Poems to See By: A Comic Artist Interprets Great Poetry

My 20 year old son is reading poems and he is READING because of this book. He says he loves it. And I am thankful!! If it takes a book to be a graphic novel for him to read I am all for it. He is loving these classical poems!

This was a good way to get a quick look into the work of different authors. Something for everyone who likes poetry. I would like to see more work from a few of the authors based on this book. I liked that the poems were laid out in word form only at the end of each illustration as a way to review them.

It gives the reader a new way of looking at some old and some new poems. It also introduced me to some poets. Very thought provoking

What a creative, well done, thoughtfully created book. Just beautifully done. Highly recommended. The art and poetry are fantastic. Hoping another volume is in the offing!!!

I loved all the poems, so well illustrated.This is one of my best books

Poems to See By: A Comic Artist Interprets Great Poetry by Julian Peters collects 24 poems along with Peters' visual interpretations. Most readers won't necessarily connect with every one, maybe even very few of them. But it is still an interesting way to understand poetry.On Edelweiss, where one of the categories is to suggest target age groups, they suggest 13-18, grades 8-12. Like any anthology, the key is going to be how it is used by the instructor, the book, any book, is not what is doing the work of helping students learn, it is a dynamic between teacher, student, and any texts used. That said, the range mentioned seems about right. When I taught at university I might have considered using a couple of the poem/comic sets but I would not have assigned the book.Like any interpretation of works literature, everyone will see things a little different. Even though I was not crazy about a few of the comics, I didn't think he was untrue to the text. Or, to put it the way most of us have heard it, it can be grounded in the text itself. So I don't have a lot of complaints just because I don't read a few of the poems the same way he does. That kind of “criticism” is really a statement of entitlement, namely that such a person feels entitled to state what is and is not proper for someone to get from a text. I don't presume to be God-like nor quite that narcissistic, so I simply don't see some poems as he does. These are his interpretations, not things drawn to meet someone's particular agenda priorities. Yes, a couple things might be problematic, but if you can read a book of interpretations, comic or otherwise, and not find some things problematic, then you're either not paying attention or you're reading something that is adhering to some dogmatic manifesto so as not to offend anyone.This book would also be something that readers who don't usually feel comfortable with poetry might enjoy. The value in this work, as something to help people, is to show that there is more than one way into any work of art. Even these classics can be approached from perspectives that once would have been shunned for being too common or too masculine/feminine, or any of the other ways that people have kept others marginalized. Unfortunately, many who are marginalized feel the need to then marginalize to compensate rather than inclusively embracing and debating.I think I like the idea of this book better than the actual execution but I do still believe this volume can be enjoyable for many and used to help grow appreciation of poetry for many more. With that in mind, I do recommend this for both the ages mentioned above as well as any adult who wants to read more poetry but hesitates because of the way it may have been presented to them in school.Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

I wasn't quite sure what I was in for when I downloaded this book. O.K., illustrated poems - I get that. Who didn't grow up with ripping action illustrations accompanying a school days classic like "...the midnight ride of Paul Revere"? I sort of expected something along those lines, and just hoped I'd like the artist's style. I was totally out of line on that.The book opens with a brief foreword/essay about how poetry and sequential comics art complement each other. The essay felt a bit like the author was trying too hard to justify his effort, but I'm glad I read the whole essay. It got me thinking about the relationship between the poetry and the sequential art, and it turns out that there's a good bit to think about while enjoying this book. As the author/artist suggests, consider rhythm, stress, repetition, juxtaposition, contrast, and the challenges of translation and interpretation. By the end of the book I almost felt like I owed the author/artist an apology for doubting him.I was amazed to see that for each poem Julian Peters adopted a different, distinct style and medium. Impressionistic, realistic, collage, watercolors, oils, pencils, inks - each poem is treated in a completely distinct fashion unlike anything that came before or comes after. It looks exactly as though each poem was illustrated by a different artist.And each treatment suits, complements, and enhances the poem. So, for something like "Invictus" we get a muscular, ripping, pen and ink adventure sequence. For "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" we get just lines of colors and naif collages that suggest freedom and captivity, with the poem carefully penciled into the lines. In "Hope is the Thing With Feathers" a brightly colored bird flies through black pencil sketches of scenes of hope and despair. Hughes's "Jukebox Love Song" looks like someone sent Edward Hopper to Harlem with a box of watercolors and an order to lighten up. Wordsworth's "The World is Too Much With Us" rendered in iPhone text messages? Inspired.I could go on and on, but you get the idea. This is a playful, deadly serious, creative, marvelously accomplished book that will delight those who like their poetry with a side of Della Robbia Blue. And if you wonder how it could even be possible to present T.S. Eliot or Dylan Thomas in a comics or graphic form, well this book has those answers. A wonderful find.(Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

It is a wonderful book, an incredible experience to see these poems in pictures. I loved! I hope for other titles like this soon.

Julien was my comic drawing class teacher. He's very creative and always looks for changes. You will be able to see a great combination of different techniques and styles he used in this book, as well as great poems and the atmosphere created by the drawings. I didn't expected this book to be so large and so well printed. Everything was great.