From: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 160 Publication Date: January 15, 1998 Reading Level: Young Adult
Poetry helps us across the world's narrow bridges, but when we slip, it helps us not to be afraid. Here is a collection of some of the most intense poems ever written, to guide us, to lead us, to hold on to as we fall.Poems are earth-shattering when, as Emily Dickinson put it, "I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off." Liz Rosenberg has selected poems of passion and yearning, of birth and death that do just that: they hurt, but they also heal. For, over and over, the poets return to love, the mysterious, perhaps limitless feeling that binds us to the earth and may lead us beyond.As Galway Kinnell tells it, "The wages of dying is love." The reward of reading great poetry is a form of love, too, and this collection is a chance to feel that, again and again.
Was that an earthquake or a kamikaze? A subterranean vibration that could knock down a house, or a suicidal pilot gearing up for a fatal nose-diving crash? Either way, things won't ever be quite the same again after impact. Earth-Shattering Poems, compiled by Liz Rosenberg, is an excellent poetry anthology for the young readers of today's world. These poems are suitable for upper grade school, all the way up to mid-twenties, maybe even older if a person's into poetry. Remember, you don't have to understand a poem in order to like it. Sometimes it's all about rhythm and rhyme, or rhyme scheme. You know, you've got your AAA BBBs or AA BBs or AB ABs. You could even throw in a few ABCBs. It isn't confusing, even if you're NOT into poetry, because the way the poet turns a phrase, the rhyming seems natural.
Poetry's all around us, even if you're not picking up a book of it. Somebody makes a rhyme on a coincidence, or says a heartfelt word of love, praise, appreciation... it's poetry. Life IS poetry, or it can be MADE into poetry. That's what all poets do. They take beautiful words that pop into their heads, arrange them around until they sound really great and have a worthwhile meaning, usually metaphorically. A poem is a string of words said with such emotion, passion, or overabundance of properly-placed figurative language that it is classified as a poem! Something that, when you say it, could have a double meaning: one phrase overshadowing another to set you off seeing the poem through a completely different set of eyes. Just like in the poem WHITE NIGHT, by Anna Akhmatova, on page 33 of Earth-Shattering Poems. White night is an expression used in Russia to refer to the time of year in early summer when there is almost 24 hours of sunlight in a day. It could also mean insomnia, something which many young adults DO face surprisingly often in this crazy, modern world.
There are other reasons too which make these earth-shattering poems so compatible with young adults: we can relate to them! This has mostly to do with the CONTENT of a poem... there are poems that elude to romance or analysis of love in such poems as THE WAY OF LOVE, some that talk of relationships, or nature. Others contemplate; death, life, and everything in between. The poems that Ms. Rosenberg chose cover many areas of deep reflections that kids just finding themselves are thinking about. And that's why these poems pertain particularly to an age group we call YOUNG ADULTS (or YA in library terminology!). The title Earth-Shattering Poems probably came about because Liz Rosenberg thought these poems, when you read them, really shake you up enough to RESPOND to the poetry. They might change the way you think about something or someone, or bring up a possibility about your life, or about life in general, that you never thought of before. Those poems which strike a chord in the area of your mind that says, Hey, I understand that... I had something like that happen to me once. Or, hey, that's really beautiful. Or even, Hey! that one makes me want to jump for joy!
definitely earth-shattering I love this book, and think of it as my "secular bible," by which I mean I can always find something I need when I need it. Some of my old favorite poems are in here, like "Sometimes with One I Love" by Walt Whitman, and the very first poem in the book, by Sappho. But I've also discovered new (to me) favorites: the Persian poet Rumi, a poet named J.E. Wei, Pascale Giroux, and poems I didn't know by Sharon Olds and Galway Kimmel. I loved this editor's first anthology, "The Invisible Ladder" because of the choice of poems, but especially because of the photos of poets as children (Robert Bly was a cute kid) and the poets' commentaries. That was a book I gave to my 10 yr. old son AND to my 95 year old friend. Earth-Shattering Poems is less of an intro to poems, and more--just what the title says. I carry it around with me wherever I go. I just wiah this one had also had more graphic elements, (photos, portraits)and maybe some comments by the poets? Also I would have liked to see the poems in the original language as well as in translation--maybe in an appendix. The only thing that makes me mad is that I don't find this book in the bookstores more often! But then, I never find The Norton Anthology, either, and those are my two favorites....
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Trevor
