Poetry Friday

Mirror Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse Marilyn Singer

There are always different ways to look at things-- whether there's a different perspective to take on a story, or a different way to read a poem...

In this book, Singer uses a the reverso form-- a poem that can be read in the normal fashion and mean one thing, or you can read it up to bottom, change some capital letters and punctuation, and you get an entirely different poem. And these reversos tell two sides to some familiar tales...

I give you "Bears in the News"

The first way it's presented:

ASLEEP IN CUB'S BED,
BLONDE
STARTLED BY
BEARS,
the headline read.
Next day
Goldilocks claimed,
"They shouldn't have left
the door
unlocked."
She
ate the porridge.
She
broke
a chair.
"Big deal?
No!
They weren't there."

And now, just by flipping the order of the lines, a very different side of the story:

They weren't there.
No
big deal?!
A chair
broke.
She
ate the porridge.
She
unlocked
the door.
"They shouldn't have left,"
Goldilocks claimed.
Next day
the headline read:
BEARS STARTLED
BY BLONDE
ASLEEP IN CUB'S BED.


Round up is over at Paper Tigers!

Book Provided by... my local library. A big thanks to Lauren for demanding I read it!

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