Rudyard Kipling and Edited by Eileen Gillooly
Illustrated by Jim Sharpe
Poetry
For ages 10 and up
Sterling, 2000, 978-0-8069-4484-5
Many poets develop their own unique form for their poems,
creating patterns of rhyme and rhythm that best encapsulate what they want to
say. Rudyard Kipling had a different goal. Rather than developing his own style
of poetry, he drew on the styles of others, using forms that were familiar and
accessible because he wanted to touch the hearts and minds of as many people as
possible. He wanted his readers to see the connections we all share, to
appreciate that though we speak in different ways and have different backgrounds,
we share many of the same experiences and emotions. He wanted to “think in
another man’s skin,” so that he could see the world through someone else’s
eyes.
In this book we
see examples of this in several of the poems. In “The White Seal” we hear the
voice of a seal mother singing a lullaby to her baby, and in another section of
verse from his Just So Stories,
Rudyard Kipling describes what it is like for a child (from the child’s point
of view) to be traveling on a ship where all the adults are seasick and the
child is temporarily free to do as he or she wishes.
Kipling also
used his poems to share his opinions and to explore ideas. In “The beginning of
the Armadilloes” we catch the excitement that he feels when he considers travel.
How grand it would be to see a jaguar or an armadillo “dilloing in his armour.”
How splendid it would be to go to Rio “Some day before I’m old.”
In “The Ballad
of East and West” he presents us with the idea that East and West “never the
twain shall meet.” Then he goes on to say that that in real life strong men
from the east and west can stand “face to face, though they come from the end
of the earth!”
What makes this
collection of poems so special is that the editor gives us a short biography of
Kipling’s life at the beginning of the book and she introduces each of the
poems. We therefore can read the poems while being aware of their context. This
helps us to understand what kind of a man Kipling was, and what motivated him
to write the poems he wrote. As they read, readers will come to appreciate that
he was a complex man. He believed strongly in the superiority of the British
Empire on the one hand, but he also believed that people from opposite sides of
the earth could meet and respect one another. He praised men who went to war
for their courage, but wrote a poem about the weapons of war, clearly showing
that he is all too aware that such weapons can inflict great suffering, and
that their development over the ages has been a singular folly. How interesting
it is to explore a poet’s words and his story at the same time.
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