Exquisite Poetry for Two Voices

Reading List
Written By Rebecca Grabill

Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices by Paul Fleischman. 1988

This is a Charlotte Zolotow book, which is no surprise. Such lovely language, metaphor, all the poetic devices one learns in school. I don’t read music, but this reads like I imagine music to be read—heard in my head, both voices blending, pulling apart, coming together.

Fleischman made use of point of view by getting in the heads of bugs. Most vivid, the differing views of life between worker and queen bee (even if a mite predictable). And on the more unexpected side, the water strider analogy to the biblical walking on water miracle was beautifully done.

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Rebecca Grabill

Rebecca has been writing since childhood, her first book about a kitten published between homemade cardboard covers in second grade. Although she studied religion and philosophy in university, she continued writing, earning an MFA from Hamline University and publishing multiple picture books (no longer with homemade covers) and a collection of poetry with a variety of New York and independent publishers. She has also published a wide array of fiction, essays, and poetry in magazines and journals and photographs for Getty Images. She balances writing with homeschooling the younger of her six children, launching her young adults, church activities, and overseeing a small flock of chickens in rural West Michigan.

www.rebeccagrabill.com
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