Runaway Opposites

by Richard Wilbur, Henrik Drescher (Illustrator)

Poems from the award-winning poet's Opposites and More Opposites are accompanied by fabulous collage art, in an engaging collaboration.

Genres: Poetry, Picture Books

32 pages, Library Binding

First published March 1, 1995

About the author

Early years :

Wilbur was born in New York City and grew up in North Caldwell, New Jersey.He graduated from Montclair High School in 1938, having worked on the school newspaper as a student there. He graduated from Amherst College in 1942 and then served in the United States Army from 1943 to 1945 during World War II. After the Army and graduate school at Harvard University, Wilbur taught at Wesleyan University for two decades and at Smith College for another decade. At Wesleyan, he was instrumental in founding the award-winning poetry series of the University Press.He received two Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry and, as of 2011, teaches at Amherst College.He is also on the editorial board of the literary magazine The Common, based at Amherst College.He married Charlotte Hayes Ward in 1942 after his graduation from Amherst; she was a student at nearby Smith College.

Career :

When only 8 years old, Wilbur published his first poem in John Martin's Magazine. His first book, The Beautiful Changes and Other Poems, appeared in 1947. Since then he has published several volumes of poetry, including New and Collected Poems (Faber, 1989). Wilbur is also a translator, specializing in the 17th century French comedies of Molière and the dramas of Jean Racine. His translation of Tartuffe has become the standard English version of the play, and has been presented on television twice (a 1978 production is available on DVD.)

Continuing the tradition of Robert Frost and W. H. Auden, Wilbur's poetry finds illumination in everyday experiences. Less well-known is Wilbur's foray into lyric writing. He provided lyrics to several songs in Leonard Bernstein's 1956 musical, Candide, including the famous "Glitter and Be Gay" and "Make Our Garden Grow." He has also produced several unpublished works such as "The Wing" and "To Beatrice".

His honors include the 1983 Drama Desk Special Award for his translation of The Misanthrope, the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the National Book Award, both in 1957, the Edna St Vincent Millay award, the Bollingen Prize, and the Chevalier, Ordre National des Palmes Académiques. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1959.In 1987 Wilbur became the second poet, after Robert Penn Warren, to be named U.S. Poet Laureate after the position's title was changed from Poetry Consultant. In 1989 he won a second Pulitzer, this one for his New and Collected Poems. On October 14, 1994, he received the National Medal of Arts from President Clinton. In 2006, Wilbur won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. In 2010 he won the National Translation Award for the translation of The Theatre of Illusion by Pierre Corneille.

Reviews

[Ronyell · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was browsing through the library for more books by Henrik Drescher, I stumbled upon this extremely unique little book! “Runaway Opposites” is an odd children's book with poems by Richard Wilbur along with illustrations by Henrik Drescher and this book basically have poems that detail various opposite words presented in a wacky way. “Runaway Opposites” is truly a unique book that every child should read!

Alright, here is a little information about illustrator Henrik Drescher’s involvement with previous books about poetry.

This is not the first book about poems that Henrik Drescher illustrated as he first collaborated with Jack Prelutsky with the bookPoems of A.Nonny Mouse which also featured poems about wacky characters.

Alright now that I have explained a bit about the illustrator, I would like to talk about what I loved about this book! Richard Wilbur’s writing is a wacky as Henrik Drescher’s illustrations and together they perfectly complement the wackiness of this book of poems! I loved the way that Richard Wilbur allows you to think outside the box whenever you are trying to figure out which words are being compared as opposites to each other, such as in this poem:

“What is the opposite of nuts?
It’s soup! Let’s have no ifs or buts.
In any suitable repast
The soup comes first, the nuts come last.
Or that is what sane folks advise;
You’re nuts if you think otherwise.”

So in this poem, the opposite of nuts can either be soup or sane, which proves how crazy the poems really are and how far you have to think outside the box to figure out what words Richard Wilbur is trying to compare together. Henrik Drescher’s illustrations are even crazier in this book than in any other book he has created! The illustrations are filled with bizarre creatures that override the pages such as images of humans with bird beaks and creatures that have many limbs attached to their bodies. I also loved the way that Henrik Drescher pasted cut out photos of realistic looking faces on his illustrations and then he draws wacky expressions on the realistic photos such as drawing a beak on a realistic photo of a human and this tactic truly makes the illustrations seem to jump out at you.

Parents should know that this book might be a bit difficult for younger children to get through. What I mean is that, as was said in another review I have read about this book, the text looks like something that you would read out of “RANSOM” notes, meaning that it looks likes pieces of letters were cut out of magazines and pasted together to create words to tell the poetry. Yeah, it sounds pretty creative, but when you actually try to read it, the words seem jumbled and you cannot read out what the sentence is trying to say. Another problem that parents might have with this book is the images. Now, I am a huge fan of surreal art and I did think that these images are extremely creative, but I will admit that there were some images in this book that did scared me out a bit. Here is a list of some of the images that scared me out a little bit:

In the poem about the opposite of doctor, there is an image of a green man who has tentacles sprouting from his face and each tentacle has some kind of green ooze leaking out of them (some of the green ooze also lands on the green man’s tongue!)

In the poem about the opposite of a weeping tree, there is an image of a large wild beast that is multicolored and when it is laughing, it has sharp teeth and its mouth looks like it is nearly cleaved in two.

Overall, “Runaway Opposites” is definitely an odd poetic book that every child should definitely check out! I would recommend this book to children ages six and up due to the text being difficult for smaller children to read and because some of the images might scare smaller children.

Review is also on: Rabbit Ears Book Blog

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow, I love these poems so, so much. They are in fact my favorite of Richard Wilbur's work, but the illustrations take whimsy to such an extreme that they completely mitigate the awesomeness of the poems themselves. The words are scrapbooked ransom-note style so they are barely readable, and certainly not readable by the audience for which the poems are ideal, kids between the ages of five and eight. Then there are the distracting side words scrapbooked in as well, such as bonkers and bananas and "screw loose". So totally unnecessary! The poems are whimsical enough. The rest feels almost apologist, as if to announce the poems as nonsense. Their beauty is in fact in the way they are both perfectly rational and utterly ridiculous, and this book does anything but let those quality shine. I wish the illustrator and the publishers had trusted in the poetry's beauty instead of feeling the need to add design element upon design element to cover it up.

[Cassie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the mixed media collages in the book.

[Nan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The illustrations were far too busy.