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©Carolyn Gabb

Category:  Poetry -- Mixed Anthology
 (written by a college student of Dr. Gabb)

Title: Classic Poetry: An Illustrated Collection
Editor: Michael Rosen
Illustrator: Paul Howard
Publisher: Candlewick Press/Cambridge/1998
ISBN: 1 – 56402 – 890 – 9

This mixed anthology of American, Australian, and English authors includes more than eighty selections of excerpts and full text poems. The anthology spans the authorship of poets from the seventeenth century to modern day. I am a supporter of perpetuating the "classics" and this anthology renews the offering of these poetic gifts. In this reading I revisited old favorites and found new favorites from familiar authors.

Each poem is introduced with a painting or drawing of the corresponding author’s face. Each author is also introduced with a biographical sketch that includes the editor’s thoughts of the poet’s writing style. The poets and their poems are introduced in chronological order, according to the birth date of the poet. The text is arranged to aid easy location of specific selections and also to provide background information to expand and support the reader’s prior knowledge. The reference pages include a table of contents that groups poems by each author. Two indexes provide background information concerning particular circumstances surrounding and affecting the writing of the poems and they also attend to specific vocabulary and uses of language. The purpose of supplying this information is to help the reader better understand and therefore better appreciate the poems. There is also a reference devoted to the explanation of specific kinds of poetry. An index of titles and first lines is also included.

Among the themes that live in these poems are the beauty and strength of nature, humanity and inhumanity, good and evil, the effects of poverty and politics, and the radiation of joy and love.

"The Fawn" (Edna St. Vincent Millay), "The Tyger" (William Blake), "The Eagle" (Alfred Tennyson), "The Wind" (Christina Rossetti), "The Pasture" and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" (Robert Frost), "A slash of Blue-" (Emily Dickinson) and "Silver" (Walter De La Mare) are among those that celebrate nature’s gifts.

The evils and hardships of life are illustrated in "Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow" an excerpt from "Macbeth" (William Shakespeare), "The Slave’s Dream" (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), "Song of the Shirt" (Thomas Hood), an excerpt from "Child Labour" (Elizabeth Barrett Browning), and "Mother to Son" (Langston Hughes).

Political and historical statements are offered in "Throwing a Tree" (Thomas Hardy), "O Captain, My Captain!" (Walt Whitman),"The General" (Siegfried Sassoon), and "Paul Revere’s Ride" (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow).

Among the musical poems that employ rhyme, rhythm, repetition and word play are "The Bells" (Edgar Allan Poe), "Sweet and Low" (Alfred Tennyson), "Calico Pie" (Edward Lear), and "Waltzing Matilda" ("Banjo" Patterson).

Whimsy and nonsense poems include "Jabberwocky" (Lewis Carroll) and "The Jumblies" (Edward Lear).

Joy is celebrated in "Miracles" (Walt Whitman).

Sadness and loneliness are felt in "Solitude" (Ella Wheeler Wilcox).

Robert Lewis Stevenson employs imaginative play from the child’s point of view in "A Good Play" and "Block City." Carl Sandburg’s "Arithmetic" employs simple uses of the number system to define arithmetic and illustrate many of its operations.

Emily Dickinson simply yet profoundly explains our need for language in "A word is dead."
 
 

 The illustrator uses style, technique, color, size and function to portray the meaning of each poem. Some illustrations are prints or pencil drawings in black and while or color. Some give the appearance of a faded photograph in sepia, using shades of brown and beige, conveying dreariness ("O Captain, My Captain!" and "Song of the Shirt"). Color is also used for dramatic contrast as in the illustration of "The Slave’s Dream," in which the sad, sleeping slave appears in dreary sepia tones and his dream of his happy youth in his native land is pictured in full color. Color contrast is also effectual in the illustration for "Full Moon Rhyme" where one sees the golden moon against the deep royal blue sky. Impressionistic and realistic color paintings capture the explicit descriptions and alluded meanings of the poems ("The Tyger," "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," and "The Slender Falls"). Cartoons and fanciful paintings are used for both light and jolly poems ("Waltzing Matilda" and "The Jumblies") and also those of a more serious nature ("Skyscraper"). Paintings that resemble tapestries are used to illustrate the stories of "Kubla Khan" and "The Destruction of Sennacherib." A sampler quilt illustrates "All the World’s a Stage" from "As You Like It." Full-page illustrations, framed illustrations separate from the text, and illustrations entwined within the text are all used.

This anthology not only spans three centuries of poetry; it also spans the ages from young childhood to adulthood in its appeal. It is true classic and a true treasure.