Multicultural Poetry

Mora, Pat. 1998. This Big Sky. Ill. by Steve Jenkins. NY: Scholastic Press. ISBN: 0-590-37120-7

Book Review:

Award winning Latina author Pat Mora has written a love story to the landscape of her childhood home in the collection of poems of the Southwest found in This Big Sky.  Describing the colors, animals, climate and terrain of the area in spare lyrical poems, Mora treats her topic with affection and delight, accompanied by the sprawling textured paper-cut collages of illustrator Steve Jenkins.

 

Primarily written in free verse, the author uses various elements of poetry to add rich imagery to her poems.  Personification is abundant in these poems, with a mountain being referred to as a sleeping Indian in “Mountain Silhouette,” and the sun staring “down with two amber eyes” in “Tall Walking Woman."  In “Suspense,” the “wind chases itself/around [a] house, flattens/wild grasses/with one hot breath.”  Mora uses anthropomorphism and a simile in giving voice to a scaled ruby snake when “Old Vibora says, “leave those doubts and hurts/buzzing like flies in your ears” in “Old Snake.” 

Some of the poems also contain musical devices such the assonance found in “River Moon” in describing the river and moon as sliding, gliding and hiding “under the night black sky,” and the alliteration reflected in “Joyful Jabber” as “the jays swoop/into junipers and pinons/bloom blue on the branches, broadcast/the news…” 

Multicultural elements are evident in the poems by the use of various Spanish words to name certain animals and objects, as well as the southwest/native American feel of Jenkins’ illustrations. Translations of the Spanish words are included in a glossary as the only access feature in the book.

Sharing the Poetry:

One of the poems I found interesting was called “One Blue Door,” in which the author writes about “making a poem”  using the senses you need to create poetry: sound, sight, touch and even taste; in other words, immersing yourself in your surroundings. This poem could be used in a lesson on writing poetry using the senses, seeing commonplace things in new ways and opening one’s eyes to the enveloping beauty of the outside world.  

Selected Poem:

One Blue Door

To make a poem

listen; crow calls.

Rain paints a door,

blue in the sky.

To make a poem

you need the door

blue and lonely

swinging in the rain.

To make a poem

you need to leap

through that blue door

onto a crow.

To make a poem

you need to glide

 on crow’s black caw,

skimming the trees.

To make a poem

you need to taste

petals of rain.

Open your mouth.

To make a poem

you need to hear

fountains sprouting

in your hands.

Leap through one blue door

onto crow’s black call.

Catch rain’s petal-fall.

Music in your hands.

Leap through the door.

References:

Children’s Literature Comprehensive Database. n.d. This Big Sky. http://ezproxy.twu.edu:4529/index.php/jbookdetail/jqbookdetail?page=1&pos=3&isbn=9780590371209 (accessed February 12, 2014).