Bibliographic Information
Mora, Pat. DIZZY IN YOUR EYES. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978375843754.
Summary and Analysis
This collection is about love - the good, the bad, and the unreturned all focused on the teenage years (remember the drama?). Alternating between points of view, the reader is aware of the gender of the speaker at times and other times the reader will not know if the point of view is that of a young man or woman. Some poems ask questions that could be asked by both teenage boys and girls, all dwelling on confusion, curiosity, and insecurities. The thoughts are age appropriate for a young adult book and at times even for adults. The ideas are relative to contemporary problems and times, while the topic of love is, of course, timeless. The focus of love varies among love for people, love for freedom, and love for relatives, but the sense of joy is felt in most poems. The writing also alternates from short five line poems, to a list, to a poem with indended spaces and blank spaces. The variety of writing style indicating the variety of love.
Plots focus on secret cruches, first kisses, hand holding, want, and insecurities. In other words, the poems are perfect for first glances, first loves, and first heartbreaks. From the commonness of crushes to the excitement of something new, the various feelings of love are mentioned throughout the collection with lines such as "Do boys really imagine all of us without clothes/ What if no one wants to touch me because I'm too fat" from Doubts and "No one has ever felt like this. Ever" from Hands. The emotions evoked are fitting for the age in which this collection was intended. While teens will read through most of these poems easily, they will also be introduced to a variety of different poetic formats.
An added element to Mora's collection is that the poems are always on the right page, no continuation on the back but onto the next right page. This leaves the left side available to the visual of grey patterns; however, there are left sided pages that sometimes offer definitions of elements of poetry. This allows the reader to learn a poetic term (English or Japanese) and style then having an example on the next page (the right one). She also uses the occassional Spanish word to illustrate the speaker or someone sharing a memory. In Conversation/Conversacion the Spanish is one half of the conversation between an American boy and a Spanish speaking girl as they meet. The poetry in this collection covers most elements of love, but the important part of this collection is that they cover the elements of love from how teenagers think of love.
Highlighted Poem
Mora offers definitions of different poetic terms and then writes a poem using the element as an example. In Dear ______, she offers a Letter poem.
I write what I can't say out loud.
I'm trying not to think about you, but
I can't resist.
My mind drifts to your slow smile,
how it moves
from your lips to your eyes-
or is it the reverse? How it lifts me
from my ordinary self.
Do you ever want to hold my hand?
When we're talking, and others join us,
when you laugh with them, I feel tangled
up inside, angry. I struggle not to be rude.
I want to be alone with you.
I love our aloneness.
When I listen to music, I imagine
slow dancing with you, and you whisper
into my hair, "You are my one true love,"
and I smile
and know
why people write music and paint
and dance, lifted as if they can fly,
because this ache
crashing inside
needs to be free.
Sometimes, love
becomes a melody
others hum for years.
Connections
Obviously this would open the door for teenagers to write and express themselves. However, as most teens do not want to openly announce their inner thoughts that project would be better used in a journal format. Instead, teens could have the opportunity to write any poems of love. As with this collection, they could write about the different types of love focusing on friendship or paternal if they have not experienced, or do not feel comfortable writing about romantic love.
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