Sullivan Poetry Reviews

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson is a critically acclaimed memoir written in verse. Winner of the 2014 National Book Award, a Newberry Honor Book, winner of the Coretta Scott King Book Award and a Kirkus Reviews Best Middle Grade Book of the Century, Woodson’s memoir traces her childhood as she grows up in South Carolina and New York City. At the heart of the story is Woodson’s family: her restless mother searching for a sense of home, her gifted sister, her faithful Jehovah's Witness grandmother, and her kind but stubborn grandfather, all of whom shape her understanding of life and the world around her. The backdrop of the memoir is the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement and the everyday racism Woodson and her family experience.  Woodson’s tone throughout the memoir is lyrical and reflective as she expertly evokes the hazy nostalgia of a Southern childhood with descriptions of sticky, summer heat and the sounds of crickets singing her to sleep. Her style is conversational...

World Make Way: New Poems Inspired by Art from the Metropolitan Museum of Art edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins in partnership with Metropolitan Museum of Art, includes exclusive poems from eighteen poets to pair with classic works of art. The compilation is centered around a quote from the introduction:   “Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.” Leonardo da Vinci   This poetry collection features poems from well-known contemporary poets for young readers, including: Alma Flor Ada Cynthia Cotten Rebecca Kai Dotlich Julie Fogliano Charles Ghigna Joan Bransfield Graham Lee Bennett Hopkins Irene Latham J. Patrick Lewis Elaine Magliaro Guadalupe Garcia McCall Marilyn Nelson Naomi Shihab Nye Ann Whitford Paul Marilyn Singer Amy Ludwig VanDerwater Carole Boston Weatherford Janet Wong The original poems in World Make Way are written in response to a diverse range of art from different time periods, cultures and art forms ...

Ordinary Hazards by Nikki Grimes is a free-verse memoir divided into four books. Each book covers a distinct time in the author's life, chronicling her difficult, and oftentimes traumatic, childhood and adolescence in 1950s and 60s New York. Throughout the memoir, Grimes emphasizes that despite the darkness of her early years, she never let go of hope. Grimes reflects on how art, specifically literature, allowed her to see how pain can be channeled into beauty. Art and faith are constant themes that reinforce Grimes’s understanding that goodness persists despite hardship. Grimes, Nikki. Ordinary Hazards. WordSong, 2019. ISBN 978-1629798813 The poems in Ordinary Hazards are written as both standard poems and as notebook entries. This natural style helps capture the intimate feeling that Grimes is so expert at fostering throughout the book. The tone throughout the memoir is meditative, and not sensational, despite the dramatic happenings in Grimes' early life. This restraint gi...