From: Reid, Robert A. <REIDRA>
Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 14:14:15 -0600

I second the observations below made about Marilyn Nelson and her A Wreath for Emmett Till. I read it over the weekend and it knocked me out of my socks. I'll be sharing it with kids in the upcoming months because I'm at a loss to know how kids will react to it, but all I can say right now is that it is a masterpiece: a cycle of sonnets with the last sonnet composed of the first lines of the previous 14 sonnets PLUS the last sonnet is an acrostic poem. All sonnets center around Emmett Till with references to Shakespeare, the World Trade Towers, baseball, to name just a few. Powerful imagery in both language and illustrations.

Rob Reid UW?u Claire

 Message----From: ARNOLDADOFF at aol.com [mailto:ARNOLDADOFF at aol.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2005 1:47 PM To: Subscribers of ccbc-net Subject: [ccbc-net] marilyn nelson:

let me add to the eloquence of sally derby:

i have just received marilyn nelson"s emmett till wreath of superb poems/// this woman's work belongs in every classroom...school...and public library: she is at the forefront of the most original and realized poets of our time: rita dove and ishmael reed and michael harper...baraka and audre lorde... lightyears beyond the self-a bsorbed post-ww2 confessionals and one-dimentional end-line rhymes... and the illustrations...the production values by houghton...and their editor: andrea pinkney...place the book in the duality of beauty and truth...a true work of the most meaningful art....

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Received on Wed 09 Mar 2005 02:14:15 PM CST