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For this anthology, I've had the great honor of selecting work by a variety of poets. Among them you'll find work by poets very well-known in the Young Adult field: Joseph Bruchac, Margarita Engle, Nikki Grimes, Linda Sue Park, Carmen Tafolla, Padma Venkatraman, and Janet Wong. Everyone one a great poet, all of them also known for their writing for young adult readers. You'll also find works by many poets classified as literary; that is, folks publishing for an adult reading audience, starting in the lit mags and journals, and progressing to books of their own. These are too many to mention here. Rodney Gomez, Julia Perez, and Melina Melgoza contributed visual poems (and you'll find Melgoza's work gracing the cover, as well). Though I'd seen visual poems before, I'd never really read them until I was challenged to consider not just what these looked like but also what they were speaking. There are some first-time poets on the list, too. One I'd like to mention is Paloma Muniz-Ochoa, who was, unbeknownst to me, 11 years old at the time of submission and acceptance.
I'm honored that these poets answered the call for submissions because if anyone can speak to pressing issues of the day, it's poets. Thanks to them all.
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I conclude this introduction with essential Whitman: "I exist as I am, that is enough." As it should be.
-René Saldaña, Jr.
August 2020
Review :
"These poets grapple with self-image and self-doubt as they lay bare their identities. Their poems capture the struggle between what we are told and what we believe about ourselves, what is imagined and what is real. They are alive with memory and anger and hope. I dare you to read these powerful poems and not feel the feelings of your own childhood pain
or teen angst once again. But it will also remind you that you are not alone and that you have the power to mend yourself-and hopefully, as Jenn Givhan concludes, 'You would see who you are / & marvel.'"
-Sylvia Vardell, author of the ALA bestseller Poetry Aloud Here and co-editor of The Poetry Friday Anthology
and Poetry Friday Power Book series
"I SING: THE BODY is a miracle of diverse voices speaking truth and life into the too often unheard songs of the body and heart."
-Chris Baron, author of All of Me, a middle grade novel-in-verse about body image, and professor of English at San Diego City College
There is no one body. There is no one poem. In I Sing-My Body, the many bodies resonate in the many poems. Like our bodies when we arrive in them, these poems are all "Beautiful beams from the inside out." Sometimes we may not be ready to see the light; sometimes the lights sees us, all of us. I say stand up as you read this book, move your body as the poems move through you. You will never end up in the same place. You will only be beginning.
-Crag Hill's next book, co-edited with Todd Fuller, is Level Land: Poems For and About I35 (forthcoming from Lamar University Press)
