Heard,
Georgia. The Arrow Finds Its Mark. Macmillan Books/ Roaring
Brook Press 40p $16.99 978-1-59643-665-7 ms/hs VG-BN Poetry
Thirty poets find poetry in unlikely
places. "Found poetry"
encourages readers to take words from text that already exists in a form other
than poetry and refashion the words into poems. Even readers who do not generally gravitate to poetry will look at
language,
from cereal boxes to dictionaries to texting, with new eyes. Georgia Heard, the editor of The Arrow Finds Its Mark, states in the
volume's introduction: "I believe that creating a found poem has to do
with sharpening a poet's vision -- seeing that poetry exists all around us and
ultimately having the insight and imagination to find it."
Heard gathered a stable of top-notch
children's poets that includes Lee Bennett Hopkins, J. Patrick Lewis, Paul Janeczko,
David Harrison, Mailyn Singer, and fifteen others. They take a creative, imaginative approach to their assignment. Encouraged not to
change, add, or rearrange words, they could change punctuation, tense, plurals,
and capitalization. They also created their
own titles, which often adds another layer of meaning or depth to the poems.
The resulting anthology of more than
three dozen brief "found poems" is a delight. Particularly
enjoyable are "Marilynn's Montessori Memo," found by George Ella Lyon
in a memo from her son's teacher, "Find a Poem," found by Georgia
Heard in "The Oxford Thesaurus," and "How to Write a Poem on
Your Computer," found by Bob Raczka from a computer drop-down menu.
Instructors will be tempted to duplicate the original assignment -- and may be pleased
to discover students completing their homework with little or no grumbling! The poems encourage
readers to play with words.
Reading this slender volume reinforces
the idea that we are surrounded by poetry. If you look through a poet's eyes, it is
everywhere. --Hilary
Welliver
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