In Pursuit of the Crystal Image: Lee Bennett Hopkins' Poetry Anthologies

Abstract

In Pursuit of the Crystal Image:Lee Bennett Hopkins' Poetry Anthologies Anthony L. Manna (bio) In his introduction to Paul Janeczko's anthology of modern poetry, Lee Bennett Hopkins pays tribute to the unique inward perception that poets bring to everyday experiences: The poet takes the ordinary and makes it extraordinary, revealing life, translating and distilling visions of experience to each individual. The poet causes us to think and wonder and feel more and more intensely until we begin to see life as a crystal image (25). As one of America's most prolific anthologists of poetry for young people, Hopkins has spent his career trying to make the crystal image accessible to children. He has published over thirty anthologies since 1969, when Don't Turn Back, his acclaimed selection of Langston Hughes' poems, appeared on the market. Hopkins has also hosted and been consultant for "Zebra Wings," a fifteen-part Educational Television program that involves children in creative writing; and for teachers of poetry he has written two vigorous and practical texts, Pass the Poetry, Please (1972) and Let Them Be Themselves (1974), the latter a result of his experiences teaching writing to children in Harlem. In addition, Hopkins' column, "Poetry Place," is a monthly feature in Instructor magazine. Although Hopkins offers children a generous selection of mostly short, mostly contemporary, and mostly American poetry, his anthologies include highly cadenced nursery and Mother Goose rhymes, zany nonsense, and light verse of varying quality. In fact, the poems Hopkins selects, particularly the ones he chooses for very young children, are a surprisingly mixed lot, including both technically sound, emotionally honest pieces and predictable and sentimental verses that are an insult to the child's sense of wonder. On the one hand, Hopkins has a fine ear for poetry that reveals what Helen M. Hill has described as "a wholeness or soundness of thought, perfection of technique, and sincerity of tone," which characterize poetic integrity (101); on the other hand, he is often attracted to poems that contain such banal language, such forced rhythm and rhyme, and such deadening piety that they are a perfect fit for the category of poetry that Kornei Chukovskii, as cited in Haviland's Children & Poetry, reserved for poems that could "cripple [children's] aesthetic taste, disfigure their literary training . . . condition them to a slovenly attitude to the written word, and block off [their] appreciation of genuine poetic works" (x). Consider, for example, Hopkins' popular six-part holiday poetry series: Hey-How for Halloween! (1974), Sing Hey for Christmas Day (1974), Good Morning to You, Valentine (1976), Beat the Drum, Independence Day has Come (1977), Merrily Comes Our Harvest In (1978), and Easter Buds are Springing (1979), all published by Harcourt. In Halloween, Hopkins devised a format that has remained consistent throughout the series: abundant illustrations in traditional colors, lavender in Easter , for example, and amber in Harvest; approximately twenty brief, frequently anthologized pieces mostly by modern and contemporary American poets; and a loose arrangement that generally moves from anticipation for what the holiday promises to a focus on the special feelings and incidents that distinguish it. The problem begins with the design of the holiday anthologies. The entire series lays out such an overwhelming visual feast that there is little room to savor the few good poems which deserve special attention. In Halloween, for example, Janet McCaffery's dramatic black and white sketches crowd the small pages and envelop the poems, leaving far too little space for the reader's imagination to flourish under the influence of e. e. cummings' spirited word play in his untitled poem which begins "hist whist/little ghostthings" (6) or Myra Cohn Livingston's "The House at the Corner" in which the subject and form of the poem are inextricably connected: The house at the corneris cold gray stone,where the trees and windowscrack and groan,so I run pastfastwhen I'm all alone (15). Furthermore, the tone and content of the illustrations often conflict with, rather than enhance, many of the selections. In Harvest, Schecter's uninspired pen-and-ink illustrations of a large cast of Pilgrim children and adults, many of them with silly...