Waiting to Waltz-A Childhood, Poems by Cynthia Rylant

Cynthia Rylant vividly captures her childhood memories and experiences of living in Beaver, West Virginia. The details of each poem create a personal viewpoint of Rylant's feelings and recollections of the past growing up in this small, rural town. While some poems in the collection have a positive tone, most reveal sentiments of moments that spoke of sadness, tragedy, and loss. Little Short Legs tells the sad story of how when Rylant's mother was late for work, she ran over a dog while driving fast down a dirt road - "never knew a grown up could make such a mistake. Never knew one could make it and say it was so and felt sorry. But she did." Rylant also conveys the realistic truth of how people cope with deal and how adults can still make mistakes even after "growing up," while relaying the importance of a person feeling remorse for her mistake.

PTA exhibits a feeling of disappointment (at first) then changing to Rylant's specific moment of being proud of her mom. "Seemed like everybody's mother went to PTA but mine." Because my mom was a nurse and they knew it, and she might never pop popcorn at halftime but she could sure save lives, boy." The transfer of feelings from being upset with her mother's inactivity in the parent program at school suddenly grows into Rylant's discovery of her mother's career and the impact that she makes on every day lives. The Brain Surgeon tells the story of a tragic loss of man that people know as one of the "town drunks." Later she comes to find that he is a brain surgeon whose wife died on their honeymoon night. "And now he sat beside Beaver Creek and would never leave it." Rylant also gives other accounts of individuals living in Beaver Falls and expresses them through each of her poems. This just goes to show how small of a town Beaver truly was and how everyone knew what was going on with one another.

While she comments about others, she also gives personal experiences and accounts of events that happen to her in her chidhood. In her poem, The Great Beyond, Rylant expresses how she nearly drowned in her friend Karen's swimming pool, "never telling anyone I didn't know how except in a hole not too deep...And no one ever knew, not even Karen, how close I'd come to the great beyond." This poem shows her as a child who took risks, not thinking about the consequences and moreso trying to be accepted by her friends and peers. The Spelling Bee also gives a personal perspective into Rylant's 3rd grade spelling contest. At first, Rylant is confident and secure in her success at the bee; until, she details the moment when she lost in the competition. I felt empathetic towards her at this point, knowing that she was truly hurting and disappointed in how she did not win the bee. In contrast, the poem Band Practice, expressed Rylant's persistence in effort leads to success. This can also be similar to how she found her identity as a writer, knowing that it will take practice in order to come up with a product that you are ultimately ready to share with others.

Illustrator Stephen Gammell adds to the realism portrayed in each poem. His pencil sketches are simple, yet reveal the simplistic, remote, quiet, yet natural setting of Beaver. The black and white coloring support the themes of tragedy, loss, disappointment, and seldom moments of happiness that Rylant recalls in her childhood. The images of people compliment the text, while seldomly revealing their facial expressions.

As I continue to read more books by Rylant, I am seeing certain consistencies in her writing. She has the inherit ability to express the sentiments, feelings, and experiences she's recalled from her past. Rylant commented in a recorded interview to the people of West Virginia, "If you're a serious writer, you write about things you are deeply moved by. And I think people are deeply moved by the same things I'm moved by. I just happen to be the one who was given the ability to put that swelling of the heart-that sweet reverence that you have those things around you or those people you live with-into some kind of language. And that seems to be my particular gift in this world." And what a gift she has - I feel after reading this poetry collection that I have visited the small, rural town of Beaver, West Virginia - and I clearly understand how much of an impact her childhood experiences impacted success as a writer.