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| 50 Book Pledge | Book #24: My Brother’s Book by Maurice Sendak |
In honour of National Poetry Month, I present “Touch Me” from Collected Poems by Stanley Kunitz.
Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that’s late,
it is my song that’s flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
and it’s done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.
By:
Carmela Martino and 5 other authors,
on 4/30/2013
Blog:
Teaching Authors
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Howdy Campers!
Remember to enter to win in our 4 x 4 Blogiversary Celebration!
Today I have the absolute honor and (as Esther would say) knee-buckling responsibility to write the last line of 2013's
Progressive Poem. Yay! And yikes!
The brainchild of
Irene Latham,
this Progressive Poem has been moving from blog to blog, growing poet
by poet, for 29 days until it's come here for one final line. For the
poem and a list of contributing poets, see below.
.
At the end of a
month posting
rough drafts of poems about dogs, I think you could say
that this, too, is a rough draft. As Laura Puride Salas says, it's
poetry improv. Yes, and a poetry game. It's been fascinating to
read the process of those who've proceeded me.
When I got the line by
Denise Mortensen,
it's such a great line, I thought I should just write THE END. Then I
could talk about how a poet needs to know when to quit and when a good
line's a good ending. That would be funny. If only I had the courage!
But I don't. So off we go!
Here
is the list of the poets who each contributed a line (in this space, some appear to be a line and then some, but they are all really one line each), and below their
names is the (yikes!) finished poem. Take a bow, poets!
.
DAY/LINE + POET
P.T.
BARNUM'S GREAT TRAVELING MUSEUM, MENAGERIE, CARAVAN, AND HIPPODROME*
by Thirty Poets on a mission in the Kidlitosphere...see list above
When you listen to your footsteps
the words become music and
the rhythm that you’re rapping gets your fingers tapping, too.
Your pen starts dancing across the page
a private pirouette, a solitary samba until
smiling, you’re beguiling as your love comes shining through.
Pause a moment in your dreaming, hear the whispers
of the words, one dancer to another, saying
Listen, that’s our cue! Mind your meter. Find your rhyme.
Ignore the trepidation while you jitterbug and jive.
Arm in arm, toe to toe, words begin to wiggle and flow
as your heart starts singing let your mind keep swinging
from life’s trapeze, like a clown on the breeze.
Swinging upside down, throw and catch new sounds–
Take a risk, try a trick; break a sweat: safety net?
Don’t check! You’re soaring and exploring,
dangle high, blood rush; spiral down, crowd hush–
limb-by-line-by-limb envision, pyramidic penned precision.
And if you should topple, if you should flop
if your meter takes a beating; your rhyme runs out of steam—
know this tumbling and fumbling is all part of the act,
so get up with a flourish. Your pencil’s still intact.
Snap those synapses! Feel the pulsing through your pen
Commit, measure by measure, to the coda’s cadence.
You've got them now--in the palm of your hand!
Finger by finger you’re reeling them in—
Big Top throng refrains from cheering, strains to hear the poem nearing…
Inky paws, uncaged, claw straw and sawdust
Until… CRACK! You’re in the center ring, mind unleashed, your words take wing--
they circle, soar, then light in the lap of an
open-mouthed child; the crowd goes wild.
* * * * * * *
* Barnum's circus was originally called "P.T. Barnum's Great Traveling
Museum, Menagerie, Caravan, and Hippodrome,"
which is pretty much what
our poem is. ("Greatest Show on Earth" was
added later...that's us, too!)
It never hurts to join forces...
...ask all the thirsty pooches at the dog park!
Let's play some more!
Hey--where'd everybody go???
G'bye to Poetry Month 2013! See you next year!
Posted by April Halprin Wayland
By: Maryann Yin,
on 4/22/2013
Blog:
Galley Cat (Mediabistro)
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To celebrate National Poetry Month, we found a video featuring pop star Madonna and her reading of the poem “If You Forget Me.” Pablo Neruda originally wrote this poem in Spanish and called it “Si Tu Me Olvidas.”
Madonna’s reading is featured on The Postman (Il Postino) movie soundtrack. It also contains poetry recitations delivered by Oscar-winning actress Julia Roberts, UK musician Sting, and The Avengers actor Samuel L. Jackson.
Neruda, a celebrated Chilean writer, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. You can read more pieces written by Neruda at The Poetry Foundation’s website. What’s your favorite Pablo Neruda poem?
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
from: Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It: False Apology Poems, by Gail Carson Levine with illustrations by Matthew Cordell
| 50 Book Pledge | Book #23: The House Girl by Tara Conklin |
In honour of National Poetry Month, I present “Dreams” from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes.
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
.
Howdy, Campers!
We're jumping up and down and popping balloons, celebrating our Fourth
Blogiversary...and you're invited to join in the fun by entering to win
one of four gift certificates to a fab independent bookstore. Details?
Read all about it
here!
.
And it's Friday, so happy
Poetry-Friday-in-the-midst-of-
Poetry-Month! Thank you,
Laura Purdie Salas, for hosting PF today!
And now...on with the show:
In keeping with our
blogiversary celebration, we're talking about indie bookstores. Here's my riff:
I was a long-time active member of the Southern California Children's Booksellers Association (SCCBA), a feisty organization of indies who generously shared knowledge on how to run a bookstore among themselves and with those thinking about starting a children's bookstore. These newbies could have seen as their
competitors, but instead they were embraced as colleagues and became friends.
SCCBA was a leader among children's independent bookseller associations and in 1984 SCCBA was the midwife in the birthing of the national organization, American Booksellers for Children (ABC) (which has since
merged with the American Booksellers Association.)
SCCBA itself folded into the
Southern California Independent Booksellers Association just a few years ago. All this merging was hard for many of us, and sad, so sad...but SCIBA has proven itself to be a lively, engaged and strong non-profit trade association.
So which are my fav indies? Must I choose just one? A longtime favorite, just up the freeway from me, is
Children's Bookworld, founded in 1986 by Sharon Hearne, and still going strong.
I am still mourning
Dutton's Brentwood Bookstore, which closed in 2008.
BUT there's great news:
indies are making a comeback and I'm lucky to have not one but
two fabulous indies just a few miles from my home, both opened within the last few years:
and the absolutely wonderful
{pages}!
Here's my rough draft of a book poem in honor of indies today:
HOOKED ON A BOOK: (The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore By Benjamin Hale)
rough draft poem by April Halprin Wayland
I’m reading the autobiography
of a classically educated, erudite
chimpanzee.
I stay up too late reading it.
Rather than listen to NPR’s Morning Edition,
I prop the book against the fish bowl as I brush my teeth.
His story
sticks to the souls of my hiking shoes
as I clamber up a steep slope in Arizona.
While buying half a head of Napa cabbage at the farmers market,
I wonder what will happen to his owner, Lydia
and why he’s writing the book from a jail cell.
Through a dinner of grape tomatoes, Napa cabbage,
juicy chicken and roasted potatoes, baby turnips and
carrots,
it haunts me
like cookie dough ice cream
haunts me
from the freezer.
poem © 2013 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved
And remember to enter our
indie bookstore gift certificate giveaway!
I'm trying to remember to put my name at the end of these posts...this is important because those who subscribe don't see the byline which automatically posts our names for us. So...
tah-tah from April Halprin Wayland!
In honor of National Poetry Month, we’ve dug up a video of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reciting Howard Nemerov‘s poem, “The Makers.”
Clinton, who at the time was serving as First Lady, recorded this video for “The Favorite Poem Project” in 1999. Her husband, President Bill Clinton, also participated in this project. This project was founded by the 39th poet laureate of the United States, Robert Pinsky. Altogether, 50 short documentaries were recorded for this video series.
In past, Clinton wrote and published several books including the 1996 nonfiction title It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us and the 2003 memoir Living History. At the moment, speculations and rumors are circulating about the new book Clinton plans to pen. What do you think?
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
From swinging in time to Robert Louis Stevenson—
How do you like to go up in a swing,
— to teaching children manners a la the Goops, I'm a big believer in having a poem—tiny, massive, rhyming or not— learned by heart and at the ready.
When I was a school librarian, one of my favorite things about April was our annual Poetry Assembly. And although it was a few years ago, I'd wager a few still remember the third grade's marvelous recitation and dramatic presentation of I AM THE DOG, I AM THE CAT, with Donald Hall's genius alternating cat and dog voices.
But, really, why bother to memorize a poem when it can be called up at a moment's notice from some distant website? Does anybody care? Do you even remember a poem you learned in third grade?
The best argument for verse memorization may be that it provides us with knowledge of a qualitatively and physiologically different variety: you take the poem inside you, into your brain chemistry if not your blood, and you know it at a deeper, bodily level than if you simply read it off a screen.
I think we writers need poetry inside us deeper than others, something to hear when we're searching for the perfect word or a phrase that creates an OH-MY-GOSH moment in our stories. They don't call it "learned by heart" for nothing.
Maybe I don't remember every word I sang, chanted, recited in school, in Sunday school, at summer camp.
I do recall enough to get me through a family supper with a smile.
The Goops
by Gillette Burgess
The Goops they lick their fingers
And the Goops they lick their knives:
They spill their froth on the tablecloth
Oh, they lead disgusting lives!
The Goops they talk while eating,
And loud and fast they chew;
And that is why I'm glad that I
Am not a Goop, are you?
Augusta Scattergood is former school librarian, a book reviewer and an avid blogger. GLORY BE, her debut novel, was named one of Amazon's Top Twenty Middle School books for 2012. A second novel has been sold to Scholastic for Fall, 2014 publication.
Happy National Poetry Month! All throughout April, we will interview poets about working in this digital age. Recently, we spoke with award-winning children’s book author and illustrator Betsy Snyder.
In the past, Snyder (pictured, via) has published two picture books that feature haikus, Haiku Baby and I Haiku You. She has been celebrating poetry by tweeting one haiku a day all month long. Check out the highlights from our interview below…
continued…
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As a children's author, I have the privilege of reading to kids, mostly in schools and libraries, and I always start by telling them that my poems all come from my imagination. I continue by saying that they all have imaginations too, as good was mine or as anyone else's. That gets them thinking, and listening a bit more sharply.
During the reading of my poems, I ask for questions, a part I always enjoy because I never know what will come at me. What is most frequently asked is, where do I get my ideas? I remind them that I use my imagination but that
I am listening and looking and smelling the world around me for ideas or phrases or situations or animals or colors or jokes that can spark the beginning of a poem. By going towards life I am rewarded because life then comes back to me with buckets of stimulation.
I tell them that on my book jacket notes, it says: "'He spends a lot of time looking out the window,' reads one of Robert Forbes' report cards."
Daydreaming is healthy, and in our busy-every-minute high-tech lives, it's good to slow down and get out of the electronic bubble we have all put ourselves into.
We talk about word choice and how it is the vehicle of writing, while imagination is the perpetual fuel for it.
Poetry has many forms, and whatever they feel is right for them is what they need to use.
But poetry has rules that can be demanding too, and those rules make it more fun because of the challenges they present. I like rhyming, which can be hard. I also use meters, so there is rhythm to my poems. While metered rhymes can be difficult, I love the journey they take me on. I don't always know where I am going to end up and sometimes I know where I want the poem to go but I don't know how I will get there.
I wouldn't have it any other way!
In the end, I write poems to please myself, and I hope they please others. By reading to children, I hope to stimulate them to read poetry and to try to write some themselves.
I am scattering seeds in the belief some will sprout and scatter more seeds down the line.
Robert L. Forbes is President of lifestyle magazine ForbesLife and the author of the poetry collections Let's Have a Bite! and Beastly Feasts!
Click through to sign up for the National Poetry Month giveaway!
Our culture at large has rather limited ideas about what poetry is. The average person on the street typically thinks of rhymed ditties about pretty panoramas, lovesick longings, or rainbow-laced dreams. Or perhaps broken-line ruminations on big topics like death, war, human nature, or tiny ones like butterfly wings, a twirling maple seed or tea leaves in the bottom of a cup. This sort of poetry, which focuses on description and feeling, is called lyric poetry.
But there's another whole branch that shares characteristics with fiction, like a plot, characters and sometimes even dialogue: narrative poetry. Narrative poetry comes out of oral tradition, when stories were shared around the fire. Rhythm, repetition, rhymes made the stories easier to remember and thus pass on from one hearer to another. Ancient, epic stories of adventure and valor, like The Odyssey and Beowulf are some of the earliest examples written down.
Over time, poets realized any kind of story could be made more memorable and even singable if set in verse. The troubadours of the Middle Ages told tales of tragic love, and talents like Geoffrey Chaucer wittily satirized the culture of the day through rollicking, bawdy tales in verse. Later, narrative poems became more like versified flash fiction, such as this striking piece by Robert Frost, "Out, out—".
Novels-in-verse are of course a type of narrative poetry. But like the epic poem form they derive from, each section tends to lose something when removed from the overall story. The sections or pieces are meant to be read as a unit. That aspect makes them trickier to write than one might initially expect.
If novels-in-verse interest but intimidate you, or you’re primarily a fiction writer wanting to try out poetry, short, free-verse narrative fiction is a great place to start. In fact, you might find benefit taking material you’ve already written and recreating it in verse format.
One of the poems in my collection Muddy-Fingered Midnights,
“Storm Shelter” began as an experiment like this. I took a scene from my novel in progress, in which the protagonist’s boyfriend invites her to see his childhood secret hiding spot, and their relationship deepens because of it.
I summarized and trimmed the prose versions, worked in evocative vocabulary and sound patterns, and even experimented with portmanteau (blending two distinct words). There’s not a huge event at the center of this piece, but there is a plot arc, moving from entering the story world, to conflict, resolution and denouement.
What makes it poetry is the condensed emotion, sparse words, sound patterns, and layers of meaning. (A more strongly plotted piece that wasn’t derived from prose is “
North and South,” also reprinted in my collection.
Writing poetry a great way to develop not only your writing skills, but also your publishing credits. There are thousands upon thousands of literary journals seeking poetry submissions. If you’ve done any writing at all, you have raw material. (For ideas on how to turn delected scenes into poems, see my post
Giving Life to Peripheral Stories.)
Read, learn from, and emulate published poets, and you too can write stories that sing.
Laurel Garver is a magazine editor and author of the poetry collection Muddy-Fingered Midnights and the novel Never Gone. Her poems have appeared in Ancient Paths, Every Day Poets, Poetry Pact volume 1, Rubber Lemon, Daily Love and Drown in My Own Fears. An indie film enthusiast and incurable Anglophole, she lives in Philadelphia with her husband and daughter.
By:
Inderjit Deogun,
on 4/19/2013
Blog:
The Pen Stroke | A Publishing Blog
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| 50 Book Pledge | Book #22: We Live in Water by Jess Walter |
In honour of National Poetry Month and Earth Day, on Monday, April 22, I present “The Moment” from Morning in the Burned House by Margaret Atwood.
The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,
is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can’t breathe.
No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.
A few years ago, Justine worked at the National Portrait Gallery and noticed that a lot of people had no reaction at all when they stood in front of a painting they didn't know. "I felt my first endeavor ought to be a book that proposes a way to look at any painting and find the spark, the joy, in that work," she says. "Forget historical references. Look for the passion in the art!"
Justine chose 14 paintings from the National Gallery of Art, painted by a variety of American and European artists who lived as early as the 1600s, and created poems to go along with them. "Each poem suggests just one possible way to look at that painting in a new way," she says. Here are a couple of my favorites, which both reflect Justine's love of dance. Yes, she is a kindred spirit!
Dancin'
 |
Green Plums by Joseph Decker, c. 1885.
Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. |
Green plums rolling
Yeah! rockin' and rollin'
Out of their box
Onto the stage
Ready to swing their stems,
Moving in rhythm
To a juicy tune.
The beat, it gets to them--
Swaying side to side,
They go even faster
Until finger-snapping hands
Put them back in their box.
Moving White Fluffs
 |
Meadow by Alfred Sisley, 1875.
Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. |
The sky is full
Of fuzzy white polka dots.
As they move on,
Do you think
Those dots are really
Dancing the polka
While they drift away?
Doing the polka
Takes time to learn
And where could they
Hear the music
To get the dance just right?
So, maybe it's not
The polka at all they're doing.
Maybe it's just a slow glide
They make up
As they go along.
Then why do you suppose
They call them "Polka dots" --
Those funny white fluffs
In the blue, blue sky?
Beautiful poems, right? So what does Justine hope that children will take away from the book? "I would like to think that children will look at the paintings, really connecting with the art, and perhaps even write original poems about the paintings themselves!"she says. I hope that some adults have that reaction, too!
Find out more about
Paint Me a Poem at
www.paintmeapoem.com. It's a really nice site that lets you get to Justine a little better an provides some more sneak peeks into the book. Irene Latham at
Live Your Poem is hosting the Poetry Friday roundup today, so you will find more poetry for children and adults there, too!
The New York Times has started a “serendipitous poetry”-themed tumblr blog called ”Times Haiku.”
A team of computer programmers developed a special algorithm that scans the publication’s articles and subsequently generates haikus.
You can read haikus derived from different NYT pieces, including an article on carrot purée, a profile on stand-up comedian Colin Quinn, and a special Q&A with the Game of Thrones TV series creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. According to Shelf Life, this blog may continue on even after the end of this month.
continued…
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By: Caroline Starr Rose,
on 4/8/2013
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I’ve known the birthdate of a casual acquaintance for 30 years, yet I don’t know that of a dear friend, only that he received his first driver’s license on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day. Why? The juxtaposition of a “day of infamy” and the possibilities of a new driver’s license struck a wry chord in my teenaged brain. As for the acquaintance, he was born on the same date as the fictional Bilbo Baggins, someone with whom I am much closer. The reasons that I can recite three poems from memory after more than thirty years are as divergent as the poems themselves. There are no lessons for teachers here. I learned them through osmosis, spitefulness and happenstance, in much the same way that I remember birthdays.
In fifth grade, I had a teacher that I neither liked nor disliked. In fact, I remember only one thing about her. She had a haughty, old-school manner of speaking - except for one day, when her detached manner slipped away as she recited Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Arrow and the Song,”
I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.
It was the second verse that caught in my mind and my own thoughts soared like the song, out of a dreary 5th grade classroom and into the limitless sky. Later, I taught myself the rest of the verses. I’ve been able to recite it ever since. I like it still.
In Junior High School, I had an Algebra teacher that I disliked a great deal. In the summers, he was a barker on the boardwalk at the Jersey Shore. He was a wise guy in a tough school. So was I. One day he announced that anyone who could memorize and recite Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” to the class on a pre-ordained date, would be exempt from taking an Algebra test. After securing a copy of the poem, I realized what a challenge it would be. Despite my disinclination toward public speaking and the difficulty in memorizing this poem in particular, he had thrown down the gauntlet and I would pick it up.
Jabberwocky
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
I memorized and recited that poem. I became interested in the works of Lewis Carroll. I asked for a book of his collected works for Christmas. I read them all, and I’ve never forgotten the poem. There are seldom opportunities for speaking it aloud, but imagine my surprise and delight when I saw Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. I smiled to myself, knowing that I was likely the only one in the theater who knew that the plot of the movie was not the book, Alice in Wonderland, but the poem, “Jabberwocky.” I knew the ending before the movie barely begun.
Chance brought me to the last poem in my verbal repertoire. As a librarian, I know not to judge a book by its cover - but I still do. As a teenager, I was perusing my local bookstore when I came upon a most appealing little book. It was cute, it was yellow, and from its cover, the pensive little man pondering the universe called out to me. It begged to be read. The book was Grooks by Piet Hein, a Danish mathematician, inventor, scientist, designer, and yes, poet. Grooks, I discovered, were a style of poem invented by Hein, rhyming aphorisms, really. They were clever and succinct, and I loved them. For over 30 years, one Grook has stayed with me. I recite it aloud - to myself, to my children, to whoever is near whenever things don’t go as they’ve been carefully planned.
ON PROBLEMS
Our choicest plans
have fallen through,
our airiest castles
tumbled over,
because of lines
we neatly drew
and later neatly
stumbled over.
And so there are three; and more diverse they could not be: “The Arrow and the Song,” “Jabberwocky,” “On Problems.” Teachers and poets, take heart. The mind is a curious thing. You may not know what will unlock the mind’s door to receive your poems, but you can ensure that they keep knocking. Sooner or later, one (or three) will get in.
| 50 Book Pledge | Book #20: Killdeer by Phil Hall |
In honour of National Poetry Month, I present “The Story of Old Women” from Sobbing Superpower: Selected Poems of Tadeusz Różewicz, translated by Joanna Trzeciak.
I like old women
ugly women
mean women
they are the salt of the earth
they are not disgusted by
human waste
they know the flipside
of the coin
of love
of faith
dictators clown around
come and go
hands stained
with human blood
old women get up at dawn
buy meat fruit bread
clean cook
stand on the street
arms folded silent
old women
are immortal
Hamlet flails in a snare
Faust plays a base and comic role
Raskolnikov strikes with an axe
old women
are indestructible
they smile knowingly
god dies
old women get up as usual
at dawn they buy bread wine fish
civilization dies
old women get up at dawn
open the windows
cart away waste
man dies
old women
wash the corpse
bury the dead
plant flowers
on graves
I like old women
ugly women
mean women
they believe in eternal life
they are the salt of the earth
the bark of a tree
the timid eyes of animals
cowardice and bravery
greatness and smallness
they see in their proper proportions
commensurate with the demands
of everyday life
their sons discover America
perish at Thermopylae
die on the cross
conquer the cosmos
old women leave at dawn
for the city to buy milk bread meat
season the soup
open the windows
only fools laugh
at old women
ugly women
mean women
because these beautiful women
kind women
old women
are like an ovum
a mystery devoid of mystery
a sphere that rolls on
old women
are mummies
of sacred cats
they’re either small
withered
dry springs
dried fruit
or fat
round buddhas
and when they die
a tear rolls down
a cheek
and joins
a smile on the face
of a young woman
Click through to sign up for the National Poetry Month giveaway!
**Congratulations to Donna MacDonald, winner of Lee Wardlaw's WON TON, A CAT TALE TOLD IN HAIKU. Please contact Lee with your shipping address. **
Acrostic poems are written by taking the letters of a word or name and using them as the first letter of each line of the poem. I like to use acrostics in both in my writing and in my teaching, even outside the language arts classroom. In social studies for example, acrostic poetry can be a very useful way of exploring a topic. Sometimes I give students an exercise to write an acrostic poem about Canada. Most of them end up starting with the word “cold”!
After starting with this students have the makings of an essay outline with paragraphs about Canadian climate, vegetation, history, culture (we are known worldwide for saying “I’m sorry” a lot), political system, and a conclusion.
*A printed dictionary is essential for this exercise. All the more reason to do it. Kids should use dictionaries more often.*
Both in and out of language arts, there are several ways of approaching the writing of acrostic poetry. Say we wanted to write a poem about “Mothers”. We might write something like:
This is the simplest kind of acrostic – basically it’s just a list of adjectives that fit the word you choose. Another thing to do is to use short phrases or sentences instead of single words.
Make our breakfast
Open their hearts
Think of us first
Hold us tight
Enjoy our successes
Read to us
Say “I love you” to us every day.
Now we have a more detailed description of mothers. This poem talks about the things mothers do for us. But that’s not the end for acrostics. Another approach is to go back to single words, only this time all the words together make sentence about your word. Like this:
Now finally we can go back to our phrases and sentences. Only this time we can make them connected into one idea. Kind of like this:
Maybe we don’t appreciate that they’re the
Ones who make us who we are
They selflessly, carefully
Help us grow. To them
Every child is like a seed in a flower garden.
Rising up, our petals open in their
Sunlight
The great thing about using acrostic poetry in the classroom is that students can write about any topic that interests them, and at a level they are comfortable with. More advanced students can write with complete sentences while struggling students will get a sense of accomplishment from completing the simpler word list form.
Even within a topic, students can narrow their focus to suit their interests. Writing about Canada, some students might focus on sports:
While some might prefer to focus on wildlife.
Caribou
And moose
Narwhal
And seals
Ducks
And Canadian geese.
We’d all love to get more poetry into the classroom, as well as new ways of approaching curriculum materials in general and the development of writing skills in particular. Acrostic poetry is a great way of doing all these things.
As writers and poets acrostics can help us to get to know our characters or explore our themes. Certainly as a verse novelist, a simple acrostic can sometimes salvage an otherwise unproductive day.
And we all have those.
Gabrielle Prendergast is the writer of the feature film HILDEGARDE, starring Richard E Grant. HILDEGARDE was also published as a novel by Harper Collins Australia. She wrote for the cartoon series Gloria’s House and Fairy Tale Police Department and worked on the drama series White Collar Blue. Her middle grade novel, WICKET SEASON was published in the Spring of 2012 with Lorimer Publishers. AUDACIOUS and its sequel CAPRICIOUS will be published by Orca Books in 2013 and 2014 respectively.
Gabrielle is also a creative writing teacher and mentor specializing in helping gifted young writers (11-21), reluctant writers of all ages and pre-literate writers up to age 7.
Happy National Poetry Month! All throughout April, we will interview poets about working in this digital age. Recently, we spoke with New York Times bestselling author Ellen Hopkins.
Hopkins (pictured, via) has been writing poetry throughout her entire life. She first established her professional writing career by penning nonfiction children’s books.
After Simon & Schuster Children’s Books published Crank in 2004, she became well-known for writing novels in verse. Many of her hit titles focus on dark topics including addiction, mental illness, and prostitution. Check out the highlights from our interview below…
continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
It's a huge honor for me to share the words of Paul B. Janeczko today, a poet I discovered in college and whose work I used in my classroom for years.
I didn't start out to be a poet. I started out as a kid in New Jersey who had two major goals in life: 1) to survive one more year of delivering newspapers without being attacked by Ike, the one-eyed, slobbering, crazed cur that lurked in the forsythia bushes at the top of the hill; and 2) to become more than a weak-hitting, third-string catcher on our sorry Little League team. I failed at both.
Had I announced at the dinner table, “Mom, Dad, I’ve decided to be a poet,” my parents -- particularly my mother -- would have been thrilled. In truth, they would have been thrilled that I’d decided to be anything other than the top-40 disk jockey, Edsel salesman, or bullpen catcher that I constantly yammered about becoming in grammar school. But at that point in my life -- as an affable kid who endured hours sitting in a desk whose design, I was convinced originated in a 15th-century Spanish dungeon -- poetry meant no more to me than 1066 or George Washington’s wooden teeth. You can tell, I suspect, that as a student, I did not have what you might call an “inquisitive mind.” The only time I was “gifted” was on my birthday and on Christmas.
My path from grammar school to high school teacher to poet gave me many opportunities to heed my internal GPS when it declared, “Recalculating.” For some inexplicable reason (dare I call it a blessing?), poetry was a constant companion along the way, whether I was teaching or writing my own poems. Whenever I worked with kids and poetry, I have wanted the kids to feel that all poems have a purpose, described well by Jonathan Holden:
“to give shape, in a concise and memorable way, to what our lives feel like . . . Poems help us to notice the world more and better, and they enable us to share with others.”
And today, with civilization seemingly destroying itself piece by piece, we all need to share. That’s what poets do. That’s what I try to do with my books. Isn’t that what we all try to do with words? I want young readers to feel that with each collection. Every poem in them is a sharing. My hope is that my readers will carry on that sharing.
As for me, although I never even sat in an Edsel or played ball above the Little League level, I did become a reader and writer of poetry. I consider myself lucky, given my staggering lack of interest and effort in school, not to mention the poetry I was expected to read. But kids don’t need to rely on luck to become readers of poetry. Exciting books of poetry are available. I hope parents and teachers share our love of poetry with kids. And let’s give them a chance to share their love of poetry with us. And, when we are touched by a good poem, we may recall the words of Stanley Kunitz, who said that if you listen hard enough to poets,
“who knows--we too may break into dance, perhaps for grief, perhaps for joy.”
Paul B. Janeczko aspired to be the teacher he never had, when he decided to pursue a career as a high school language arts teacher. From his own days as a student, Paul was obsessed with poetry of all kinds, and as a teacher he wanted to spread his own love of poetry to young people. Today, Paul Janeczko is better known as a writer, poet and anthologist.
Click through to sign up for the National Poetry Month giveaway!
Poetry has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. My mother and father both read poetry, my father favoring the Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Robert Service variety while my mother was a fan of Frost, Sandburg and Gerard Manley Hopkins. I had a big picture book of poetry I read and reread so often that many of those poems linger in my mind though I never consciously memorized them. "A violet by a mossy stone half hidden from the eye. Fair as a star when only one is shining in the sky" is a line that reliably comes to mind every time I go hiking and find wildflowers clinging to unlikely spots along the trail.
My fourth grade teacher, an exceedingly no-nonsense woman named Ms. Jacques, seemed to have two great loves to communicate to my nine year old self--long division and poetry. She taught me dozens of poetic forms from Haiku to the ballad and (what seems more impressive to me now) showed me how to scan a line to fit the meter of the line before it. I loved the structure of writing to a particular format. Hunting for just the right word to fill out the rhythm or rhyme of a line was so much more game-like than ordinary writing which I detested at the time for its irritating reliance on standard spelling and punctuation. With a poem I could invent words to my heart's debliss and dispense with punctuation entirely.
Ms. Jacques introduced me to my first literary crush, the deliciously uncapitalized e e cummings. Since cummings had neither a first name nor a gender, my nine year old self imagined a pleasant, furry alien who might, should I come across him in my ramblings in the woods, translate for me the poetry of slugs and squirrels and sword ferns.
Eventually college broadened considerably my repertoire of poetry while siphoning off much of the pleasure I found in reading it and all of the joy I took in creating it. I stopped writing poems for years and didn't miss it until I started reading poetry to my own children and writing my own stories.
Novels are so long, I leaned on poetry to give me the satisfaction of something I could finish in a day. When I was stuck or discouraged, poetry gave me a reliable lift and often a fresh perspective on a character. And for all the effort I took over making marketable novels, it was a huge relief to write something that I would not only never sell, but never show anyone. I think having work that lives in my own mind and heart but not in the world is extraordinarily valuable. Jack Gantos would appear to agree with this. He wrote very movingly of his relationship with his unpublished stories in this month's Horn Book Magazine.
So it was a great surprise to me that when a friend asked me to do a poetry event this April that I agreed to write and read my own poems in public. At first the prospect of a public reading filled me with dread. Not that I'm nervous about public performance. I'm far too Irish for that. But I did fear that my poetry would lose its luster if I gave it away. The thing that made the difference was choosing a topic that I cared about. Jim and I decided to write and share poems about love and war--a thing which has touched both our lives. The 10th anniversary of the war in Iraq seemed a good occasion for it.
There is a story I've been thinking about writing for several years, based on the combat experience of one of my nephews. I've begun it and abandoned it several times because I could never quite get the right tone. But I went all the way back to poems I remember my father reading to me, "The Ballad of East and West" by Kipling and "Christmas at Sea" by Stevenson, and decided to write the story as a ballad. I haven't written a ballad since I was nine, but to my amazement, this simple sturdy poetic form fit the story like a glove and what was too hard--too sad--to write in prose, flowed like a stream in verse.
If you happen to be in The Dalles, Oregon on April 18th you'll have a chance to hear what I sincerely hope will be my only poetry reading ever. But it will be worth it for the music and the companionship of fellow poets and the chance to bring a story I've struggled with to light in the form of a poem.
Rosanne Parry is the reluctant poet and enthusiastic author of Heart of a Shepherd, Second Fiddle and the upcoming Written in Stone. www.rosanneparry.com
When people ask me where I got the idea for LIES BENEATH, a YA novel about murderous mermaids on Lake Superior, I tell them that the initial image came to me in a dream, which is the truth. But the inspiration--the thing that fueled the novel--was Victorian poetry.
I’ve always had a love for the Victorian-era poets: Shelley, Tennyson, Dickinson, Rossetti, and the Brontës, just to name a few. In particular, I’m drawn to the way they mix their images of death and romance: the beautiful corpse, so to speak. For example, Dickinson speaks of death being a suitor come courting in a fine carriage:
Because I could not stop for Death
He kindly stopped for me.
The Carriage held but just Ourselves
And Immortality.
But the Victorians don’t have a monopoly on this juxtaposition of romance and death. It is also a familiar image in modern-day paranormal romance.
The paranormal genre is filled with vampires, faeries, angels, and mermaids--all beautiful creatures who bring romance to unsuspecting mortals, just as easily as they bring death. So why are we drawn to them? They should repel us, but we are transfixed. Perhaps it is because we long to be consumed by love, just as surely as death will consume us all. Perhaps it’s the notion of “‘til death do us part” taken to its most extreme conclusion.
LIES BENEATH (the first book in the trilogy) is the story of Calder White, a merman, who falls in love with Lily Hancock, a human girl whose family has a history with monsters in the lake. The novel was inspired by three Victorian poems about beauty, love, and death, all written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson: “The Merman,” “The Mermaid,” and “The Lady of Shalott.”
Tennyson describes the merman as a beautiful creature, living a king’s life. He’s flirtatious and bold, but without real love, his life is lonely, empty, and shallow:
But the mermaids are more straightforward in their warning that death lurks behind the beautiful façade of their lives:
Till that great sea-snake under the sea
From his coiled sleeps in the central deeps
Would slowly trail himself sevenfold
Round the hall where I sate, and look in at the gate
With his large calm eyes for the love of me.
-The Mermaid
In LIES BENEATH, Calder recognizes the emptiness of his life, wants more, but fears he cannot escape his own nature. That is, until he meets Lily Hancock, a modern-day Lady of Shalott.
Like the Lady of Shalott, Lily Hancock lives under a curse. While the Lady is teetering on the edge of a mental breakdown, Lily’s perception of the world is colored by her belief that she is destined for insanity, just like her grandfather before her. Both Lily and the Lady long for love and an end to the curse, even if seeking it out will surely lead to death.
When the Lady sees Lancelot, the object of her desire, Tennyson describes him just as dazzling and golden as he described the merman:
The gemmy bridle glittered free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle bells rang merrily
As he rode down to Camelot:
Both Lily and the Lady put on white dresses, board a boat, and seek an end to their family curse. One of them is successful. The other pays the ultimate price. But can we say they did not both achieve their goal?
Some argue that YA paranormal romance sets a bad example of love for teens. I disagree. I would suggest that argument is looking at the genre through the wrong set of lenses. Rather, if considered through the lens of poetry, the reader quickly realizes that paranormal romance--like so many Victorian-era poems before it--presents a metaphor for sacrificial love. And, in the end, isn’t that the greatest love of all?
Anne Greenwood Brown is the author of Lies Beneath (Random House/Delacorte June 12, 2012), Deep Betrayal (Random House/Delacorte March 12, 2013), and Promise Bound (Random House/Delacorte spring 2014). She lives in Minnesota with her amazingly patient husband and their three above-average children. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
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on 4/12/2013
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How are you celebrating National Poetry Month?
Since 1996 the Academy of American Poets has been encouraging people everywhere to embrace and celebrate the history, passion, and art of poetry. Around the country people are planning readings, write-ins, talks, and events that could inspire a haiku out of anyone.
Whether you’re a seasoned poet or just interested in seeing what poetry has to offer, Columbus offers a few great ways to take part in the celebration.
Meet the Authors: Celebrating National Poetry Month
Tuesday, April 17, 7:00 – 8:30 p.m.
Westerville Library, Meeting Room B.
Three published poets from the Westerville Poetry Group share their work. An open mic gathering and discussion will follow the readings.
Pen and Pallete Poetry Open Mic
Thursday, April 18, 8:00 – 10:00 p.m.
Travonna Coffee House.
Free poetry open mic, hosted by local poet Hanif Abdurraqib. All work is welcome to be shared!
Borderlands: Poetry On the Edge
Saturday, April 20, 2:00 – 4:00 p.m.
Main Street Books (Mansfield, OH).
These poetry readings feature writers we have invited from all over the state; the readings by our hand-picked poets will be followed by a brief open mic.
National Poetry Month Publishing Workshop with M. Scott Douglass, Publisher of Main Street Rag
Thursday, April 26, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.
Bexley Public Library.
To celebrate National Poetry Month this year, OPA members are invited to attend a publishing workshop where they can get great ideas and advice to help them compile a manuscript for a book or chapbook.
Poetry Slam and Open Mic
Every Wednesday, 8:00 p.m.
Kafe Kerouac.
Every Wednesday Writers’ Block Poetry has their weekly slam followed by an open mic for anyone in the audience.
Even if you can’t make it to one of these events, celebrate poetry on your own terms! Whether you’re doing a little extra writing or reading, take the opportunity to further explore this fantastic multi-faceted art form. So indulge in your favorite poet, find your favorite line, and spread your love of poetry!
Are you doing something to celebrate National Poetry Month? If so, let us know in the comments below!
POEM IN YOUR POCKET DAY is APRIL 18, 2013! Visit poets.org for printable, pocket sized poems and other fantastic poetry related items.
I fell in love with Poem in you Pocket: 200 Poems to Read and Carry, published in conjunction with The Academy of American Poets and selected by Elaine Bleakney, last April. Maybe this year I will be able to bring myself to tear-and-share the poems in
April 18, 2013 is
POEM IN YOUR POCKET DAY! Don't forget to arm yourselves and your family with poems to share! If you need a little help finding poems, visit the POETS.org PIYP page for downloads and ideas for making the day great. And, last year, these great books for kids and adults were published.
Poem in Your Pocket, edited by Elaine Bleakney, in conjunction with the Academy
Click through to sign up for the National Poetry Month giveaway!
“Vignette” is a word that originally meant “something that may be written on a vine-leaf.” This image makes me think: small, special, delicate, and perhaps not for everyone to see.
How apt is this image?
Nowadays, a vignette is what you call a snapshot in words. It differs from flash fiction or a short story in that its aim doesn’t lie within the traditional realms of structure or plot. Instead, the vignette focuses on one element, mood, character, setting, object, or if you’re clever, a unique and smooth blend of them all. It is the perfect form of writing for poetic descriptions, excellent for character or theme exploration and wordplay.
The language can be simple and minimalistic, or extravagantly crafted literary prose. It’s your choice. Write in the style and genre you are comfortable with and in the genre you love. There are no limits regarding style and genre. In fact, the vignette only has one rule: create an atmosphere, not a story.
If you’d like to read some wonderful vignettes, you can find an abundance of them at Vine Leaves Literary Journal, which is run by me and Dawn Ius. But to be honest, I’d give writing one a go before you allow yourself to become influenced by too much other work.
Set your mind on a moment. Use all the senses to describe it. Especially the neglected ones like touch and taste and sound. Try not to go over 800 words. Anything longer than that will want to become a story. 100-word vignettes are also acceptable. And if you can manage to do it in even less than that, we applaud you. But it has to be good—really good, to get away with something so short.
That being said, one of my favourite vignettes in Vine Leaves Literary Journal Issue #01, called “Flashback”, is two lines long. It was written by a poet named Patricia Ranzoni:
the softness from dialing the phone
is like lifting the lid to my music box
This was a very brave submission. But totally worthy. Can you see why? Read it out loud. Slowly.
Let me tell you why I love this piece:
I can absolutely feel myself in the moment. Silence surrounding me, either really early in the morning or late at night. Alone. That soft click and then purr when I lift the receiver of the hook, and then the dancing notes as I dial. I can see the flashback—a blurry image of a pastel pink ballerina spinning, the tune twinkling, and the box vibrating in my hands. I can hear a child laughing in my head. It’s me when I was a kid. The first time I ever saw a ballerina in a box. Magic.
A successful vignette must evoke emotion. If you can make us feel, you’re on the right track.
If Jessica Bell could choose only one creative mentor, she'd give the role to Euterpe, the Greek muse of music and lyrics. This is not only because she currently resides in Athens, Greece, but because of her life as a thirty-something Australian-native contemporary fiction author, poet and singer/songwriter/guitarist, whose literary inspiration often stems from songs she's written. Jessica is the Co-Publishing Editor of Vine Leaves Literary Journal and annually runs the Homeric Writers' Retreat and Workshop on the Greek island of Ithaca. For more information, please visit her website.
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What a fabulous finale, April! And what a celebration.
Love that it ends in the lap of a child (subconscious connection to your doggy drafts?!?!)!!
Huzzah! What fun to have been a part of this creation!
Super ending! What a fun event this has been.
TA-DAAAAAH! I admit I rather loved your idea of writing THE END (ha!), but I'm so glad you didn't. This is the perfect ending, words twirling to a child, which is what we're here for.
THE CROWD GOES WILD! Yay, us!
Nice! Let's do it again next year!
Wow, we went from music and dancing to singing and dreaming to swinging and tumbling...the crowd does, indeed, go wild! Well done!
April, I love it!!! In the lap of a child, exactly where we want it to be. Love that wordy title too. Thank you THANK YOU, everyone who made this year so much fun. xo
What can I say? the crowd goes wild is a wonderful way to go out!
Bravo! Take a bow! With all of the action centered around the writer, it all comes to a fitting end in the lap of a child, which is just perfect! I can hear the blogosphere clapping!
I think at the end of a beautiful act, I should say 'encore', yet you've ended the poem so lovingly, April, right where it should be, with a child. Class act!
This poem came together so wonderfully well all along the way. Perfect ending, April!
Yes, Bravo, April! The perfect ending for an over-the-(big)-top creation, chronicling both secret musings and spectacle, is with a child reader. clap*clap*clap
Like others, I love that it ends in a child's lap, too. Great ending to a terrific poem! Congratulations to all the participants.
Wonderful ending, April! (I would not have wanted that knee-buckling responsibility.) Brava!
Yay for our whole pack--it truely takes a village!
It's already been said, but I'll say it again, the perfect ending in the lap of the child with the crowd going wild.
The crowd goes wild for your ending, April. Well done! I laughed at your impulse to write the end--just let those awesome words wing away. That would have been grand, but I'm glad you brought them to a child's lap.
Excellent! The ending couldn't be more perfect. Very nicely done!
Yay for us! Love the title. Let's twirl some words together again sometime. It's been fun!
Bravo! What fun. xoA
Best poem title ever!
STOMP STOMP CLAP! STOMP STOMP CLAP! Leave the whole show in a little kid's lap!
Somehow it all came together, and anchorwoman April did the heavy lifting. Thanks, Irene, for instigating, and to all who played along. Poetry improv indeed.
I'm sure you all felt this with each line: all I can say is, WHEW! ("It's just a POEM,Honey...")
Felt like I was in the March Madness Poetry Tournament all over again...
xxx
I loved watching this unfold! Couldn't believe how people could make the poem hang together, day after day, not only with meaning, but with meter. Like so many others, I love your ending. Also absolutely love the title! Perfect!
What a satisfying ending, April! And what an amazing team effort. It's a wonder I don't have a tummy ache from all the cotton candy, but what an awesome month at the circus!
This could not have been a better ending! I love it, and I loved this month. Thank you, poetry friends. xo, a.
April,
I went over to Teaching Author's to read today's post and couldn't resist another run through the Progressive Poem. I saw that my comment didn't come through on the 30th! Weird! Anyway, I will just say again how perfectly you ended our poem I just love your line! In fact, I'm going wild over it!
Thank you, Penny and everyone for your comments! Now that Poetry Month is over and we're winding down, we can all actually read more poetry!