Glenn, Mel. 1982. Class Dismissed!: High School Poems. New York: Clarion Books. ISBN: 0899190758.
Mel Glenn’s first book, CLASS DISMISSED!: HIGH SCHOOL POEMS, which was published in 1982, is a book of poems that are sometimes interconnected, though not always. The poems are written in free verse. Each poem represents the voice and experience of one student, which allowed Glenn to provide a multicultural cross-section of a typical high school. Glenn, a now retired high school English teacher, explores topics like poverty, college fears, fights with parents, teen sex, cheating, and violence with a students’ voice. Many poems were accompanied by a black and white still photo taken by a vice principal of real high school students at a Brooklyn high school. The photographs help the reader put a face on the speaker of the poem, though because this book was published in the 80s, the styles, both clothes and hair, prove somewhat amusing.
The way that Glenn interconnects the poems is interesting, with characters inflicting damage on each other by accident or on purpose. The effect is very similar to real life where students struggle to define themselves and create a place for them in the whole. For example, in “Allen Greshner,” Allen calls a girl named Tracy, to ask her to the prom. For some reason he can not understand, she refuses. He all the while is trying to figure out what is wrong with him. In the very next poem, “Maria Preosi,” Maria, Tracy’s sister, “accepted calmly, meekly, / My position in her shadow / And did not even whisper a syllable of revenge.” (Glenn, 35.) In “Jeanette Jaffe,” the speaker is a young woman who has a crush on her French teacher, who happens to be married. “Last week I put a letter in his mailbox, / Saying on paper what I was afraid to say in person.” (Glenn, 45.)
Glenn writes both humorous and very tragic poems, which demonstrate his ability to express clever turns of phrase with ease. In “Bernard Pearlman,” (Glenn, 88.) the young man uses mathematical and statistics terms to create a very funny diversion to precede the next poem, a sad commentary on life in the U.S. from the perspective of a Vietnamese immigrant. “I have see children with bloated bellies cry, / with no strength left to make sounds….In this new country my body grows. / But at school I look into the faces around me, / Wide-eyed, well-fed, unblinking. / How could they know? / How could they not know? / America, Land of the Free, Home of the Ignorant.”(Glenn, 89.) Glenn moved on with his poetry. “From this collection design it was a natural progression to develop a story with each character giving a viewpoint of the conflict. Characters expanded to include school personnel, such as guidance counselors and teachers. Glenn managed to take diverse viewpoints written in free verse and create a cohesive and suspenseful story.”(Chance, 34.) This book is easy to read because Glenn uses language exactly as the high school student would and this enables each character to speak directly to the reader in a natural flowing rhythm.
Reference List:
Glenn, Mel. 1982. “Maria Preosi,” In Class Dismissed! High School Poems. New York: Clarion Books,35.
Glenn, Mel. 1982. “Jeanette Jaffe,” In Class Dismissed! High School Poems. New York: Clarion Books, 45.
Glenn, Mel. 1982. “Bernard Pearlman,” In Class Dismissed! High School Poems. New York: Clarion Books, 88.
Glenn, Mel. 1982. “Song Vu Chin,” In Class Dismissed! High School Poems. New York: Clarion Books, 89.
Chance, Rosemary. 2004. “Novels in Verse for Teens: A Poetry Phenomenon.” Mississippi Libraries Vol. 68 No. 2 (Summer) 34.
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Topic 6: Preposterous: Poems of Youth, selected by Paul Janezcko
Janeczko, Paul B. 1991. Preposterous: Poems of Youth. New York: Orchard Books. ISBN: 0531059014.
The poems in PREPOSTEROUS: POEMS OF YOUTH were selected by Paul Janeczko and include poems by people some young adults might know, such as Langston Hughes, Gary Soto or Robert Penn Warren, but the majority are not as well known. The poems are arranged more or less thematically, though sections are not labeled as being on one topic or another. The poems, though written by adults, express emotions and views held by many teens as they grow up. Most of the poems are written without rhyme, in a free verse style that reads as most people speak. “More than half of the over one hundred poems reflect a male point of view, perhaps indicating special appeal to older boys who often feel that poetry has little to offer them.” (Fader.)
Janeszko chose to title the book PREPOSTEROUS from one of the poems, written by Jim Hall about a boy dreaming that a girl with a “the Best….” list would list him under something besides, “Wittiest.”(Hall, 21.) Perhaps his thought was that someone, particularly an adult would find the poems and experiences they express to be preposterous. One poem, “Sister” by H. R. Coursen, attempts to capture the author’s experience being the only girl in a house of brothers, “Younger than they, / and not the same. / Girl growing amid/ a grove of brothers. / They took my dolls/ one day into their/ forbidden circle/ in the woods, / drove sticks/ into the cleared dirt, / and burned them/ at the stake.” (Coursen, 36.)For at least one reviewer, this calls to mind a certain younger brother.
The poems fit together as teenagers do in a school, some clashing and colliding as they try to find their own space, while others hang alone and separate on the page. Janezcko selected poems that require the reader to think about their own experiences and how they relate to the experiences of the poets, which is something that a good poem will do. The poems evoke the runaway emotions of young adulthood and the issues, like death, sex, love and despair, teenagers experience as they strive to adulthood. The result is a book that truly does seem preposterous in its attempt to capture a multitude of voices expressing their experiences as young adults and yet it pulls off the capture in a magnificent way.
Reference Lst:
Fader, Ellen. 1991. Review of Preposterous: Poems of Youth selected by Paul Janezcko. Horn Book Magazine, Vol. 67 Issue 4 (Jul/Aug), 471.
Hall, Jim. 1986. “Preposterous.” In Preposterous: Poems of Youth, selected by Paul Janezcko. New York: Orchard Books, 21.
Coursen, H. R. 1986. “Sister.” In Preposterous: Poems of Youth, selected by Paul Janezcko. New York: Orchard Books. 36.
The poems in PREPOSTEROUS: POEMS OF YOUTH were selected by Paul Janeczko and include poems by people some young adults might know, such as Langston Hughes, Gary Soto or Robert Penn Warren, but the majority are not as well known. The poems are arranged more or less thematically, though sections are not labeled as being on one topic or another. The poems, though written by adults, express emotions and views held by many teens as they grow up. Most of the poems are written without rhyme, in a free verse style that reads as most people speak. “More than half of the over one hundred poems reflect a male point of view, perhaps indicating special appeal to older boys who often feel that poetry has little to offer them.” (Fader.)
Janeszko chose to title the book PREPOSTEROUS from one of the poems, written by Jim Hall about a boy dreaming that a girl with a “the Best….” list would list him under something besides, “Wittiest.”(Hall, 21.) Perhaps his thought was that someone, particularly an adult would find the poems and experiences they express to be preposterous. One poem, “Sister” by H. R. Coursen, attempts to capture the author’s experience being the only girl in a house of brothers, “Younger than they, / and not the same. / Girl growing amid/ a grove of brothers. / They took my dolls/ one day into their/ forbidden circle/ in the woods, / drove sticks/ into the cleared dirt, / and burned them/ at the stake.” (Coursen, 36.)For at least one reviewer, this calls to mind a certain younger brother.
The poems fit together as teenagers do in a school, some clashing and colliding as they try to find their own space, while others hang alone and separate on the page. Janezcko selected poems that require the reader to think about their own experiences and how they relate to the experiences of the poets, which is something that a good poem will do. The poems evoke the runaway emotions of young adulthood and the issues, like death, sex, love and despair, teenagers experience as they strive to adulthood. The result is a book that truly does seem preposterous in its attempt to capture a multitude of voices expressing their experiences as young adults and yet it pulls off the capture in a magnificent way.
Reference Lst:
Fader, Ellen. 1991. Review of Preposterous: Poems of Youth selected by Paul Janezcko. Horn Book Magazine, Vol. 67 Issue 4 (Jul/Aug), 471.
Hall, Jim. 1986. “Preposterous.” In Preposterous: Poems of Youth, selected by Paul Janezcko. New York: Orchard Books, 21.
Coursen, H. R. 1986. “Sister.” In Preposterous: Poems of Youth, selected by Paul Janezcko. New York: Orchard Books. 36.
Topic 6: Tomorrowland: 10 Stories About the Future, ed. Michael Cart
Cart, Michael, ed. 1999. Tomorrowland: Ten Stories about the Future. New York: Scholastic Press. ISBN: 0590376780.
What does the future hold? Mankind has always wondered about this and men have tried everything possible to figure it out. With the Y2K close at hand, Michael Cart invited nine other authors to write a short story to express their theory, hope or vision of the future. The variety that he received spanned millennia, from Jon Scieszka’s story set in 33,001 B.C. to Gloria Skurzynski’s story set on Mars. The authors provide bleak visions where dogs and books are almost extinct, to hopeful visions where baseball will always be played. The stories all tackle one issue or another, issues often created by society. “Such different stories. Such different futures. Yet all of them contain the same implicit invitation to think about how the seeds of possibility we planted in the past and continue to sow in the present might blossom into the future.” (Cart, ix.)
Lois Lowry’s “Rage” is a story about who young man saw his grandfather become bitter after selling part of his land to government for a wildlife preserve. The government “had planned for Pop’s acreage to the west was for a kind of nature that had begun to evolve in our state and every other.” (Lowry, 97.) The betrayal leads to serious consequences for all involved. “Rage” is contrasted with the specter of hope that one monk shares with a novice monk at the turn of the first millennium. In “Night of the Plague” by James Cross Giblin, the bubonic plague ravages Europe, where one young monk wonders if the world is ending. As he faces a disease that is killing old and young alike, he realizes his own mortality and like one of the victims he is treating fears the disease means it is the end of the world. Asking an older monk what he thinks life will be like a thousand years from then, he ponders the older monk’s response. “’I have no idea,’ said Brother Paul. ‘But you can be certain of one thing; it will be very different.’”(Giblin, 167.) Taking hope from this the young monk goes back to his duties tending the ill in the infirmary, ready to give hope to the sick.
Science fiction is a genre that is stretched by the short stories included in this anthology. The stories are connected through a common theme, "visions of times to come."(Publisher’s Weekly.) One critic has mentioned the distinctive cover art for the story, “The attractive (well, to teens) cover art of a spaceship shoulder tattoo will reel readers in, and the stories will net them, hook, line, and sinker.” (Farber.) A detail that the reviewer didn’t mention was that the person, pictured looking out into space seems to be wearing a suit of armor that seems to be riveted, which ties the medieval story into the rockets in outer space stories. The stories run the gamut of human emotion, cautions the reader about societal dangers often taken for granted, and offers snatches of hope for the future.
Reference List:
Cart, Michael, ed. 1999. Tomorrowland: Ten Stories About the Future. New York: Scholastic Press.
Farber, Susan. 1999. Review of Tomorrowland: 10 Stories About the Future, ed. Michael Cart. School Library Journal. Available at: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=ba6kWDUAgn&isbn=0590376780&itm=1. Last Accessed 7 December 2004.
Giblin, James Cross. 1999. Night of the Plague. In Tomorrowland: 10 Stories About the Future, ed. Michael Cart. New York: Scholastic Press. 167.
Lowry, Lois. 1999. Rage. In Tomorrowland: 10 Stories About the Future, ed. Michael Cart. New York: Scholastic Press. 97.
___________. 1999. Review of Tomorrowland: 10 Stories About the Future, ed. Michael Cart. Publisher’s Weekly. (Oct.). Available at: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=ba6kWDUAgn&isbn=0590376780&itm=1. Last Accessed 7 December 2004.
What does the future hold? Mankind has always wondered about this and men have tried everything possible to figure it out. With the Y2K close at hand, Michael Cart invited nine other authors to write a short story to express their theory, hope or vision of the future. The variety that he received spanned millennia, from Jon Scieszka’s story set in 33,001 B.C. to Gloria Skurzynski’s story set on Mars. The authors provide bleak visions where dogs and books are almost extinct, to hopeful visions where baseball will always be played. The stories all tackle one issue or another, issues often created by society. “Such different stories. Such different futures. Yet all of them contain the same implicit invitation to think about how the seeds of possibility we planted in the past and continue to sow in the present might blossom into the future.” (Cart, ix.)
Lois Lowry’s “Rage” is a story about who young man saw his grandfather become bitter after selling part of his land to government for a wildlife preserve. The government “had planned for Pop’s acreage to the west was for a kind of nature that had begun to evolve in our state and every other.” (Lowry, 97.) The betrayal leads to serious consequences for all involved. “Rage” is contrasted with the specter of hope that one monk shares with a novice monk at the turn of the first millennium. In “Night of the Plague” by James Cross Giblin, the bubonic plague ravages Europe, where one young monk wonders if the world is ending. As he faces a disease that is killing old and young alike, he realizes his own mortality and like one of the victims he is treating fears the disease means it is the end of the world. Asking an older monk what he thinks life will be like a thousand years from then, he ponders the older monk’s response. “’I have no idea,’ said Brother Paul. ‘But you can be certain of one thing; it will be very different.’”(Giblin, 167.) Taking hope from this the young monk goes back to his duties tending the ill in the infirmary, ready to give hope to the sick.
Science fiction is a genre that is stretched by the short stories included in this anthology. The stories are connected through a common theme, "visions of times to come."(Publisher’s Weekly.) One critic has mentioned the distinctive cover art for the story, “The attractive (well, to teens) cover art of a spaceship shoulder tattoo will reel readers in, and the stories will net them, hook, line, and sinker.” (Farber.) A detail that the reviewer didn’t mention was that the person, pictured looking out into space seems to be wearing a suit of armor that seems to be riveted, which ties the medieval story into the rockets in outer space stories. The stories run the gamut of human emotion, cautions the reader about societal dangers often taken for granted, and offers snatches of hope for the future.
Reference List:
Cart, Michael, ed. 1999. Tomorrowland: Ten Stories About the Future. New York: Scholastic Press.
Farber, Susan. 1999. Review of Tomorrowland: 10 Stories About the Future, ed. Michael Cart. School Library Journal. Available at: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=ba6kWDUAgn&isbn=0590376780&itm=1. Last Accessed 7 December 2004.
Giblin, James Cross. 1999. Night of the Plague. In Tomorrowland: 10 Stories About the Future, ed. Michael Cart. New York: Scholastic Press. 167.
Lowry, Lois. 1999. Rage. In Tomorrowland: 10 Stories About the Future, ed. Michael Cart. New York: Scholastic Press. 97.
___________. 1999. Review of Tomorrowland: 10 Stories About the Future, ed. Michael Cart. Publisher’s Weekly. (Oct.). Available at: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=ba6kWDUAgn&isbn=0590376780&itm=1. Last Accessed 7 December 2004.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
