A Progressive Education

“This, dear Miss Husband,/ is our Class Poem/ composed in your honor,” begins the penultimate poem in this intelligent, funny collection from Pulitzer-winner and renowned translator Howard (Without Saying). Presented as letters to teachers in the voices of precocious, delightfully ironic children at a liberal Cleveland private school (much like the one he attended in the 1940s), the poems chronicle the children’s sixth grade year as they raise questions nobody can answer. After a science-class field trip: “we long to learn/ at Park School—or elsewhere if necessary—/ how some people manage (or how they/ might manage) to/ keep from Behaving/ like animals.” One student wants to be a doctor “to see lots of/ naked people all the time.” Adorably curious yet repelled by sex ed, the children also hate Peter Pan and Our Town; they deplore bullies but also want to reform them. Propelled by layers of allusion and irony, Howard’s account of the children is a comedy with a plot. Howard gained fame for verse in the voices of literary and historical characters, often very sophisticated ones: the sixth-graders here are as much fun as any characters in any poetry this year, even as their improbably long sentences ask, seriously, “how the system we’re trying/ to live by operates.” -Publisher's Weekly