Everything Glistens and Everything Sings: New and Collected Poems

A "Glittering bridge / curved like a harp/ with your necklace of Shining lights." The familiar "grind of brakes/ the slam of a car door/ the crunch of gravel underfoot" which mean a beloved father is home. Falling asleep while "the grown-ups talk quietly / downstairs. The bedroom is cool and dark."  Eighty-two short poems on such every-day subjects like these make up this 1987 Everything Glistens and Everything Sings, New and Collected Poems (published by Harcourt Brace, illustrated by Margot Tomes, and dedicated to one of her authors, the poet and anthologist  Lee Bennet Hopkins).

Charlotte's clean, clear observation of both the natural and human world, from the child's eye view, glistens and sings throughout these deceptively simple poems. 

A sidenote for Mr. Rabbit fans

At one time Charlotte planned to to do a book called The Color Book. She pictured each page being about a different color, and the things in the world which were that color, each beginning 'Red is a good color', and so on. "I submitted the story," she says, "but it was turned down --- wisely, I think. There was something nice about the idea, but there were no children in it, and no relationships. The color bits were more like poems." 

Eventually  the idea transmuted, and went in two different directions. You can find the development of one in Mr. Rabbit & the Lovely Present. The other is "the color bits" --- published in poems, in This book.

Here is one of those color poems --- the one on yellow. Click to enlarge it.