Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep

I love rearranging my bookcases. Now that I have (mostly) banned myself from purchasing more books, I only have to re-sort and re-shelve the cases once a year for the “break-through” books that I inevitably purchase. Which books do I buy? Only the ones that are vital to my well being as well as those books that “deserve” to be held (anything written by Margaret Atwood, Barbara Kingsolver, and Isabel Allende...poetry and other books by favorite authors and friends...books that I love). For the most part these days, I find it easier and quicker to read on my iPad or to hear hear via audiobook.

So...yesterday I dove into my badly needed re-sorting/re-shelving project. My books are categorized according to favorite authors, alphabetical by all other authors, WWII and Holocaust literature, reference, travel, biographies and autobiographies, music, and 5 shelves of poetry. The poetry demanded a complete overhaul, and that’s where I found a book I had forgotten I had: Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep (Mulberry Books, 1976) by Jack Prelutsky, who was the Poetry Foundation’s Children’s Poet Laureate from 2006 to 2008. It was illustrated by author/illustrator Arnold Stark Lobel (1933-1987).

What an entertaining book! Every poem is a ghoulish delight that is made even more acute with the accompanying illustrations. Consider the first stanza of “The Will O’ The Wisp”...

You are lost in the desolate forest

where the stars give a pitiful light,

but the faraway glow of the will o’ the wisp

offers hope in the menacing light.

Later this summer my first book of poems for children—The Galloping Garbage Truck—will be published by Kelsay Books/Daffydown Dilly Press—and I have been working closely with a fabulous young female artist (R.E. Anderson) on the cover image as well as illustrations on the inside of the book. I am in awe of her talents (she and fellow artist, Meredith Balogh, both Kent State University graduates, co-created the cover of my poetry books Just the Girls: A Kaleidoscope of Butterflies; A Drift of Honeybees (The Poetry Box) and Widow Maker (Finishing Line Press) and know that her illustrations will make this newest book “pop.”

Here’s to poets who write and here’s to artists who create images. When they come together, it can be magical.