Black Stars in a White Sky

Black Stars in a White Sky
Jon Arno Lawson
illustrated by Sherwin Tjia

Genre: Poetry (Single Poet Collection)

My Rating: 5 out of 5

Lawson's book of poetry, Black Stars in a White Sky, accomplishes just what the title suggests: a new perspective on the world and on life. In addition to exploring themes such as love, conformity and honesty, Lawson explores the boundaries of language. His ability to take words and virtually turn them inside out and upside down add dimension to his already humorous poems. The imagery Lawson uses is inventive and imaginative. He not only uses imagery in the traditional sense, he uses the actual structure of the poem to convey meaning. I also really enjoyed Lawson's explanation of inspiration for some of his poems in the back of the book. Students can read these poems and realize poetry is a free form of writing, that anything they think can be translated into poetry; that is can be fun and unstructured and still be effective. Students will devour these poems and may even learn some lessons along the way. I would recommend this book of poetry to students in sixth through eighth grade.

"The Snakes Advice, or Advice
from Snake to Protohuman"

Don't forfeit four feet
unless you get more feet,
no don't forfeit four feet
for two.

For once you're up and standing
the world's more demanding-
slide down on your turn
and glide through.

"Love"

She came round the corner and
all of a sudden
I understood it:

All love is sudden.

"Hummingbird"

Hummingbird's tumbling,
hummingbird's lunging,
sunlit fruit's luring-
humingbird's
P
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