What Is Poetry?: The Essential Guide to Reading and Writing Poems

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I don’t remember the next few minutes. I remember at one point thinking or saying, “Why have you done this, Eddie?” as if he had done this thing to me. I’m almost ashamed to admit it, though. Why or how could I have thought at that moment that I was in any way involved in him getting whatever it was that had killed him? I guess it’s part of how we see the death of those we love: we see them withdrawing their love from us. If ever, in our past, people withdrew their love from us as some kind of punishment, then someone dying can feel like that too. The second chapter is just as valuable and practical as the first. It asks not 'What Can Poetry Do?' but 'What can YOU do with a Poem?' He begins with the obvious, 'read it,' but the list is longer than you might think. I love what he has to say about memorizing poems:

It has now been 23 years since Eddie’s death. For the most part, Rosen has succeeded in escaping incapacitation. “I’ve tried not to be burdened by it,” he says. “I talk in the book about ‘carrying the elephant’.” Rosen hands me a postcard replica of an engraving of a man struggling to carry an elephant up a hill. “I bought that in Paris,” he goes on, “and it’s a great reminder. You know, I’m not carrying an elephant. At the time I thought I was. Eddie’s dead and I’m carrying all this grief and it’s bigger than me – it’s as big as an elephant. But not any more. Even with this Covid thing, or with any of that other stuff, I’m still not carrying an elephant. So this picture, it inspires me.”At one point he made a rather lazy point about 'chemicals on the land' which jarred for me, in the overall context of the book, the particular poem and in its wording (an entirely valid point that the poem might lead you to reflect on damage being caused to the environment) and I feel children deserve better. I also felt he used Macbeth's "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech (which I certainly do love) in an odd context (he does not mention that Lady Macbeth's death has just been reported) I was a creative writing major. I've read a lot of books and articles about poetry (although I'm more of the fiction writer), and this is definitely the best one out of the lot. While it's target audience is probably upper elementary through middle school kids, I think it can definitely scale into high school, and even be useful and inspiring to adults like me. Reading Michael Rosen's guide to poetry makes me realize how many of the previous poetry resources were definitely written by academics and not poets themselves. Rosen works through this guide to poetry differently, from the first chapter where he be explores what is poetry by exploring what poetry can do, complete with examples... and it puts all the technical terminology of poetry (metaphor, rhythm, etc.) in the last chapter, an afterthought to the bigger scope of poetry as a thing that places with words and emotions and images. A Materialist and Intertextual Examination of the Process of Writing a Work of Children's Literature" (PDF). University of North London. October 1997. Archived (PDF) from the original on 6 September 2021. That's what this book does. It fills in that gap. It speaks to kids who are beyond the age of simple and silly rhymes and gives them a lot to think about and play with and a little technical advice. And it comes from a real writer in the trenches who uses examples from the literary canon and then takes you inside his own poetry and tells you what he was thinking or trying when he wrote this.

How did that help? It put what had happened into the context of the human race. It showed that Eddie’s death wasn’t just or only something that had happened to me, to his family, to his friends. It was something that happened to the human race and was part of the human story. We live with bacteria. Bacteria live with us. This is how it’s been for millions of years. We evolve with each other. The death of Eddie was a moment when the bacterium was so successful it failed: it killed its host and then died with it. To know these things helped me, and still does. It’s the only way I can make sense of it. Any other way feels to me senseless. I don’t believe in a fate or destiny that governs us. I don’t believe that it’s the will of a being outside life on Earth. I don’t even think any kind of “will” comes into it. It’s biology. To tell the truth, I was afraid that I would be. I felt like her in that very moment, my mind full of Eddie, thinking every minute about not having him there, and knowing that I would never have him there again. I felt like this woman sounded. But would I feel like that in a year’s time? Ten years’ time? I hoped not. I wished the poor woman well and walked on.Rosen’s poems for children always see the world from their perspective and can be counted on to induce giggles – “‘Don’t throw fruit at a computer’ / ‘You what?’” – especially when performed by the poet himself: he doesn’t have 98m YouTube views for nothing. He is learning to adapt to virtual school visits, “a kind of informal telly”, zooming into the camera with one eye: “then my dad came in and said ...” He has written more than 200 books and counting, including greedily devoured favourites Chocolate Cake, Fluff the Farting Fish and Monster. His most recent books for adults include The Missing, an investigation into the fates of his European Jewish relatives during the second world war, and his 2017 memoir So They Call You Pisher!, a lively account of growing up the son of Jewish communists in postwar Pinner: “Not the most encouraging place to start a branch of a political organisation aimed at world revolution.” Then there are the two books he wrote in response to the death of his second son Eddie (he has five children, including Eddie, and two stepchildren) from meningitis when he was 18 just over 20 years ago: Carrying the Elephant, a mixture of prose and poetry, and Michael Rosen’s Sad Book, illustrated by Blake. “I loved him very, very much,” Rosen writes, “but he died anyway.” Rosen likes to say he is ‘recovering’ rather than ‘recovered’. Covid has left him with a hearing aid in one ear, dizziness and breathlessness In November 2019, along with other Jewish public figures, Rosen signed an open letter supporting Corbyn, describing him as "a beacon of hope in the struggle against emergent far-right nationalism, xenophobia and racism in much of the democratic world" and endorsing him in the 2019 UK general election. [38] In December 2019, along with 42 other leading cultural figures, he signed an open letter endorsing the Labour Party under Corbyn's leadership in the 2019 general election. The letter stated that "Labour's election manifesto under Corbyn's leadership offers a transformative plan that prioritises the needs of people and the planet over private profit and the vested interests of a few". [39] [40] Michael Rosen Interview – Igniting the desire to read". Scottish Book Trust. February 2009. Archived from the original on 31 May 2009 . Retrieved 6 March 2009. . Rosen's mother, Connie (née Isakofsky; 1920–1976), worked as a secretary at the Daily Worker and later as a primary school teacher and training college lecturer. She had attended Central Foundation Girls' School, where she made friends such as Bertha Sokoloff. She met Harold in 1935, when both were aged 15, as they were both members of the Young Communist League. They participated in the Battle of Cable Street together. As a young couple, they settled in Pinner, Middlesex. They left the Communist Party in 1957. Rosen never joined, but his parents' activities influenced his childhood. For example, their acquaintance with the bohemian literary figure Beatrice Hastings made an impression on him as a child. [5] [8]