2. Technically It's Not My Fault

Technically, It's Not My Fault by John Grandits (Clarion Books, 2004)

Genre

Poetry/Concrete Poetry

Review

The book proceeds as a series of concrete poems about 11-year-old Robert.  There isn't really a narrative in a traditional sense; it's more of a picaresque character study.  Robert is eccentric -- he's smart, but in one poem willfully answers all of the questions on his science homework incorrectly because the topic of magnets bores him and he'd rather study the poisonous cane toad.  In a lovely parallel, the school bully demands his homework the next day at school and the homework has a similar effect on the bully as the cane toad on a dingo. Robert likes to skateboard, play basketball and baseball, talk backwards, and imagine the path of the bubbles in his soda from their home in the can to their adventures as they are expelled through the air via eructation or flatulation. 

Opinion

Grandits poems cleverly trace the events occurring in each poem. In the poem about soda bubbles the lines of verse mimic a straw, the esophagus, the intestines, and action lines erupting from both ends of the narrator.  In a poem about baseball each line of the poem represents a single at bat and its aftermath.

"Robert's Four At Bats"  Each line is one at bat a pop fly, a line out, a dribbling ground out, and a double followed by a stolen base and a score on a wild pitch.

The style is whimsical and can amuse children who think that they hate poetry.

Ideas

Grandits' style is likely to encourage his readers to try their hand at making their own concrete poems.  Indeed the last poem of the collection actively encourages them to try.  This would be a fun book to couple with a program or club on poetry writing.