May 14, 2008
On Sunday, I was hanging out with some friends, and one of my really good friends lent me the greatest book. It’s called Look! Up in the Sky! and it is an anthology of comic book poetry. As soon as he turned it over to me, I thought, I wonder if Jeannine Hall Gailey has any poetry in here, because she wrote an entire book of comic book poetry. In fact, she is! She has two of her poems from Becoming the Villainess in there. I felt smart and in the know, for a moment. Don’t worry, it passed.
Throughout the past couple of days, I’ve been flipping through the book, and it has some great poems in here. I think it stretches the theme a bit, to include all sorts of heroes and villains. But I’ve enjoyed much of the poetry inside. My favorite, for now, is a poem by Samer Saliba called “The Pussy Doctor,” which describes what it feels like to grow up with a father who is a gynecologist. (This is the the stretching it part — the dad is a hero, in the poem.) The best line: “Whenever my dad saw me crying and called me a pussy, I had to take his word for it.” Brilliant!