From: Amy Clark <a.elizabeth>
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2003 11:02:56 -0400

Barbara made the point that the collages in Girl Coming in for a Landing work well because "they certainly would cause young readers to linger longer on each page, and by so doing, maybe spend more time pondering over the meaning of the illustrated poems, rather than hurrying through the printed words..."

I found this to be true of Things I Have to Tell You: Poems and Writing by Teenage Girls, edited by Betsy Franco, photographs by Nina Nickles. Each poem shares a 2-page spread with a black and white photograph of nameless adolescent girls captured in the activity of daily life. These photos, as Nickles states in her preface, are not intended to illustrate the poems.

What these photos did for me as I read the poetry was cause me to pause long enough to absorb the profound nature of each poem as I studied the detail in the images on the page. Though the photos were not intended to illustrate the poems, I found myself trying to figure out why a photo had been paired with a poem, and in the process I reflected about what I had just read.

There is a such thing, as people such as Barbara have mentioned, as poetry illustration that offers the reader an opportunity to digest poems to a greater depth, without imposing too much on the reader's freedom to interpret meaning as she or he feels compelled.

Amy Clark URI GSLIS Student
Received on Wed 23 Apr 2003 10:02:56 AM CDT