Product Description

A collection of poems about teaching, love, and dogs.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #295353 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-01
• Format: Unknown format
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 88 pages

Review
Mali is a ranting comic showman and a literary provocateur. -- The New York Times

Taylor Mali speaks of the world of the teacher with power and grace. His voice is our voice. -- Michele Forman, 2001 National Teacher of the Year

About the Author
A passionate teacher and enthusiastic proponent of performance poetry, Taylor Mali is the only person to have won the national poetry slam championship three times. He has been featured twice on the HBO series "Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry."

Customer Reviews

it leaves me flabbergasted
I find it rather difficult to adequately describe Taylor Mali's book, What Learning Leaves. How can a reader poetically describe a poet? I'm not sure one can, so I'll leave the poetical language to Mr. Mali.

I recently learned about the Poetry Slam scene, and it has fascinated me. The power of the spoken word ignites within me a fire that is unquenched by mere penmanship, and I'm sure you would be the same after you hear a poet slam a poem out. Taylor Mali is one of the best, and simply reading his work gives me a whole new respect for him.

The theme of the majority of his poems is education, which include What Teachers Make, Like Lilly Like Wilson, and First Day of School. But he also explores love, grief, and everydayness. While these are different for me, because I've only heard/seen his educational related poems, they still have a tone of authority that demands one see that there is something in these things to be learned as well. It's really beautiful.

While Mali is primarily known as a performance poet, he shows off his superb writing skills, as well as uncanny wit, in some of the poems included in this collection. These include On the removal of the antonym section, Poet teaching Math and History, and The the impotence of proofreading. All of these are hilarious even if you never hear Mali perform them. (I always enjoy watching people laugh while reading because I'm sure somewhere somebody who sticks to the "dumb box" is upset that they cannot have the same pleasure)

I would recommend this book to anybody. It will open them up to poetry in general, as well as the Slam Poetry scene. And, personally, I think it's time we place a little more importance on the arts. When a person can inform, educate, and entertain in the way that Mali does people will listen and be in awe. Although, I will say that I am a bit biased, I majored in Literature so I see the complexity of his poems on paper and as they are performed by him, but anybody can appreciate the these poems collected in this work. What you learn from Taylor Mali will leave you flabbergasted.

Taylor Mali's Greatest Hits
This book collects the high points from the career of performance poet Taylor Mali. All his classics are here: What Teachers Make, Like Lilly Like Wilson, Playing Scrabble With Eddie. Many of his other poems in this book have a narrower audience, but are probably already well known if you consciously follow the performance poetry scene. This volume was published in 2002, so more recent show-stoppers like How to Write a Political Poem aren't in here; however, the poems that made his name in the 1990's are pretty much all here.

The largest section of this book is comprised of poems on teaching. These are the books that made Mali famous, of course. But there is also a section of surprisingly touching love poems and a section on loss and grief. Because these poems mostly lack his trademark goofy wit, they lack the legendary following of his most famous poems, but they arguably translate better to the page, and reflect a lesser known side of the renowned poetry jokester.

Not all of these performance poems seamlessly translate to the page. What Teachers Make, for instance, requires parenthetical notes for clarification. And some of the short poems, like Gene Pool and Because My Students Asked Me, seem abrupt and corny. It's almost worth more to regard these poems as scripts for a theatrical performance than to see them as poems like Eliot and Ginsberg would have written. But they are still entertaining and instructive to read.

This book is great for fans of Taylor Mali, lovers of slam poetry, or as a gift for anybody who says no one is writing good poetry these days. I've read dark fingerprints into the pages of my volume. You will probably read your copy to pieces. It's that good.

Superb!
I have been searching for this book for a while, it's out of print and Amazon was the only one who carried it. Great condition, fast delivery, and of course the book is just excellent. As an aspiring teacher it speaks to a place in my heart that I hold in deep passion. Mali's words are fully expressive on what it means to be an educator.