A lot of serendipitous events have been happening around me lately, and I am happy to report that one such event involved the arrival of 3 wonderful books back to back. I say serendipitous for a few of reasons. First, I don’t read much poetry anymore, unfortunately, and when I do, it’s usually not “current” poetry. Victorian is about as current as I typically get. Yet, all of these books were released post 1930! Second, I don’t read much children’s literature anymore, unfortunately, and when I do, it’s usually from the way back, too. Third, I love, love, love, love illustrated books, and all 3 of these books have absolutely wonderful illustrations. And lastly, 2 of the 3 came to me via friend, poet, and novelist Richard Cambridge. How great is that? Friends who read cannot be beat.
I’ll go in order of publication in talking about these, making the first T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. After mentioning this book to several friends this week, I’ve come to the conclusion that I am the only literary cat person alive who had never heard of this until Richard brought it to my attention. That makes sense, as not only is it a collection of T.S. Eliot poems written about cats, but it was also the basis for the musical Cats, and I am pretty sure I’m the only cat person alive who hasn’t seen that, too.
There are many, many versions of this wonderful little book, but I chose one illustrated by Edward Gorey. Gorey was a major cat dude, and it shows in his illustrations. As with most of his animal drawings, his illustrations of the Practical Cats are wonderfully whimsical and surprisingly light-hearted, and each captures not only the innate catness of its subject, but the heart of each of Eliot’s poems.
And what lovely poems. This is a children’s collection, but looking deeper into each piece will remind you that a genius and master poet cranked these out. That is a large part of their charm – these are not hack works, lessened in quality because of their perceived audience. Each is a beautifully crafted little gem, yet none lose their joie de vivre for a second. It’s like finding a set of well-loved set of diamond building blocks in a child’s chest of toys, unexpected, beautiful, and magical.
If you’re a cat lover, you must read this collection. Chances are, you’ll recognize some of your beloved felines; Eliot gets it that right. I won’t go into each one (my personal faves are “The Song of the Jellicle” and “The Ad-dressing of Cats”) because there are two more books to talk about, but trust me when I say, you will not be disappointed.
The second book is Alison McGhee’s Only a Witch Can Fly, which Richard gave to me to commemorate our day in Salem and my graduation from my MFA program. What a wonderful book! The story unfolds in a sestina, one of the most rigid and difficult forms of poetry, and one of the most stunning when done well. I thought this one was done very well. The form never constricts the story – about a little girl who wants more than anything to fly, and in discovering her true nature, finally does so – and like Eliot’s poems, it never loses sight of who it is being written for. The illustrations are also lovely, simple in both their lines and palette. They are very modern and linear, simple and uncluttered, presented in sage green, a taupe-y rust, black, and white. If someone described drawings to me using these words, I’d think, meh, but they are utterly charming. The expressions on the faces of the people, the cat’s body language, and the details of environment the illustrator, Taeeun Yoo, chooses to focus on all contribute to a much warmer, more spontaneous finished product than what I’ve described here. Oh, and the dad looks suspiciously like an adult version of Harry Potter, so it’s not hard to imagine this might his little girl learning to navigate her broom, which never hurts if your reader is a big HP fan (though that is never even hinted at in the poem).
Lastly, I read Ron Koertge’s Lies, Knives, and Girls in Red Dresses. This is a collection of fairy tales re-told in edgy free verse with bad language, so not for kids, though I would say it is geared toward a YA crowd. I came to this with elevated hopes, because one of the best books I’ve read in the last five years is Sharp Teeth, a story about modern day werewolves in LA told in epic verse. I was so completely blown away by the use of an ancient form to tell a decidedly modern story that I read the description of this book and bought it right away.
The book opens with the following direct address to the reader: “Do you want to sleep? Find another storyteller. Do you want to think about the world in a new way? Come closer. Closer, please. I want to whisper in your ear.” This is actually my favorite quote from the book, but what follows doesn’t really live up to its sinister promise.
Not to say the rest is bad. The poems are dark, yet they are darkly humorous rather than darkly horrific. Retellings of “The Little Match Girl” and “Cinderella” have some real ick in them, but the rest are simply amusing. Like the other two books mentioned here, Koertge never loses sight of his audience, but unlike the other two, these poems aren’t really layered enough to really hit a nerve with most adults who would be drawn to this book. I chuckled at many of the poems, and only found one to be subpar, but for those of us who have read Angela Carter and Margo Lanagan, whose retellings of “Bluebeard” and “Hansel and Gretel,” respectively, are horrific in the truest sense of the word, nothing here will make us think about the world in a new way. Likely, though, many teens have not read Carter and Lanagan (though Lanagan is often marketed as a YA author, a thought that makes me shudder), so this collection would be a terrific introduction to the truly black but beautiful retellings that are out there.
The illustrations are, for me, wonderful. Andrea Dezso works primarily in silhouette, making the pictures highly reminiscent of paper cut art, one of my very favorite mediums. The color scheme is minimal in keeping with the cover, and I think that images hit on some of the discomfort and terror the poems often miss. (The book is brand spanking new, so I couldn’t find good quality images as with the others.) I know I don’t sound all that enthusiastic about Lie, Knives, and Girls in Red, but it is a nice little book. I think it just suffers in my estimation because I have in my reading history so many other works of superior quality to compare it to.
If you’re the mood for some quick, fun stuff and pretty great eye candy, check out any or all of these books. Combined, it wouldn’t take more than a couple of hours to read them all and give a good gander at the drawings. If you’re anything like me (you poor sap), you’ll find yourself returning to them after you’ve done to revisit particularly compelling verses or images or both. That’s the great thing about poetry and illustrations – they linger, and it is easy to go back and examine them again. I dare say that you might even, after hitting these books, be left feeling as if a furry creature of some sort, be it wolf or cat, brushed by your leg and left some of its magic behind.
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