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Article: Poetry in prose.(Reader at Large)
- Article from:
- The Horn Book Magazine
- Article date:
- May 1, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Horn Book, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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This has the best first chapter in the history of the world," exulted a thirteen-year-old friend, Laura. She pulled from our bookshelves Kevin Crossley-Holland's The Seeing Stone. "Listen to this!" she said, and read aloud, "Tumber Hill! It's my clamber-and-tumble-and-beech-and-bramble hill! Sometimes, when I'm standing on the top, I fill my lungs with air and I shout. I shout."
Laura was responding to sound and meaning. She was responding to poetry--to trochees and dactyls, bouncing "tumber, clamber, tumble, bramble"; to "beech-and-bramble," initial and embedded bs exploding softly in her ear; to lengthening musical phrases punctuated by two monosyllables, the ...