selections from THIS PLACE I KNOW

[zirconium]

I came across This Place I Know: Poems of Comfort last month, while looking up Karla Kuskin in my library catalog. Each poem is paired with an illustration by a different artist. You can see some of the illustrations in this Candlewick Press PDF, including one of my favorites, Chris Raschka's depiction of New York City. It's next to Ann Turner's "The Beginning," which opens with

This is where it begins
like God really lives in New York
and he opens his hands, PRESTO!
there are subway trains
churning through the dark
and Brooklyn Bridge swaying
all its lights like ribbons...

And the line "dogs running underfoot / like bits of escaped rug" -- oh, hee!

Another pairing I especially liked was Margaret Tsuda's "Commitment in a City" with a painting containing dozens of people (as well as some dogs and cats and birds) by Jill McElmurry, whose work I now definitely want to see more of (her new book, Tree Lady, is about "the first woman to graduate from the University of California with a degree in science," Katherine Olivia Sessions). The ending of Tsuda's poem:

... You are part of my city,
my universe, my being.
If you were not here
to pass me by,
a piece would be missing
from my jigsaw-puzzle day.