Poetry for Young People

   

Poetry, for me, isn’t something I go out of my way to read.  It’s enigmatic where I prefer bluntness – prose.  I don’t like to guess at the meaning of phrases.  My favorite author is Ernest Hemingway whose writing is famously direct.  However, my resistance to it notwithstanding, poetry is something with which we should all spend time.  It helps open our minds in the same way looking at a Monet blurs our preconceived notions of how we think the world looks.  It’s like the medicine you know you need but put off taking because it’s hard to swallow.  Some people devour poetry; they love it.  I’m not one of them.  However, as a homeschooling dad, I have to suck it up and take this medicine and teach my kids something about poetry.   Poetry will make them better people.  And who knows, one or both of them might end up being a poetic genius.  How will we find out if we don’t explore?      

Poetry for Young People: The Books      

I forgot how I first got introduced to the series, but I’m glad I was.  The books are artist specific collections intended to introduce kids to poetry.  We own 4 of them, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Emily Dickinson, Carl Sandburg, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, but there are many more available (at least 24 that I’ve counted).   All the books have a several page introducing biography of the featured poet and then begin immediately with the poems.  For their part, the poems are not rewritten for youthful ears.  Rather, if they are particularly long poems like, for instance, Paul Revere’s Ride, there is an asterisk next to the title and a note below saying where, in the complete work, the selection can be found.  For Paul Revere’s Ride, the book includes the first part, about 600 words, up to:    

 “A hurry of Hoofs in a village street,   

  A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,   

  And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark   

  Struck out by a steed flying fearless   

            and fleet:   

  That was all! And yet, through the   

            gloom and the light,   

  The fate of a nation was riding   

            that night.”   

And, for the benefit of the kids, or those of us who’s vocabularies are not particularly poetic, they give a glossary of potentially difficult terms beneath each poem.  Back to Paul Revere’s Ride for an example.  The three words they think we (I mean the kids) might have a hard time with are grenadiers, impetuous, and spectral.  They helpfully define them for us right next to the poem so we don’t have to flip to the back of the book or a dictionary.  Pretty convenient I think.      

There are tons of poetry books meant for kids.  We have other good ones apart from Poetry for Young People.  But, as poetry books for kids go, these are top notch!  They’re short enough not to be daunting, they have colorful pictures that go along with each poem, there’s a biography for each artist (a bit of background is always good) and, the coup de grace, they anticipate the words we don’t know, and do it accurately.  I’m impressed.      

Note: I like these books.  Nobody gave me anything for my endorsement.