Legacy, a collection of poems educators will love, and students will like

Our last encounter with Nikki Grimes was in Southwest Sunrise. As someone who typically doesn’t like poems, I referred to it as stealth poetry. That book is an illustrated book but has text that’s more poetic in nature. With Legacy, Women Poets of the Harlem Renaissance, the literary cat has officially left the bag, because this is 100% poetry, and that’s OK. That’s what Stuart Smalley would say.  Legacy is a poetry book that’s bite-sized in nature, allowing even those poetry adverse people to enjoy it. It accomplishes this by holding your hand as you read some classic poems from the Harlem Renaissance, as well as, some new poems from Grimes that were created using the Golden Shovel technique.

To us, the Golden Shovel sounds like an investing term or a good luck tool that might have been used by prospectors in the mid-1800’s. Alas, the Golden Shovel is a form of poetry created by Terrance Hayes that uses the last word in each line to create a new poem. For example, the second half of our first paragraph would say “A It Renaissance Technique”. This form of poetry is creative to read and mind-bending to create, similar to the puzzles that you’d hear by Will Shortz on NPR.

Legacy has a combination of female poets who wrote about life in the first quarter of the 20^th century. The book is broken up into three parts, heritage, Earth mother, and taking notice. The poems featured in each of those three categories revolve around the African American experience, nature, and taking pride in who you are. Even though half of the poems were created about 90 years ago they hold up nicely so that modern reader won’t feel like they’re going back in time. The language that those poets use are still the words that we use today. If you’re looking for poetry involving the words box social or hootenanny, you’ll have to go elsewhere.

In addition to the poems you’ll be able to read biographies about the poets, as well as, information about the artists who illustrated the book. The illustrations have a variety of different styles, but share the common theme that Legacy’s poems have.

As a book, Legacy does have legs that will take it beyond February reading for Black History Month. The poems are on par for those middle-elementary readers and up. However, Legacy is best suited for those middle school readers and up. That’s certainly due to the fact that those ages will have the patience and the life experiences to better understand and appreciate poetry. If you have a younger reader to whom you’d like to introduce poetry to, or they already like it themselves, then this will also suit them nicely. It’s an example of a book that librarians and educators what kids to read, meeting a book that those ages won’t mind reading.

Legacy, Women Poets of the Harlem Renaissance is by Nikki Grimes, with illustrations by a variety of artists and available on Bloomsbury Children’s Books.

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