The Bat-Poet

The Bat-Poet by Randall Jarrell, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak, is a book poets and lovers of poetry and lovers of poets should have in their libraries.

It's a children's book, especially children interested in creative writing, but it's also about being different, and about nature, and as such speaks to adults too. Plus there's a lot of good stuff about craft in the book, and a lot about the joys and (sometimes) burdens of being a poet.

I'm not that familiar with Jarrell's work. This book may have some relationship to the Rilke of the thing-poems, and indeed Jarrell translated Rilke. I mean to investigate this link as a way of trying to get to know RJ a bit better.