Echo, Echo

Echo Echo: Reverso Poems About Greek Myths
by Marilyn Singer
illustrated by Josée Masse
Dial Books for Young Readers, 2016

Marilyn Singer is amazing. Not only did she invent the reverso poetry form, she just keeps getting better at it!

Her new collection tells familiar stories from mythology from two points of view -- Pandora’s box, King Midas and his golden touch, Perseus and Medusa, Pygmalion and Galatea, Icarus and Daedalus, Demeter and Persephone, and Echo and Narcissus. Readers will also learn about Eurydice and Orpheus, Melanion and Atalanta, Bellerophon and Pegasus, and more.

Here is the closing poem, for just a taste of the deliciousness of these poems:

Gods and Mortals

These myths
make sense of
the world.
We --
tellers and listeners alike --
enter these portals to
gods and mortals.
They can never again be closed,
once our imaginations are opened.

Once our imaginations are opened,
they can never again be closed.
Gods and mortals
enter these portals to
tellers and listeners alike.
We,
the world,
make sense of
these myths.