How I Discovered Poetry / Marilyn Nelson; Illustrations by Hadley Hooper - Paperback

by Marilyn Nelson (Author)

A CORETTA SCOTT KING HONOR BOOK - A powerful and thought-provoking Civil Rights era memoir from one of America's most celebrated poets.

"An intimate perspective on a tumultuous era and an homage to the power of language."--Publishers Weekly, starred review

Looking back on her childhood in the 1950s, Newbery Honor winner and National Book Award finalist Marilyn Nelson tells the story of her development as an artist and young woman through fifty eye-opening poems. Readers are given an intimate portrait of her growing self-awareness and artistic inspiration along with a larger view of the world around her: racial tensions, the Cold War era, and the first stirrings of the feminist movement.

A first-person account of African-American history, this is a book to study, discuss, and treasure.

Author Biography

Marilyn Nelson is a three-time National Book Award Finalist, has won a Newbery Honor, a Printz Honor and several Coretta Scott King Honors, and has received several prestigious poetry awards, including the Poets' Prize and the Robert Frost Medal 'for distinguished lifetime service to American poetry.' She has recently been a judge of poetry applicants at the National Endowment for the Arts and Yaddo, and has received three honorary doctorates.