Real Cool, Poems to Grow Up With

25 January 2006
test

Real Cool, Poems to Grow Up with is a collection of poems for all lovers of poetry and especially for young people whose interest extends beyond the classroom

Published some years earlier than the wonderful Something beginning with P and lacking that book's splendid production values, none the less Real Cool, Poems to Grow Up With is a collection of poems well worth the attention of all lovers of poetryl and especially those young people whose interest in poetry extends beyond the classroom. As Niall MacMonagle points out in his introduction, despite the subtitle to the collection, these are not just poems to grow up with but poems to live with.

The collection contains works by Auden, Heaney, Montague, Longley, Mahon, Durcan, Kavanagh, Stevie Smith, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Platt. Julie O'Callaghan, Rita Ann Higgins. In fact the index of poets at the back of the book is as a guide to fillings is to a chocolate addict. 'That was delicious. What'll I have now?' Well I can have almost anything that I desire in any form about any subject.

Patrick Kavanagh on the painter, Patrick Collins:

'A hand ceaselessly

combing and stroking

the landscape, till

the valley gleams

like the pile upon

a mountain pony's coat.'

Or Ted Kooser's verse on dumping someone;

'Get your tongue

Out

Of my mouth;

I'm kissing you