[Poetry Friday] Emperors, Princes, and Princesses in Singer and Masse’s “Follow Follow”

Myra here.

I am happy to join the Poetry Friday community this week with a book recommendation that I received from fellow book enthusiasts when we launched our bimonthly theme early this year: Game of Thrones: Blue Bloods, Queenship, and Aristocracy. 

As this is the last Friday when we are celebrating royalty, I am glad to feature Marilyn Singer and Josée Masse’s Follow Follow. Poetry Friday this week is hosted by Anastasia Suen in her Poet! Poet! blog.

Fats has written her thoughts about Mirror Mirror last year when we featured quite a few of the CYBILS winners over the past several years. In Follow Follow, Marilyn Singer shares even more reversos, a poetic structure that Singer herself has ingeniously created. In the Author’s Note found at the back of the book, Singer explains quite succinctly it in this fashion:

The reverso, a form I created, is made up of two poems. Read the firest down and it says one thing. Read it back up, with changes only in punctuation and capitalization, and it means something comletely different. When you flip the poem, sometimes the same narrator has a different point of view. Other times, there is another narrator altogether.

A brilliant concept altogether. This book is a testament to just how essential punctuation marks are in a text, regardless of whether it be prose or poetry. Masse remained faithful to this duality through her illustrations that portray varying shades, flipped perspectives, or the extreme polarities in characterization (see figure below).

There are twelve sets of reverso poems altogether. Teachers would also be glad to note that there is a brief yet detailed description of the fairy tales which inspired the poems. I found a few poems that are in keeping with our royalty theme.

The first one talks about the power of belief in Panache.

I love the bold colors used by Masse and the transformation of the poor miller’s boy to a grand marquis.

This other poem also caught my eye as Singer played around with the idea of exactly what it means to “precious” in The Nightingale’s Emperor.

Have you written a reverso poem? Do share a few of the joys and challenges in using this poetic form, if you have.

Follow Follow: A Book of Reverso Poems by Marilyn Singer and Josée Masse. Published by Dial Books for Young Readers, 2013. Book borrowed from the public library. Book photos taken by me.

Reading Update: 36 (25)

*** Video ads other readers may find at the bottom of this post are NOT endorsed by GatheringBooks but are randomly included by WordPress to maintain their site. ***