. Twist - Short, illustrated book of poetry for kids. Each poem and its illustrations focus on one yoga pose. I think that the poems work better if one knows the poses and movements already because the ones I didn’t know were not really clear to me from the illustrations. The words focus on the natural forces and animals that give the poses their names.
Worth, Valerie. Pug and Other Animal Poems - Short, illustrated book of animal themed poems for children. I liked some turns of phrase here quite a bit.
Yolen, Jane. Ring of Earth - Short, illustrated book of poetry aimed at children. There are four poems here, each one a season from the point of view of a creature associated with it.
Zamora, Javier. Unaccompanied - Short book of poetry. There’s a lot of trauma here-- violence and fear of violence, loss of family, loss of home, constant awareness of precariousness and risk. A lot of the poems talk about experiences attempting an illegal crossing of the border between the US and Mexico. Repeatedly attempting. The date on the back of the title page is 2017, so I can’t tell how much is or isn’t a response to current horrors. The experiences are clearly older and clearly horrific; it’s just that things are getting worse.
Started but didn’t finish:
Florian, Douglas. Handsprings - Short, illustrated book of poetry for children. I’ve tried three or four of this author’s books, and none of them worked for me. I shan’t be getting more.
Ford, T’ai Freedom. How to Get Over - Short book of poetry. I found these difficult to parse. I’m pretty sure that I lack the cultural background to fill in the lacunae in the poems properly or even to comprehend all of the words being used. I got about 35 pages in before I admitted that this was beyond my reading ability.
Oates, Joyce Carol. Anonymous Sins & Other Poems - Short book of poetry. I just didn’t find the combinations of words here congenial.
Olds, Sharon. The Wellspring - Short book of poetry. I got about twenty pages into this, but I kept hitting poems about kids being horrible to each other just because they could be (from both sides). I couldn’t go on.
