School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-9-- This well-known poet, anthologist, and teacher demonstrates what makes a poem a poem in a concise, simple, readable manner. She explains the various voices of poetry; types of rhyme; and other elements of sound, rhythm, and metrics. She also discusses figures of speech such as simile, metaphor, and personification; and the forms of haiku, cinquain, limerick, free verse, and concrete poetry. The book is organized well, each chapter building successfully on the previous one. The examples throughout draw from the works of many familiar poets, and effectively illustrate Livingston's points. However, there are no explanations for the notations used to diagram meter; for some they may be obvious in context, but perhaps not for all. The author treats mechanics and style with much more detail than X. J. Kennedy's Knock at a Star (Little, 1985), which, while it supplies excellent and profuse examples and is extremely readable, only touches on the surface, especially where it concerns meter. While this book is an excellent introduction to the serious craftsmanship of poetry for beginners, it ends rather abruptly and, because its approach is more academic than in other books, it is likely that few children will pick it up on their own. It will certainly be useful for teachers, easily refreshing their memories of the basics and giving them a guideline to follow in teaching poetry. --Annette Curtis Klause, Montgomery County Department of Public Libraries, MD (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Horn Book Review
Poet, anthologist, and teacher Myra Cohn Livingston makes the mechanics of writing poetry understandable in this carefully organized handbook. She also allows readers to grow intellectually in their own attempts at 'poem-making.' Index. From HORN BOOK 1991, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
As Livingston says in her introduction, she invites young people ``to make the image, the thought, even the sound [of an experience] come alive...by arranging words, making a sort of music...to experience the joy of making a poem.'' This detailed, carefully organized volume makes the invitation irresistible. Admirably, the author doesn't condescend to her audience by skimping on the complexities; she gives the real concepts and terminology--apostrophe, tercet, consonance, dactyl, cinquain- -building from voice to the patterns and uses of sound to imagery, explaining with consummate clarity and generously providing excellent examples with a wide range of sophistication: Mother Goose to Fitzgerald's Homer. She's never pedantic; her eye and ear are consistently on the poem that the devices serve, while her occasional questions to the reader are not merely rhetorical but well framed to provoke imaginative thought. The last chapter is on concrete poetry, with some delightful examples of typography mimicking and extending meaning. Like a provocative poem, the book leaves readers without a neatly wrapped conclusion--the better, perhaps, to continue their own thoughts. An inspiring introduction to a notably thorny but potentially rewarding topic. Index. (Nonfiction. 10-14)
Booklist Review
Gr. 5-9. Everyone is not a poet, according to Livingston, who's always been scathing about those who think they can be "creative" by just spilling out raw emotion. She's just as vehement about "greeting-card verse" that goes for the trite message and comfy rhyme. A teacher herself, as well as an eminent poet and anthologist, she gives a personal view of the rigor as well as the delight in making a poem. She's not much interested in free verse; her focus is on the tech~nical--voice, metrics, form, figures of speech--but she never allows the analysis to spoil the mystery. In fact, looking closely with her at how poetry works increases the reader's pleasure, mainly because of her wealth of splendid examples, dozens of them, drawn from everywhere: nonsense verse and haiku; The Odyssey and Shel Silverstein. She makes you want to reach for anthologies to find more. As a writing guide, this book will be most useful in creative writing groups with a teacher or leader; on their own, most kids won't care to analyze the anapestic feet in a limerick or the rules of the cinquain, or to experiment with consonance and assonance. What Livingston does communicate on every page is the excitement of poetry and its strange power to "arrest our senses" and help us see the world in a new way. ~--Hazel Rochman
