Time You Let Me In

March 22, 2010
Nye (Honeybee
) presents an anthology of poets under the age of 25, each of whom contribute four poems. The poets chiefly employ free verse and utilize intensely personal material, but these are their sole similarities. The poems cover territory spiritual and saccharine, philosophical and experimental, angry and irreverent (“do you think/ if you left your house/ emily dickinson/ your poems would have titles?”). Some writers are concerned with excavating the past, contemplating death and illness, dissecting class divides, and questioning feelings of displacement, be it geographical, emotional, or cultural (Amal Khan, born in Pakistan, writes, “They have called me subcontinental,/ Ethnic and oriental—/ Suffering and my creed—/ It is a romantic thing indeed”). Several exhibit a delicacy in the handling of memory and attention to detail; “She collages her disasters/ by finding her own feelings in the/ magazine faces,” writes Ben Westlie. While the poems don't necessarily break new ground, the collection is gripping and provocative in its portrayal of vastly different lives and experiences, strong sense of place, and sheer exuberance. Ages 12–up.

Starred review from February 1, 2010
Gr 9 Up-In her introduction, Nye shies away from laying out her parameters for inclusion, but rather paints a picture of the stumbling, exploratory passage into adulthood that she hopes the voices in the collection will convey. True to form, the young poets may be vastly separated by experience, ethnicity, and gender, but are linked by a common humanity and a desire to make sense of their unfolding life experiences through language. They struggle with race, slurred words, absent loved ones, and unrealized dreams while reveling in snow crystals and childhood memories. From Gray Emerson's "The Indexer in Love," a playful approach to the oft-hackneyed love poem, to Talah Abu Rahmeh's powerful "The Falling Man," a heartbreaking ode to those who fell from the Twin Towers, these selections are diverse in content and form. They are also alternately raw, poignant, quiet, and loud. They are many things, but never amateurish. Readers will have no trouble finding little pieces of themselves in this beautifully orchestrated collection."Jill Heritage Maza, Greenwich High School, CT"

Copyright 2010 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2010
Grades 7-12 Moderation can waitplenty of time for that later, says acclaimed poet and anthologist Nye. She knows how to reach teens, and this lively collection by young contemporary writers is rooted in the strong, emotional particulars of family, friendship, childhood memories, school, dislocation, war, and more; interestingly, there is almost no talk of sex or romance. The spare lines are passionate, wry, irreverent, and eloquent about meaning found in daily-life scenarios. One poet describes a meditative moment with her cat that destroys all my knitting to teach me about impermanence. Another prays for a soldier, a kindergarten best friend who has returned from Baghdad. In several selections, immigrants remember their arrival in the U.S. In a brief, appended biography, one poet describes her draw to poetry: Unresolved, uncomfortable, and sometimes repulsive moments of memory can be made somehow graceful through writing. Teens will connect with the passionate, unmoderated feelings that are given clarity and shape in each poem.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)

May 1, 2010
"No matter what age we are, we need these voices," writes Naomi Shihab Nye in her introduction to this exceptionally well-selected collection of poems by poets under twenty-five. The coming-of-age free verse poems speak poignantly on themes of love, family, heritage,trauma, and identity, in twenty-six ("In school I was good with words and bad with numbers," writes the compiler) distinguishable, unique voices. With four poems by each contributor, each section provides a glimpse of the poet's style as illuminating as the brief bios included in the final pages. The more tragic poems about war, death, or rape are potent and stirring, but the most gripping for the young audience will likely be those that echo the specific angst of being a young adult -- like Mary Selph's "Fourth or fifth love" ("I want love to be simple, like / the creased notes you slipped / through locker grates in high school / and as careful as efforts to decipher / what you'd written beneath clouds / of eraser marks"). What makes these poems so satisfying is their urgency and unabashed courage; as Nye affirms, "Moderation can wait -- plenty of time for that later."

(Copyright 2010 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

July 1, 2010
In this exceptionally well-selected collection, the coming-of-age free verse poems speak poignantly on themes of love, family, heritage, trauma, and identity. With four pieces by every contributor, each section provides a glimpse of the poet's style as illuminating as the brief bios included in the final pages. What makes these poems so satisfying is their urgency and unabashed courage.

(Copyright 2010 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)