After stumbling upon a commemorative Little Golden Book by Joan Walsh Anglund,
a prolific writer-illustrator of gift books relating to themes of
friendship, love and other cheery topics, I remembered how much I enjoy
her simple, nostalgic style, so I decided to see if our library had any
of her other books. It turns out there are quite a few in the system, so
I’ve been immersing myself in her tiny tomes. While Love Always Remembers isn’t among my favorites, it’s still a charming collection of minimalist poetry with an uplifting theme.
Anglund
isn’t necessarily talking about romantic love here, despite the red
cover whose illustration is a trio of red roses resting inside of a
white heart, though a few of her untitled poems do specifically apply to
that. Mostly, she’s talking more generally about caring for each other,
and almost every time she uses the word in the book, “Love” is
capitalized. She also capitalizes other big-concept words like Spirit,
Life and Death.
The poems in this book don’t rhyme, and there is
a definite sparseness to them that almost puts me in mind of Emily
Dickinson. Anglund doesn’t use dashes, but she does have white space
galore. The shortest poem is three lines long, while the longest is 17,
and that’s mostly because it’s broken down so much, with several lines
containing only one or two words. In all, she presents 26 poems, each of
which is on the right page. On the left is a simple black-and-white
sketch that is very small, leaving mostly white space on the page.
Anglund
is best known for the children that she draws, so it’s a little
disappointing to turn to this little book and find mostly rather generic
symbols as illustrations, and all black-and-white at that. Only two
pictures feature people. One is a woman in a shawl and sunbonnet; the
other is Cupid. Fully 14 of the left-hand illustrations are single
roses, each exactly the same, which frankly gets dull. The rest are a
bit more interesting but certainly lacking the vitality of her more
colorful pictures. My favorite is a tiny tree that, despite its
miniscule size, is covered with dozens of individual leaves; perhaps it
was drawn larger and then shrunk down.
I’m certainly fond of the
overall theme of the book, which is that Love is something to embrace
and celebrate. Some of the poems are single sentences, and these short,
pithy pieces tend to be my favorites. For instance, “In the primer / of
Life, / the / first lesson / is Love.” Another I quite like is “It is
not / what we own // but / what we love // that gives Life / its
sweetness.” The word “love” appears in every single poem except one –
and that one includes the word “loving.” Hence, the theme is strong, but
that also makes the book feel a bit redundant, since several of the
poems say essentially the same thing. What’s more, even though this book
was published in 1997, the language is often antiquated, to the point
of using “thou”s and “-eths,” making it less accessible.
Ultimately, then, I recommend Love Always Remembers,
but only mildly. Some will no doubt find the poetry too syrupy, and
those who are fans of Anglund’s work elsewhere may be disappointed at
how unimaginative most of the drawings are. Love is indeed worth
lauding, and it won’t take you long with this slim volume, but other
books showcase Anglund’s talent far more effectively.
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