Book Cover Image:
Book Summary: A
Kick in the Head: An Everyday Guide to
Poetic Forms contains a creative route to breaking down poetry. The book includes an introduction to poetry,
why there are rules, and many different forms.
The book follows with 29 examples of different forms of poetry with each
section containing a selected work by the author of this form of poetry, an
illustration hinting to the poems essence, and a brief description of what
makes this form unique. The page also
includes in the top corner a colorful title of the form. After the 29 forms of poetry section another
section called “Notes on the Forms” follows.
Here the author gives three columns per page, with title, summary of
each form for further learning. For
example the author explains, that a couplet is named that way due to the
meaning of the word couple, and the rhyming pattern displayed in the poem that
was read in the section named couplet among the 29 forms.
APA Reference of
Book:
Janeczko, P.B. (2005). A kick in the head: An everyday guide to poetic forms. New
York, NY. Candelwick.
Impressions: This
book provides an engaging, creative, artistically fresh, and hip way to study poetry. Typically, when I think of studying poetry
flashbacks of high school days of white pages,
black font, and somewhere around page 600 in the Reading and Language
Arts textbook come to mind. Studying war
poetry was fine form some, but not quite engaging enough for me. This book takes a fresh look at studying
poetry. Most of the sections are short,
concise, and easy to move through for our easily distracted cultural
norms. The illustrations are colorful
and someone mysterious when attempting to link them to the poetry as the author
suggests we do. The different forms and
authors selected add variety and surprisingly quite a bit of comedy too. Janeczko’s book is impressive in its
simplicity, summaries, hints on each page, and works selected. It gives the reader an added bonus of
artistic touch to help us learn about poems.
Without his sectioning, illustrations, and brief poems added in, for
many studying poetry can be tedious and uninteresting. It is also impressive in the brevity of
explanations, hints, and end of book additional summaries to help even the most
knowledgeable poet who could have trouble explaining differences in forms. The information given also keeps the reader
engaged. For example, I read a poem
without reading the form, or explanation, and was clueless. I typically would have turned the page and
never glanced at that poem again, but the author provided the title Riddle Poem
in the bottom corner with a simple explanations. Then I reread the poem with a lot of intrigue
and a little dedication to solving the riddle.
So for me this totally turned the poem around and made it exciting
instead of an “Oh well that was probably over my head or something symbolic I
did not understand, next poem.” My only criticism is that some of the
vocabulary could be too technical from certain readers without help from
teachers or parents. Regardless, the
book is great for anyone teaching poetry or wanting to know more about the
subject.
Professional
Review:
School Library Journal
-
Gr 3-9 –Following on the heels of their delightful
introduction to concrete poetry, A Poke in the I (Candlewick, 2001),
Janeczko and Raschka now join forces to explore poetic forms. An introduction
presents an easy-to-swallow rationale for the many rules to follow, likening
the restrictions to those found in sports: in both cases, rules challenge the
players to excel in spite of limits. The repertoire then unfolds to showcase 29
forms, one to two poems per spread, building from a couplet, tercet, and
quatrain to the less familiar and more complex persona poem, ballad, and
pantoum. The selections are accessible without being simplistic; they span an
emotional range from the tongue-in-cheek humor of J. Patrick Lewis's
"Epitaph for Pinocchio" to Rebecca Kai Dotlich's moving "Whispers
to the [Vietnam] Wall." Each page is a tour de force of design, the pace
and placement of art and text perfectly synchronized. Raschka's characters and
abstractions emerge from torn layers of fuzzy rice paper, intricately patterned
Japanese designs, and solids, decorated and defined by quirky
ink-and-watercolor lines. The expansive white background provides continuity
and contrast to the colorful parade. The name of each form resides in the upper
corner of the page, accompanied by a wry visual. A definition (in an unobtrusive
smaller font) borders the bottom; more detail on each form is provided in
endnotes. Readers will have the good fortune to experience poetry as art, game,
joke, list, song, story, statement, question, memory. A primer like no other.
Source: Lukehart, W. (2005). A kick in the head: An everyday guide to poetic forms.
[Review of the book A kick in the head: An everyday guide to poetic forms by D. Cronin]. School
Library Journal: The Book Review. 230. Retrieved from http://libproxy.library.unt.edu:2052/hottopics/lnacademic/?verb=sr&csi=256569
Found Through: UNT Library Database – LexisNexis Academic
Library Uses: This
is a great book for teaching poetry to students in the library or
classroom. One way I will use this book
is to get tables of three to four students.
Let each table select 2 forms of poetry provided in the book. Have them read the author’s selection of
their form, including its summary in the back section of the book, and create
their own poem of this form following the guidelines presented with an
illustration. Each table will have a
designated poet or two, illustrator, and presenter. Once the poem is presented with the smartboard
technology, I will ask students seated to discuss with their group if they
could figure out which form this is.
Once they have discussed and looked through the book I will let them
guess from a multiple choice list which one they believe it is and to write down
that choice on a piece of paper. Then
they can hold it up when the teacher says to, and the table with the most
correct answer near the end of class gets a reward.
No comments:
Post a Comment