This is a beautiful book that reimagines classic poems. I like the graphic novel format because it provides a new way to look at poetry that is more accessible to a lot of students. My students in particular are drawn to graphic novels as a format, and are more likely to pick up a book like this, which is why I bought it for my library.

The illustrations are beautiful, and I really liked that the art style was slightly different for each poem and also matched the poems, in a way.

Overall, this was a great book and a great addition to my library. One of the teachers at my school really liked it as well and found it to be helpful in her teaching of poetry

This is a beautifully illustrated book filled with wonderful poems that you may or may not already know. I think that any fan of gorgeous artwork and/or poetry will want this book on their shelves.

This was a gorgeous read from start to finish. Julian Peters has collected together dozens of the most well known and lauded poems of the decades, setting each to comic, but not only that. Each comic's design, style, and layout is different from all of the others around it, and it's chosen specifically to fit the feel and messages of each of the poems. I deeply, deeply, deeply loved read this.

Although I am not a graphic novel reader, I thought the idea of this one was very good--to illustrate "classic" poems that otherwise might never be read and appreciated. While the pictures are not the beautiful illustrations that maybe we are used to in poetry picture books or anthologies, they look very graphic novelish that teens will appreciate. I did order it for my hs library; two teachers have checked it out to have in their classrooms so it is being exposed to many students.

It wasn't bad! I wasn't a huge fan of some of the art style though. My favorites were the poems by Langston Hughes. Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson.

"Poems to See By" is a collection of 24 classic poems, and breathes new life into them by illustrating each work in a comic-strip format. The poems cover a variety of topics, but all of them invite the reader to look at the world and themselves differently.

The artwork is phenomenal and breathes life into poems that students find boring and uninteresting. Being able to see the poems aids in students’ comprehension because they can see what the poem is conveying. The grouping of the poems by theme is another plus for students. Will be asking the librarian to purchase for school.

Just a lovely book! An interesting mix of poems paired with artwork in a different graphic style for each poem- one of my favorite's was Maya Angelou's Caged Bird over Gee's Bend quilts. I enjoyed every one of the spreads, and this is definitely a book I'll go back to again and again.

#PoemstoSeeBy #NetGalley

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.

Poems to See by is a graphic illustration of some of the great poems, known worldwide. I have already known, read, and even studied many of the chosen poems. While others were completely new to me. So it was particularly amazing to discover them in this new format.

I really like the idea of combining two art forms and creating a new unique work of art, and I would like to see more books like this. The poems illustrated were beautifully done, and I liked some illustrations more than others.

I recommend this to all the curious people out there who like to discover art in all its forms. And who knows, maybe this would inspire many people to create similar ideas.

My Thoughts
This book includes a wonderful selection of 24 beautiful classic poems that are organized into categories of “seeing,” which include Seeing Yourself, Seeing Others, Seeing Art, Seeing Nature, Seeing Time, and Seeing Death. It includes works from a diverse set of poets: Wordsworth, Yeats, Angelou and Hughes among others. I discovered new poems by poets I enjoy reading (Thomas Hardy’s The Darkling Thrush, Poe’s Annabel Lee), favorite poems (Shelley’s Ozymandias, Emily Dickinson’s Hope), and wonderful poets I had not read before(Seamus Heaney, Siegfried Sassoon).

I started taking notes as I read each one over and over again, so I could list a couple of favorites. But I soon realized the futility of that exercise. It was just impossible – I love each one for its uniqueness – in the selection of the poem, and the wondrously suited art style as if made for the poem. We see manga, familiar comic strip styles and black-and-white film strips playfully included with whimsical watercolors, folk artsy crayons and more. It is almost impossible to believe it is all the work of a single artist (but it is!)

The artist’s rendering can help readers “see” the poems in a whole new way, and also opens up ideas for more inspiration. Like Peters says, “As much as it’s true that a picture is worth a thousand words, it’s also the case that a single word can conjure up as many pictures as there are people who read it”. On a side note, I felt I would have had a different feel if the original poems were included before the artists’s interpretation.

In Summary
I am going to get this book for myself, and I know you will thank me if you do too – get the book for yourself and for a loved one or two who enjoys comics or poetry or reading!!

<a href="https://www.ladyinreadwrites.com/">Check my blog - LadyInReadWrites - for more reviews</a>

Disclaimer: Thank you to NetGalley as well as the publishers for the digital ARC of the book; these are my honest opinions after reading the book.

Loved it. The art really helps to visualize the poems. It’s great to help student’s a see the figurative language of the poems.

'Poems to See by: A Comic Artist Interprets Great Poetry' with art by Julian Peters is a collection of 24 pretty famous poems interpreted visually by the artist.

Divided in to different categories of seeing, like yourself, art, death, etc., the book presents the graphic version of the poem followed by a text version only. There are some very famous poems in here by Emily Dickinson and William Wordsworth and Edgar Allan Poe, and some less familiar (to me anyway) works. All are presented in different ways as the artist interprets.

As a child, I remember there was a man who would come to our library on occasion and read us poems. We had our favorites, but this early exposure to poetry harbored a lifetime interest. I liked this collection of poems and it's approach. It shows how visually poems can be, and maybe it will help another young person to appreciate these poems and others.

I received a review copy of this ebook from Plough Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.

Brilliant and beautiful. This collection of poems offers the text of each as well as a beautifully illustrated version. It’s a wonderful way to enjoy favorite poems, discover new ones, and share them with young people who enjoy the format as well.

3.7/5
24 amazing classic poem's is given an illustrative turn, and what a turn this is.
I loved the illustrations, Julain is amazing artist who has seen these wonderful words and converted it into the beautiful & colorful art.

Thanks netgalley and publishers for approving this eArc in return of a honest review.
Full review to follow soon.

I love the idea of taking poems and setting them to comics. Wow. The artist mentions in the beginning that both comics/graphic novels and poetry have a rhythm, which I totally agree with. I’m a huge (ok, maybe not huge YET.....but someday) manga fan, and seeing some of my favorite poems set to a comic style is awesome!

Some of my favorites were:
Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden
In a Station of three Metro by Ezra Pound
When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats
Juke Box Love Song by Langston Hughes
The Given Note by Seamus Heaney
The World is Too Much with Us by William Wordsworth
Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley
There Have Come Soft Rains by John Philip Johnson
Birches by Robert Frost

Ok I’m gonna stop listing them because there are too many. The point I’d like to make is that some of these I liked as just poems before reading this, and some of them I didn’t like as just poems, but this book makes them beautiful! So beautiful!

AMAZING ! ! !

Thanks for Netgalley & respective publishers for sending a copy.

This poetry graphic books was delightful and exceptional. It comprises 24 classic poems and the comical-graphic was used that was so pure and linked which made you to feel ecstatic with poetry and scenes.
I've enjoyed those verses with pictures which were so thoughtful and visionary.
Highly recommended for poetry lovers.

The ARC I received from the publisher was incomplete, but I appreciated the poem / illustration pairings. This is a book I will definitely use during my poetry speed dating activity.

Peters is a comics artist based in Montreal. Here he has chosen 24 reasonably well-known poems by the likes of e.e. cummings, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Seamus Heaney, Langston Hughes, Edgar Allan Poe, Christina Rossetti and W.B. Yeats and illustrated each one in a markedly different fashion. From black-and-white manga to a riot of color and music, from minimalist calligraphy-like Japanese watercolor to imitations of Brueghel, there is such a diversity of style here that at first I presumed there were multiple artists involved (as in one of my favorite graphic novels of last year, ABC of Typography, where the text was written by one author but each chapter had a different illustrator). But no, this is all Peters’ work; I was impressed by his versatility.

The illustrations range from realistic to abstract, with some more obviously cartoon-like. A couple of sequences reminded me of the style of Raymond Briggs. For “Caged Bird” by Maya Angelou, lines are inlaid on the squares of a painted patchwork quilt. Other sets look to have been done via wood engraving, or with old-fashioned crayons. You could quibble with the more obvious poetry selections, but I encountered a few that were new to me, including “Buffalo Dusk” by Carl Sandburg and “Conscientious Objector” by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Peters has grouped them into six thematic categories: self, others, art, nature, time and death. Teenagers, especially, will enjoy the introduction to a variety of poets and comics styles.

Poems to See By is an illustrated anthology of two dozen classic poems that will be familiar to many readers. They are organized into six sections that consider different ways of seeing: Seeing Yourself, Others, Art, Nature, Time, and Death. You can see examples on Julian Peters’ website, such as “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allen Poe or “Before the Battle” by Siegfried Sassoon.

The newest poem is “There Have Come Soft Rains” by John Philip Johnson while the oldest is William Wordsworth’s “The World Is Too Much with Us.” Of course, it is impossible to select a perfect sampling from 220 years of poetry, but I cannot think of any that should be excluded. There are two poems from Emily Dickinson but her poems are so short that seems more than fair.



Poems to See By is a great collection of poems and is beautifully illustrated. What is most impressive is the many varied styles of illustration. Peters masterfully fitted his illustrations to the emotional context of the poem. You can look at these examples and see Peters’ incredible ability to adapt his style to suit the poem.

Poems to See By will be released March 31st. I received an e-galley from the publisher through NetGalley.

Poems to See By at Plough Publishing
Julian Peters author site

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