Stephen K. (havan) reviewed on 3/25/2012 + 138 more book reviews

Just finished the penultimate poem in the anthology (I'd already read the last one as it lends it's title to the book)

I clearly recall my sixth grade teacher touting this book and I now regret waiting 40 odd years before finally taking him up on his recommendation.

This is a great collection of poetry for non poetry readers, particularly younger folks. The poems cover a wide variety of topics and there are fewer "clinkers" among them than in most poetry collections.

Perhaps part of the enjoyment came from limiting myself to no more than three poems a day. I made this a bathroom read and took some time to enjoy the imagery and the playful moods evoked by many of these.

While the giants are represented (from Robert Frost and Langston Hughes to Carl Sandburg and Edna St. Vincent Millay) it was the lesser known poets that I found the most charming.

I'd love to see these taught in a modern day high school class. I can just see the uproar over some goth girl reading Dorothy Parker's Resume, a soliloquy on suicide, or the boasting after a popular baseball player neatly nails the reading of Robert Francis's The Base Stealer. If I picture myself in that class, I'd have to choose William Jay Smith's The Toaster

[The Toaster]
A silver-scaled dragon with jaws flaming red
sits at my elbow and toasts my bread.
I hand him fat slices, then one by one
he hands them back when he sees they are done.
― William Jay Smith

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