Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It, written by Gail Carson Levine with illustrations by Matthew Cordell, RL 2
Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It: False Apology Poems, written by Gail Carson Levine and brilliantly illustrated by the very busy Matthew Cordell, is, as you may surmise, inspired by William Carlos William's poem "This Is Just to Say." What Levine brings to this collection is her considerable knowledge of fairy tales and a gleefully wicked sense of humor. Every poem in the book it titled, "This Is Just To Say," (and the last stanza of each poem begins with the same line, "Forgive me") and the table of contents is a very funny jumble of the title over and over in different sized fonts. Six poems into the book we find the Introduction, which turns out to be a "This Is Just to Say" poem with a great illustration of a pointy-toothed, very demented looking Levine. The poem reads:
This Is Just to Say
Instead of at the beginning
I slipped
this introduction
in here
where
my editor excruciatingly loudly
screeched
it does not belong
Forgive me
I also shredded
her red pencil and stirred
the splinters into her tea

The poem above finds an narrator who has gone unpaid for her/his lawn mowing job lacing the grass with poison ivy. Another, below, finds a child apologizing for running away with Muffie. The last stanza reads, "Forgive me/ we just/ landed in -/ never mind"

Another poem finds a boy and a girl, brother and sister perhaps, and a missing baseball cap. Then, there is the narrator apologizing for casting a magic spell on Louie the bully and turning him into a fly, asking forgiveness for having a fly swatter ready...
