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| Marilyn Singer, photo by Linda Gallop |
Marilyn Singer's many books for children include Echo Echo, Mirror Mirror, Follow Follow, and the forthcoming Feel the Beat. She lives in Brooklyn and in Washington, Connecticut.
Q: Echo Echo is the third of
your books of reverso poems. How did you come up with the idea originally, and
why did you choose to focus on Greek myths this time?
A: For readers who haven’t
encountered it, the reverso is a poem with two halves. The second half reverses
the lines of the first half, with changes only in punctuation and
capitalization. That second part has to say something completely different from
the first.
Reversos work particularly
well based on narratives and as such fall into three categories which feature
either: 1) one character with two POVs;
2) one character at two points in time; 3) two characters, usually with
opposing POVs.
My first two books of
reversos were based on fairy tales, which have strong stories, so I could make
them fit into one of the above categories.
Greek myths also have multi-layered narratives, and they are taught in
school. In addition, I’ve always loved
them, and so do most students. It was a
natural extension to go from fairy tales to myths.
Q: One of the poems deals
with Pandora's box. Why did you select that particular tale, and how does this
set of poems reflect the two sides of the story?
A: Pandora’s Box is such a
popular and beguiling myth that I had to use it. In the first half of my poem,
Pandora, as is typical, is blamed for loosing evils into the world.
But I always found it
somewhat troubling that the poor young woman has always taken the rap. So the second half is more sympathetic—she
may be curious and weak, but she didn’t collect those evils and she might well
be a pawn of the gods.
Q: You have a new book of
poems coming out this spring, Feel the Beat!: Dance Poems That Zing from Salsa
to Swing. Why did you decide to focus on poems relating to dance, and what do
you see as the intersection between dance and poetry?
A: My husband and I have been
taking social dance lessons for over 12 years, particularly in swing, ballroom,
and Latin dance. For a while I’ve wanted to feature those dances in poems.
One day I decided to
challenge myself—something I like to do—and write the poems in the rhythms of
the dances. Poetry, of course, is also rhythmic—dancerly, if you like—so it
made sense to feature dances in poems.
There is a CD which
accompanies the book and on it I read the poems over music, adding another
layer to the work. The wonderful illustrations are by Kristi Valiant, who is
also a swing dancer. Lots of zing all
around!
Q: You've written many
books--do you usually work on one at a time, or do you have several going on at
once?
A: Sometimes I work on more
than one at a time, especially if I need a breather from a genre. More
typically, however, I do revisions (generally based on editorial comments) on
one book while I’m writing a new book.
Q: What are you working on
now?
A: Besides revisions? ;-)
I’m writing a middle grade novel which is a ghost story and I’m about to
start on a collection of poems about presidential pets, which will be published
by Disney-Hyperion.
Q: Anything else we should
know?
A: Besides Feel the Beat!, I
have a collection of poems about global New Year celebrations, Every Month’s a
New Year, coming out this fall from Lee & Low and illustrated by Susan L.
Roth.
And among my books next year
will be Have You Heard about Lady Bird?, poems about the First Ladies, which
will be published by Disney-Hyperion and illustrated by Nancy Carpenter, and I’m
the Big One Now, poems about seminal experiences for five- and six-year-olds,
from Wordsong/Boyds Mills Press, illustrated by Jana Christy.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Echo Echo is illustrated by Josée Masse, and both it and Feel the Beat are published by Dial.
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