Light in Poetry

Contributor's Form (list #61)

• No oil to read by...
  I am off to bed but ah!...
  my moonlit pillow. (Haiku by Basho)

   

• Chandra, Deborah. Balloons. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988. See "Sun and I")
• Chandra, Deborah. Rich Lizard. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993. See "Porch Light," and "Moon Baby")
• de Regniers, Beatrice Schenk. Sing a Song of Popcorn. (Scholastic, 1988. See "Firefly" by Elizabeth Maddox Roberts: "...I never could have thought of it, / to have a little bug all lit / And made to go on wings.")
• Field, Eugene. "Wynken and Blynken and Nod."
• Graham, Joan. Flicker Flash. (Houghton, spring 1999. Shape poems about light)
• Hopkins, Lee Bennet. Side by Side. (See "Hanukkah Candles," by Margaret Hillert and "No Need to Light a Night Light," by Anonymous)
• Livingston, Myra Cohn. Light and Shadows. (Photographs by Barbara Rogasky, Holiday House, 1992. The poems in this book are cinquan-style, and visit less common forms of light. There are some intriguing images such as "Light steps / into a pool / stretching its yellow legs..." and the photographs are wonderful. Grade 2 and up)
• O'Connell, Kristine. The Great Frog Race. (Clarion, 1997. See "Falling Star")
• Worth, Valerie. All the Small Poems. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1987)