From: WMMayes <bogus_at_does.not.exist.com>
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1998 22:07:40 EDT

I use poetry in most of my presentations, adult and child, and I am enamored of both the Nye and Rosenberg books. I am a tremendous fan of their earlier works, especially Nye's collaboration with Paul Janescko, I FEEL A LITTLE JUMPY AROUND YOU.

EARTH-SHATTERING POEMS is a treasure, plain and simple, and I can open it to almost any page in a middle school setting and come up with something that gets the room humming. I use the anthology with the following remarks:
               No matter how awful your life may be at the moment, here is a whole book full of poems about and by people who have it worse off than you!
(read a poem) There, don't we feel better?

I also use Ruth Gordon's PIERCED BY THE RAYS OF THE SUN, Lori Carlson's COOL SALSA, and Angela Shelf Medairis' SKIN DEEP in similar situations. The discussions that follow are priceless, especially in small group settings. I even have teens pulling out their own poetry to share with me and, on occasion, their peers. I don't teach writing, but we focus on the storytelling aspects of the poems and how poetry is a heightened, disciplined form of telling.

I haven't had the chance to use Nye's outstanding Middle East anthology yet, but I will, and soon!

Walter M. Mayes Walter the Giant Storyteller co-author of VALERIE AND WALTER'S BEST BOOKS FOR CHILDREN: A LIVELY, OPINIONATED GUIDE, to be published by Avon Books in the summer of 1998. WMMayes at aol.com

"Love, Food, Shelter, Clothing...Books!"
Received on Mon 13 Apr 1998 09:07:40 PM CDT