Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It

Gr 4–6—Levine fashions her introduction to the topic after a poem by William Carlos Williams—"This Is Just to Say"—in which he 'fesses up to having eaten some plums from the icebox ("Forgive me/they were delicious/so sweet/and so cold"). The "false apology" poems (Levine's designation) include three four-line stanzas. The first states the offense; the second describes it; the third lays out the false apology (based on what came before). In a note on creating this novel poetic form, Levine advises readers: "Your poems should be mean, or what's the point?" Many of her unrhymed selections relate to fairy-tale or nursery-rhyme characters (Rumpelstiltskin, Rapunzel, Jack and Jill), and some have particularly wicked twists: Grandma leaves Red Riding Hood to the wolf; the bear goes over the mountain and dies in a landslide. Others involve intentionally hurtful actions against a sibling—sanding the face off a sister's Barbie doll; stealing a brother's lucky baseball cap just before the state playoff. Black-ink-and-pencil drawings—many of them bizarre images of people, animals, and unearthly beings—accompany the verses. While the collection is supposed to be funny and to appeal to readers' dark sense of justice, it largely comes off as distasteful and even disturbing. Forgive me, there's got to be a better way to engage this audience with poetry.—Susan Scheps, formerly at Shaker Heights Public Library, OH