The ancient Hebrew idea of tikkun olan—remaking the world whole—served as inspiration to poet and editor Rosenberg as she gathered in poems for a sister collection to her Earth-Shattering Poems (not reviewed). Read full book review >

A striking array of poems by ``living poet[s]'' who do not write in a ``children's poetry ghetto,'' including Robert Creeley, Carolyn Kizer, Nikki Giovanni, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Bly, and W.D. Snodgrass. ``Most poetry anthologies for young readers,'' Rosenberg (Heart and Soul, p. 224, etc.) writes in her introduction, ``are . . . books full of bouncy rhymes too stupid for any adult to put up with (as if children were tone deaf or didn't know any better)—or poems by the dead and the very dead.'' Some of the featured poets cite as sources of inspiration long-dead and recently dead poets, as in ``The Mystery of Emily Dickinson'' by Marvin Bell: ``While the others wrote more and longer,/you wrote much more and much shorter.'' The poems range in subject from the power of love to the mysteries of math (from Kyoko Mori: ``If x equals y,/is it like putting apples into/cole slaw, the way a tomato/is really a fruit?''); there are stinging poems of advocacy, from Alice Walker's ``I am the dark/rotten-toothed girl/with the wounded eyes/and the melted ear'' to Mart°n Espada's defendant ``ordered/to remove his tires/from the halls of civilization'' and David Chin's Sterling Williams who ``shows us he knows how to bleed.'' The contributors are arranged alphabetically, with commentary and photos of themselves both as children and as adults, followed by one or more of their poems. Read full book review >