It's April!: Poems for Poetry Month

Ah, April, that month which Chaucer celebrated in the introduction to his Canterbury Tales! His tribute to April is probably the inspiration for making it the official "Poetry Month," but what better time to salute the power of poesy than this month of flowers and showers!

The definitive modern anthology for children is The Random House Book of Poetry for Children, edited by Jack Prelutsky, himself a popular children's poet, and illustrated by the Caldecott artist Arnold Lobel, famous for Frog and Toad Are Friends, its sequels, and other classics. With 500 selections from poets as diverse as Shel Silverstein, Ogden Nash, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Lewis Carroll, and Emily Dickinson, this compendium has something for poetry lovers of all ages. It makes a great birthday gift which can grow up with the child and remain a much loved reference for many years.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is the delightful reissue of an oldie from the sixties, Never Tease a Weasel. This new edition features clever illustrations by New Yorker cartoonist George Booth adding to the fun of Soule's sprightly text, which continues to remind us that, however tempting it may be, "teasing isn't nice."

If Not for the Cat is a recent title featuring seventeen haiku poems about animals. Written by Jack Prelutsky, the most prolific author of humorous poetry for children, the book is wonderfully illustrated by Ted Rand, whose drawings encompass the comic and the heroic in a restrained style totally in keeping with the haiku form. His illustrations perfectly interpret the title poem, which reads,

If not for the cat
And the scarcity of cheese,
I could be content.

Rand shows a mouse, timidly shrinking just inside his mousehole, while an obnoxiously vigilant cat, his nose and whiskers pressed against the hole, waits just outside.

Another amazing anthology of animal poems is Jane Yolen's Alphabestiary: Animal Poems from A to Z, which features such famous poets as Hilaire Belloc, Mary Ann Hoberman, Beatrice Potter, William Blake, and Alfred Lord Tennyson. In addition to Blake's "Tiger" and Tennyson's "Eagle," as you might expect, Yolen also provides rather exotic beasties as poetic subjects--the quetzal, xyleborus, zebu, and zemmi. (Yes, no zebra)

One of my favorite little books of poetry is novelist John Updike's A Child's Calendar, recently revised and reissued with illustrations by Trina Schart Hyman. This collection of twelve pieces provides short, perfectly polished poems, one for each month, which are alternately gentle, humorous, and spiritual. The word pictures and artist's illustrations blend perfectly to create that tingly "Oh, yes!" feeling that reading a good poem gives. Here's an excerpt that has haunted me since I read it in the book's first edition years ago:

November

The stripped and shapely
Maple grieves
The loss of her
Departed leaves.

The ground is hard,
As hard as stone,
The year is old,
The birds have flown.

And yet the world,
Nevertheless,
Displays a certain
Loveliness---

The beauty of
The bone. Tall God
Must see our souls
This way, and nod.