Water Striders' & Poems for Two Voices

Photo, © 2007 by Maureen Shaughnessy

Written Language of Water: if you look closely, you can see in this long exposure, the tiny scatterings and skatings, the markings made by water striders dancing on the surface of the water.

One of my favorite poetry books ever is Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices. I love it so much one time I bought 10 copies so I would have enough to give to my young friends who have since come to love it too. The poems about insects (water striders included) are written with a left and right column on each page -- each column meant to be read aloud by one person -- in time -- with a partner reading the opposite column. The poems' rhythms are designed to give the feeling and sense of each insect. My favorite of the poems for two voices is the one where the queen bee is one voice and a worker bee is the other voice -- they are both simultaneously describing the same hive, from very different points of view. And somehow it all works perfectly, causing us, as readers, to collapse on the floor in fits of laughter each time.