“I imagine he carries his mother’s / wedding dress around in that filthy sack. / I imagine he takes the dress out on Sundays / and talks to it about the dogs, / the way he might talk to Pauline / if she ever gave him the chance. / About how to him those seven dogs / are seven faithful wives, / seven loaves, seven brothers.” - from One Man’s Family, by Rosemary Catacalos, p. 144
Reader's Annotation
Highly readable, often humorous, and always thought-provoking, this collection of poems will give you insight into why he thinks that way, why she acts this way…and how we balance each other.
About the Editors
Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a Palestinian father and an American mother. During high school, she lived in Jordan, Jerusalem, and Texas. She earned a B.A. in English and world religions. She has authored several books of poems, including You and Yours, which received the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East , and Red Suitcase. She has also received four Pushcart Prizes. She currently lives in San Antonio, Texas with her husband and son.
As a child, Paul B. Janeczko did as little homework as possible. But he did read the Hardy Boys, which got him into reading other authors. During college, he realized that he’d wasted a lot of time, and had a lot of learning to do to catch up with his classmates. After this turn-around, he earned a graduate degree and taught high school English. In 1990, he decided to leave teaching in order to focus on writing and working as a visiting poet. He’s now published over 40 works, and lives in western Maine with his wife, daughter, and poodle.
Genre
Poetry
Reading Level/Interest Age
12-14 years
Content Summary
This is a book of poetry, put together for young teens, which presents 196 poems in pairs of one each by a female and a male poet. In their introductions, the editors note that their intention was to focus on perceptions: how male and female poets see the world, themselves, and each other. They both believe that women and men are different in some ways, but alike in many others. The editors wanted to pair these poems in order that readers might consider the ties or tensions between them. Some poems were paired because they balance each other and shed light on one another, and some paired because they oppose each other. And the editors note that by the end of their selection process, they often weren’t sure whether gender or simply individual perspective created the differences. They have included both well-known poets, some from other countries who are not as well-known in the United States, and some poems that had not been published before this volume. The poems are grouped into four sections which bear some, but not a precise, relationship to the nature of the poems contained in each: “Heads on Fire,” “Foreign Exchange,” “The Real Names of Everything,” and “Separate Longings”. A great feature of this book resulted from the editors’ questioning of the poets about the role that gender has played in their lives and writing. Excerpts from these answers are included in a separate section after the poems. Along the bottom of this section is the running faxed conversation between the two editors as they assembled this book, included by them to show an often humorous example of the joys and frustrations inherent in working with the opposite sex.
Critical Evaluation
What I loved most about this collection is that the poems are very accessible: I didn’t see any poems that I would label as abstract; most are instead about clearly identifiable real-life experiences to which young people, and anyone, can relate. Yet these are not childish poems, they are filled with the multifaceted nature of dealing with the opposite sex and trying to understand ourselves, something which young teens are beginning to explore. Not all, but many of the poems concern the narrator’s or a family member’s experience as a young teen, describing in a very true-to-life way the joys and heartbreaks experienced at that age in connection with interactions with the opposite sex. Two of the most enjoyable examples are: Edward Hirsch’s The Skokie Theatre, which describes his intense emotion during his first intimate movie date, followed by the awkwardness afterward outside the theater, and Maria Mazziotti Gillan’s My Daughter at 14: Christmas Dance, 1981 , about a mother picking up her daughter after a dance, and their respective nervousness and elation resulting from the daughter’s enjoyment of the evening. I very highly recommend this anthology -- an insightful, thought-provoking, and often humorous collection for male and female readers of any age.
Booktalking Ideas
• Read several of the poems aloud.
• Ask the members of the audience to recall situations in which their opinion on something differed from that of a friend. Based on one of the situations brought up, read a related poem pair aloud.
Curriculum Ideas
• Social Science: Students each interview a few males and females about some pre-determined topics. Afterwards, the whole class compares notes to see if there are any common male or female tendencies in the answers.
• Literature/History: Each student chooses a favorite poem from the book and researches the life of its author.
Potential Challenge Issues & Defense
Sexual references:
• Become familiar enough with the book’s content to promote its literary merits.
• Refer to library’s collection development policy.
• Refer to book reviews from authoritative sources such as ALA, School Library Journal, etc.
• Obtain book reviews from young teens who have read it.
Why I Chose This Book
I thought that the juxtaposition of poems by women and men on similar topics sounded very interesting. And I heard Naomi Shihab Nye interviewed recently.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment