Step Lightly: Poems for the Journey

In Willard's gracefully written introduction to this sparkling collection, she says the book ""started in a shoe box,"" and what a brilliantly quirky and satisfying assortment she has compiled. Each poem that she clipped and saved has given her ""the special kind of pleasure that good poetry gives when it celebrates the ordinary in an unordinary way."" Willard deftly mixes Shakespeare's lyrical ""Full Fathom Five"" with Frost's eerie ""The Witch of Coos"" and Mother Goose's plainspoken ""Go to Bed"" into a seamless whole. She uses two Dickinson poems as bookends for the anthology, beginning with ""Will There Really Be a Morning?"" and ending with the poet's description of sunset in ""Who Is the East?"" The intervening poems dally over the animals, experiences, people, nature and ideas that have intrigued poets for centuries, as if the events described were occurring during the course of an ordinary, yet extraordinary, day. Lesser known poets flank the venerable Stafford, Blake, Yeats and Roethke, while Neruda's homely ""Ode to a Pair of Socks"" keeps company with Pastan's exquisite ""Blizzard."" Unlike many collections for young adults, Willard avoids poems about teenage angst and confusion, inviting readers to begin the journey into mature feeling and thought. Teachers, especially, will find this volume a treasure, and fledgling wordsmiths will feel a thrill akin to browsing through the notebooks of a poet. Ages 12-up. (Sept.)