Julian Peters' Poems to See By collects 24 popular poems and pairs them with illustrations drawn by Peters based on his interpretation of the poems' meanings.

I found this collection to be a refreshing reread of poems by Maya Angelou, Christina Rossetti, W.H. Auden, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes and others. While Peters included some of the most well-known poetry taught in high school and college-level classes, he also featured lesser-covered poets and their works, which I appreciated.

Peters' idea of illustrating popular poems will be useful for English teachers and poetry readers--close readings are enhanced by being able to actually see what is going on in the scene itself. His illustrations offer new images to go along with these poems, as well as a new spin on how to interpret them in more modern times.

I was shocked at how many different art styles Peters was able to do; they not only seemed to fit the overall style and tone of the poems, but furthered the experience of the reading. It was as if continued meaning was being given to them.

Overall, this is a book I'll be recommending to faculty who teach poetry and high school English teachers. I'm excited to go out and get a finished copy when it's released in March!

*I received an ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thanks for the free comic book / poetry collection.*

"Poems to See by" is the graphic illustration of world famous poems by Emily Dickinson, Thomas Hardy, T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas and many more. We find the text embedded in the panels, it's quite beautiful. The style of the different poems is mirrored in the drawing style. Each illustrated poem is followed by the text of the poem without any drawings in order for the reader to read the poems once more without the pictures. I personally loved the choice of poems (T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Emily Dickinson! <3) and how well the drawings fitted the poems. The pictures are, of course, a sort of interpretation of the poems, but I liked that.

5 Stars!

Graphic novel from the library

Julian Peters masterfully illustrated a number of favorite poems so that they read like comics. He also tailors the style of illustration to each poem, making this a truly breathtaking piece of art. His interpretation of William Wordsworth's "The World Is Too Much With Us" especially resonated with me.

I received an arc from Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest opinion.
This book comes out on the 30th of March.

This is a beautiful collection of classic English poems accompanied by comics in various styles. I really enjoyed the way that the poems have been brought to life with this visualization. While I am no fan of mangas and comics on classics, with poems it seems to be another thing for me. I especially love the different parts of the collection, for example seeing nature or seeing death. Also I think it was the right decision to add the original poem after the comic strips, as sometimes the text was a bit hard to read on the images and also this provides the awesome experience of being able to compare both ways of reading the poem - with and without the comics.
A great short read that introduced me to some poems that I did not know yet. I wished that the selection of poems would have been a bit broader though - most had quite a melancholy and negative undertone and I would have enjoyed to see some more poems which are celebrating the beautiful and positive sides of life.

Such a clever premise. The illustrations were lovely and added a new layer to these poems.

*I received an ARC of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

Confession time: I love classic poetry.

You can often catch me quoting famous lines, gesticulating wildly with my hands. My students roll their eyes, embarrassed on my behalf, but I digress. There is something charming in the familiar, magic in re-reading known works, in studying the sentences that have endured and enamored us, and witnessing how they change: every generation comes back to the classics and “sees” them anew. That’s the thing about poetry, perhaps; the poet writes and decides and means, but the readers read and feel as they see fit. Readers interpret. And these interpretations can become essays and extensive analyses, but they can also become other forms of art. Maybe a song, maybe a drawing. Why not a comic? Julian Peters certainly asked himself that.

“Poems to See By” is an illustrated anthology of classic poems —24, to be exact. Each poem is accompanied by the author’s visual interpretation in the often breathtaking, sometimes amusing form of a comic. As a graphic designer, this sounded like the perfect marriage of two beloved passions. Excited, I requested the collection.

I wasn’t disappointed. This book is exactly what it promises to be, and more. I thought that a single artist tackling 24 poems would result on repetitive styles or obvious recurrences of motifs. Peters did neither. Overall, the breadth of variety in this book is frankly impressing. So is the use of colors and shapes, the different lines and shades. I would’ve never guessed that this was the work of a single artist; despite knowing it was, I still did a double take on more than one occasion, hurrying back to the start to verify that, yes, Peters was the only illustrator. His love for these poems, and the respect with which he approaches each drawing, is crystal clear. His reverence doesn’t stop him from imagining new meanings, and the results are much stronger for this: “As much as it’s true that a picture is worth a thousand words, it’s also the case that a single word can conjure up as many pictures as there are people who read it”.

The book is divided into six sections: Seeing Yourself, Seeing Others, Seeing Art, Seeing Nature, Seeing Time, Seeing Death. The poetry selection for each, in itself, is lovely, with works from a wide variety of familiar names: Dickinson, Angelou, Cummings, Poe, Hughes, among others. Though many of the poems are extremely familiar, others are overlooked jewels of their author’s. I was happy to find some of my favorites among the selection, and I think everyone will find at least one of theirs.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to fans of poetry and visual arts. Moreover, it would be a lovely addition to every high school English classroom, and a great reference for classes that study and analyze the intersection of visual and textual art-forms. I know I will use it in my own classes. I leave you with Peters’ preface:

“The truth is, I did it all for love of beauty. A beautiful poem is pretty much the most beautiful creation I can imagine… I wanted to pay tribute to the way these poems made me feel, to spend time with them, to pull them in as close to me as possible in the way that, as someone who draws comics, felt the most natural”.

Such a cool concept! Definitely want to get a copy for my classroom library

I'm so pleased with this. I knew going in that much would rest on the choices of the poems, and the poems here are beautiful and well-chosen. I loved the different art styles throughout, one seeming almost manga and others in many other artistic styles. I also loved much of the visual interpretation of the words. This was beautiful and I hope for more.