From the Foreword

Let us celebrate what these young poets have done, for it is by no means easy. To stay on topic, evoke emotion, and use vivid imagery, to introduce an idea, flesh it out, and then resolve it with nuance. . . this is the true work of writing, and it’s why each one of these poems belongs in this collection.

As anyone who’s gone online knows, there’s a nearly infinite collection of very wise quotations about poetry floating out there in the cloud. But here’s the one I’d like to end this foreword with.

From the Mexican poet Octavio Paz: “To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes; to hear it is to see it with our ears.”

Happy reading, and writing.

Todd Strasser, Author of The Wave, Boot Camp, Fallout, and many other novels for teens

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