24 - The Realm of Possibility

The Realm of Possibility by David Levithan

Random House, 2006

224 pages

Date completed: February 2010

David Levithan took me back to my high school days in this beautiful collection of poems. While to some this might seem like a bad thing, Levithan crafts the poems exquisitely, allowing them to intertwine and intersect, forming a rich overall narrative.

The poems are grouped in fours, and each is written from the point of view of a different teenager. While this could be confusing at times, especially when one poem would refer to another teenager who may or may not have been mentioned previously (I often wished I had a list of each character's name and what her/his significance was), it had an overall effect that was splendid. Here was not just one high schooler with a voice, but rather a collection of separate but intertwined stories, each with its own inherent beauty.

I had a pencil in my hand the entire time I read this volume, because so often the characters had some small form of deep insight (stated with simple beauty) that I had to underline and make notes. I definitely want to come back to this at some point and reread it.