Longing for Beauty - A Poetry Break

I got the book from which these poems came from for Christmas (which I was very excited about!), and there were so many good poems to pick from it was hard to choose one for a poetry break!

INTRODUCTION
There are so many different styles of poems! Acrostic, haiku, concret, and more! Poet Marylin Singer has beautifully introduced the Reverse Poem in her new book Mirror, Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse where she has taken the famous fairy tales and written two poems telling the story from two points of view. The "cool" affect of these poems is they are the exact same words, only one is in reverse. To introduce the a poem, ask the children if they are familiar with the fairy tale and briefly discuss reverse poems to them.

POEMS

Longing for Beauty
by Marilyn Singer

(poem 1)
A beast
can love
beauty.
A moist muzzle
can welcome
a rose.
A hairy ear
can prize
a nightingale, singing.
Beneath fur,
look!
A soft heart
stirs,
longing.

(poem 2)
Longing
stirs
a soft heart.
Look
beneath fur.
A nightingale singing,
can prize
a hairy ear.
A rose
can welcome
a moist muzzle.
Beauty
can love
a Beast

EXTENSION
After reading the poems as the children if they know which poem is about which character: Beauty or the Beast? (Note, if you show the book's illustrations this could help them decide as the artwork generally shows the characters standing on the left or right side of the page just like the poems are.) When the children know what reversible poems, they can create their own simple reversible poems about nature or a single object. If someone wants to be ambitious and try to write their own reversible poem stories based on a fairy tale or beyond let them try!

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Singer, Marylin. 2010. Mirror, Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse. Illus. by Josée Masse. NY: Dutton Children's Books (imprint of Penguin Group Inc.). ISBN: 9780525479017.