I'm not that much of a fan of Swenson's poetry, but I bought this book for my 6th grade writing classes and my rating is largely based upon their reactions to it. Before I ask the kids to write poetry, I try to allow them to read as much as possible. Since many 11-year-olds have little attraction to poetry, this book looked like an interesting addition with it's 'puzzler' twist. This did not turn out to be the case. A fair number of students picked out the book, but few stuck with it. After some casual interviews of my students here's what might have been going on:

I think the 'puzzler' element intrigued many kids but, ultimately, it just didn't have enough "oomph" for them. They were expecting "brain teasers" of a more logico-mathematical sort. Furthermore, Swenson's mature poetic language seems to have added a second level of challenge for them. Its not that these kids could never get beyond Shel Silverstein (on the contrary, many leapt toward the books with serious themes), but something about Swenson's Marianne-Moore'ish sparseness added complexity while subtracting words. The puzzles weren't puzzling enough and the poetry was a tad too poetic - for 11-year-olds. (For me too!)

It is pretty hard to find powerful poetry appropriate to the range of interests and capabilities of the young-adult. In poetry, as in life, they are sometimes stranded between kiddie-stuff and teen-angst stuff, neither of which define them so much of the time. This collection does offer something with a certain power and poetic universality, so I'd still suggest it for such a classroom (or family) collection as mine... and perhaps yours.

This book is a great tool to use in order to promote higher order thinking skills in upper elementary and middle school students. It helps children to use their imaginations, and write with more descriptive language.