SALTING THE OCEAN: 100 PEOMS BY YOUNG POETS by Naomi Shihab Nye

Nye, Naomi Shihab, ed. 2000. Salting the Ocean: 100 Poems by Young Poets. Illustrated by Ashley Bryan. New York: Greenwillow Books. ISBN 0688161936.

Salting the Ocean is a collection of poems composed by some of the children Naomi Shihab Nye has known and taught over a span of many years.  Nye inspires young poets around the world, and this collection gleans talents from grades one through twelve.  In this anthology, she includes a note about the poems, a table of contents, an introduction in three parts, an afterward, acknowledgments, suggestions for further reading, an index to the 100 poems, and another index to the 100 poets.  The 100 poems are divided into four sections.  The first thirty-two poems are about ”the self and the inner world,” then twenty poems are about ”where we live.”  The next twenty-three are about “anybody’s family,” and the final twenty-five are about “the wide imagination.”  

Award winning illustrator, Ashley Bryan, completes the volume with his colorful pictures packed with kid appeal.  His cover art shows five children of varying ethnicity in a boat named POETRY.  Three children are reading books and two are holding signs.  The names of the books and the signs have the names of poetic forms:  haiku, sonnet, free verse, and ode.  On the waves in the water, more forms are included:  ballad, quatrain, couplet, elegy, epic, lullaby and limerick.  The picture opposite the introduction shows four children writing.  On the rug and wall in the background, Bryan draws the words Emotion, Time, Love, Play, Nature, Family, Humor, and Ideas, to represent the thoughts going through the children’s minds as they are composing their poems.  These two pictures appropriately encapsulate Ms. Nye’s career mission as a writer-in-the-schools. 

The poems Nye has included in this volume are among the best of her students.  She credits each poem with the poet’s name, but does not include the child’s age or grade level.  I wish she had included that information because I think it would have inspired others of the same age.  

As the poetic forms drawn into the cover picture suggest, various forms are used in the book.  Many poems are created with kid friendly prompts poet novices.  For example, page 4 includes an “I like to:” poem, and page 20 has a poem of 8 lines that all begin with “I”.  On page 53 you will find an acrostic, and several lists poems are included.  Most of the poems are written in free verse, and most of them are short.  Most of the poems show a great deal of emotion and some have very clever imagery.  For example, Joe DeLeon (p. 99) wrote a four line tribute to Michelangelo called 

Ode to Michelangelo’s Bones

 Many years ago

Michelangelo

Released men

From rocks.

 I noticed that many of the poems are full of negative emotions like sadness, frustration, anger, and depression.   I found Ernest Beache’s poem on page 60 heart-wrenching:

My father

a volcano

ready to explode

My mother

a roaring lion

My sister

King Kong destroying

buildings

A little girl but with a

big fist

And I

an ant stuck in a

coffin

This book inspires other students to write poetry.  Any of the poems would be useful in asking the questions suggested by Amy McClure (1990, p. 49):

What did you think?

What did you like about this poem?

Does this remind you of anything you know about?

What is the poet saying here?

Any comments about that?

Let’s discuss what is going on here.

What is this about?

But before you ask your students the questions, read carefully Nye’s introduction.  It is full of inspiration and celebration of poetry for poetry’s sake.  On page xii she suggests: “Put a poem on the board and don’t even discuss it—let it permeate the atmosphere on its own.”  Wise advise from the voice of experience.

Citation:

McClure, Amy. 1990. Sunrises and Songs: Reading and Writing Poetry in an Elementary  

              Classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.