"Jimmy Stewart and His Poems" by Jimmy Stewart

Hannah reviewed this book on her blog, "Reading in the Dark," a few months ago and I couldn't believe I'd never heard of it!  Jimmy Stewart is one of my favorite actors, and I love that he wrote some poetry and actually published it in a cute little book.  So when I found it at the used book store a couple weeks ago, I snapped it up.  April is National Poetry Month, so I decided to read this right away instead of letting it sit on my TBR shelf for a while, which is what usually happens to books when I buy them.

Anyway, this is a sweet, slim volume, with about as much text devoted to Stewart's reminiscences of how he came to write each poem as there is to the poems themselves.  There are only four, and they are by turns humorous and poignant.  The final poem, written after the loss of his beloved dog Beau, moved me to tears.  

If you're like me and you've seen oodles of Stewart's movies, you can probably hear his voice reading these poems and musings.  You might think this is a sort of stunt, an elder actor bored and finding a new way to get his name back in circulation, but I don't think that's the case.  Stewart writes very well, with the same dry, understated delivery that graced his movie acting.  His poems rhyme, but never devolve into sing-song or predictability.  I'm pleased to add this to my poetry collection.

If This Was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG for an unexpected un-genteel word or two.