Karla Kuskin, one of my favorite children’s poets, passed away in August. I loved Karla’s poetry. Much of it was joyful and exuberant. It was poetry that truly spoke to children and about the world of childhood. My elementary students read and enjoyed and took pleasure in memorizing Karla Kuskin’s poetry.
I had the opportunity to hear Karla speak twice—the first time at the Boston Public Library when she gave the David McCord lecture more than twenty years ago and then again at a children’s literature conference at the University of Southern Maine. I could tell you more about Karla—but there’s no reason to because Sylvia Vardell has already posted a lovely tribute to Karla at her blog Poetry for Children: Remembering Karla Kuskin. I suggest you read it—if you haven’t already. 
(Note: These are titles and first lines of some of Karla’s poems that my students and I loved best: A Bug Sat in a Silver Flower, Buggity Buggity Bug, I Woke Up This Morning, Rules, The Question, The Gold-Tinted Dragon, Where Have You Been Dear?, Around and Around, and nearly every poem from her book Any Me I Want to Be. I guess I could go on and on.)
Here is one of the poems from Any Me I Want to Be—probably the best collection of mask poems ever written for children. I love the book so much that I bought two copies—just in case I lost one. I memorized the following poem—as well as a number of others from the book.
I liked growing.
That was nice.
The leaves were soft
The sun was hot.
I was warm and red and round
Then someone dropped me in a pot.
Being a strawberry isn’t all pleasing.
This morning they put me in ice cream.
I’m freezing.
In remembrance of Karla Kuskin, I wrote a poem using titles of her books and poems and lines from some of her poems. I typed Karla's titles and poem lines in italics.
Here I Am: A Poem in Remembrance of Karla Kuskin
by Elaine Magliaro
Here I am
Sitting near the window tree,
Feeling green as a bean,
Getting the urge to roar and more,
To saddle up and ride on the gold-tinted dragon
In the middle of the night—
A silver night that’s full of the moon.
Here I am
Sitting near the window tree,
Counting the stars
While the Earth goes spinning around and around,
Dreaming different dreams,
Pretending to be any me I want to be—
A worm,
A wizard,
A blue bird on a branch.
Here I am
Sitting near the window tree
Where stillness is my secret,
Thinking dreams are life you live asleep…
Wondering: Where do you get the idea for a poem?
Telling myself: Dig deep in you…
Some things you know.
Here I am
Sitting near the window tree
Writing wordless words,
Composing a tuneless tune…
A song to be sung at night
When I look out at the world and listen
To the day shut tight.
For further reading:
At Blue Rose Girls, I have two poems dedicated to the memory of Lindsey B., of one of my former students. I just learned on Wednesday that Lindsey had passed away at the age of thirty. The poems are Little Elegy by X. J. Kennedy and Child of a Day by Walter Savage Landor.
The Poetry Friday Roundup is here—at Wild Rose Reader—today!
JOYCE SIDMANI think it's safe to assume that many
kidlit bloggers are already familiar with the name of children’s poet
Joyce Sidman.
Sidman was the
winner of the 2006 and the 2007 Cybils Awards for Poetry. Her
Cybils are just two on a long list of awards and prizes that Joyce has won for the seven poetry books she has published since 2000. Other acknowledgements—and this is just a small sampling— include a Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, the Claudia Lewis Poetry Award, a Bulletin Blue Ribbon Book, the ASPCA Henry
Bergh Children’s Book Award, and a Bank Street Best Book of the Year.
Sidman’s poetry books are worthy of high praise indeed. She is a master poet like
J. Patrick Lewis and
Janet Wong, two other children's poets I interviewed for
Wild Rose Reader earlier this month. In addition to being a writer,
Sidman is also a lover of nature…a poet who believes in connecting much of what she writes about to the “physical world.”
INTERVIEW WITH JOYCE SIDMAN
Elaine: You have said that you began writing when you were young—that you felt “compelled” to write. When did you decide that you wanted to have a career as a children’s poet?
Joyce: I began writing for children after my own children were born, but experimented with lots of genres at first. I’d been a poet for adults, and a friend suggested I try poetry for children. It immediately felt “right.” It only grew into a career when I began to experience some success!
Elaine: Do you keep a notebook in which you jot down ideas for poems?
Joyce: I only keep notebooks when I’m traveling. Usually what I have littering my desk are pieces of paper with notes scribbled on them. Or, when I have a coherent thought, theme, or idea, I’ll type it right into the computer. Writing on the computer really helps me organize my thoughts. My handwriting is atrocious and I can type faster (even though my typing is really atrocious, too!). I do a lot of planning, thinking, and organizing in my head, though, because once an idea hits paper, it changes somehow, takes on a life of its own, loses a little of its promise. The words can sometimes take over and head the idea in the wrong direction . . . this doesn’t really make sense, I know, but to me, ideas are the future—what COULD happen—and words are solid, immutable, alive. Once you “birth” them, you never know where they’ll take you. It’s not always the direction you want to go.
Elaine: Did you receive many rejections letters before your first poetry collection, Just Us Two: Poems about Animal Dads, was accepted by a publisher?
Joyce: Oh, yes, of course—many, many rejections. Most of them came before I had begun to write children’s poetry. I spent ten years, really, floundering about. I had short pieces published—stories, poems, newspaper columns, but the first book took forever.
Elaine: Two of your highly acclaimed poetry collections,
Song of the Water Boatman and
Butterfly Eyes, focus on nature—the pond and meadow and the plants and animals that live in those habitats. There’s a lot of information conveyed through your poetry and prose in those books. Did you have to do much research?
Joyce: Yes, those two books and many others I’ve written took a lot of research, but I loved it. One problem writers have is how to be productive when we’re not writing well—because of course you can’t make magic every day. Research is so fun and enriching and gives you something to do in those horrible blank spaces. Plus, it’s like a treasure hunt—tracking down what you need. These days, with the Internet, the chase is thrilling because you have the whole world at your fingertips.
Elaine: You say that nature inspires you. You seem to have a real passion for learning about the “physical world.” Have you had this interest in plants, animals, and the natural environment since you were a little girl?
Joyce: My sisters and I spent much of our free time outdoors and went to a summer camp that had unheated, unelectrified wooden cabins. Although my younger sister was the real animal nut (lizards & snakes in the bedroom), I felt a deep affinity for the natural world and its beauty; it filled me with peace, even as a child. Cities make me nervous, and I always gravitate toward green space. My interest in natural science, though, has grown steadily in the last decade or so. Now my favorite part of the New York Times is not the Book Review, but the Science section!
Elaine: You told me before that your most recent book, This Is Just to Say, came out of your work as a writer-in-residence—that it came pouring out of you in a way that other books haven’t. How long does it usually take for you to write a collection of poems? What is the process like?
Joyce: Well, it’s different for every book, but generally I start with an idea, or an image, or an emotion. I have a book coming out next year called Red Sings from Treetops—it’s about color in nature. This book started with the deep thrill that color gives me: a flaming red maple or the soft green of new buds. But an emotion or image is not enough—I have to figure out a “voice” for the book: a way to write it so that it captures that original emotion. I played around with all sorts of color poems, touching on this idea or that, and then retreating when it didn’t feel right. This happened over the course of a year. Finally one spring I looked down at some tracks in the mud, and a line came into my head: “Look down—brown. Deer were here, and a dainty raccoon.” That line isn’t even in the book anymore, but I knew that I’d found a way in, a way of talking about color as though it were alive. After that, the book took about three months to write and another few months of tinkering. I have to go slowly. If I force it, it’s just bad poetry. And I have to give it time to rest so I can look at it with fresh eyes and see if it still works.
Elaine: You’
ve done a number of author residencies in schools and worked with children on writing poetry.
In Touching the World: The Importance of Teaching Poetry, an article you wrote for
The Riverbank Review in 2002, you state the following: “To fully engage myself and my students with the physical world, I turn to poetry.” Would you care to tell us how you feel poetry can connect you and your students to the physical world?
Joyce: It’s a matter of looking and feeling. Looking with all one’s senses: being an observer, a “noticer”. Letting those senses be fluid, and run into one another as they do in nature—letting sunlight have a smell, and thunder have a color. And also to be willing to let all these sensory elements touch your emotions, open up your sense of wonder and joy. The natural world is incredibly complex and astounding. Poetry allows us to plunge into that complexity, without the need to understand, but only the need to appreciate, to behold, to celebrate.
So, I try to get kids outside, to establish a bond between them and the world they pass by every day. Make it personal. Have them speak to the shell they’re peering inside of, or the pine tree they’re touching.
Elaine: I’d like to ask you a question that a second grade student asked me more than a dozen years ago: How come you know so much about poetry?
Joyce: What a great question! How did YOU answer it? And who says we know so much, anyway? Poetry is ultimately mysterious. The thing I love most about it is that I don’t understand it—can’t say for sure what makes one poem more powerful than another, or even WHY a poem is powerful. Ten year olds can write poems that are as breath taking as fifty year olds. The playing field is completely level. That’s why I love to go into classrooms: I feel as if I’m walking into a room of potential colleagues.
None of us knows everything about poetry. You can analyze it to death and still not know. And then a child—who has never written a poem—can come up with a line like “Fear feels like a spider web in my heart.”
Elaine: Do you think that you’ll ever attempt writing a picture book or a nonfiction book for children?
Joyce: Oh, I’ve written many picture books. They’re not very good. I have trouble with plot! I’ve also written novels and one nonfiction book. I would love to get one of them in good enough shape to publish. Some day!
Elaine: Would you like to tell us about any new poetry projects that you’re working on?
Joyce: I mentioned the color book. Also in production are a book called Ubiquitous about survivor organisms, and a book in the Water Boatman/Butterfly Eyes vein about the woods at night. And I’m playing around with some other poetry projects, nothing that has entirely coalesced. I hate the in-between periods, when I’m not settled on anything; they make me extremely nervous. What if I never have a good idea again?? Every writer would like to move smoothly from one project to the next, but that doesn’t always happen. And my husband will tell you that I get very whiney during those fallow periods!
Invitation to Write a Poem
Joyce and I would like to invite readers of this interview to write their own poems of apology as Joyce did for her book This Is Just to Say: Poems of Apology and Forgiveness. Do you think you need some inspiration? You can read my review of This Is Just to Say here. It includes excerpts from some of the poems in the book. I also recommend reading the funny and touching poems of apology Jone’s students wrote. You’ll find the poems in this post at her blog, Check It Out.
And here, with Joyce’s permission, is a poem from This Is Just to Say:
Brownies--Oops!
By Joyce Sidman
I smelled them from my room:
a wafting wave of chocolate-ness.
I listened for movement,
ears pricked like a bat’s.
I crept down, stepped
over the sleeping dog.
I felt the cold linoleum
on my bare toes.
I saw the warm, thick
brick of brownies.
I slashed a huge chunk
right out of the middle.
The gooey hunks of chocolate
winked at me as I gobbled them.
Afterward, the pan gaped
like an accusing eye.
My head said, Oops!
but my stomach said, Heavenly.
by Maria
Last year, I was inspired to write a poem of apology and a response poem after reading Joyce’s book. Here are my two poems:
This Is Just to Say: A Poem to My Daughter
I have eaten
the chocolate bunny
I bought you
for Easter
a big-eared, brown hunk
of deliciouness
you probably saw
hidden
in the closet
and were expecting
to unwrap and savor
on a flower-filled Sunday
Forgive me
it was bittersweet
and creamy
and melted in my mouth
like snow
on the first warm day
of Spring.
A Daughter’s Response to Her Chockaholic Mother
Mom! How could you???
You know
I love chocolate, too!
You’re an adult
and should have better control
of your candy cravings.
Set an example
for your only child
who also has
a significant sweet tooth.
Next year,
open your wallet a little wider
and buy two bittersweet bunnies
so we can rhapsodize
in a duet
of ooohhhs and uuummmms
and indulge
in our chocolate Easter dreams
together
NOTE: If you write a poem of apology and post it at your own blog, please send me the link. If you’d like me to post your poem at Wild Rose Reader, type it in the comment section or send it to me via email.
ANOTHER NOTE: I would like to express my appreciation to Joyce Sidman for this in-depth interview about her "writing life," for writing wonderful books that connect poetry to the "physical world," and for granting me permission to post a poem from her book This Is Just to Say.
******************************
At Blue Rose Girls, I have the poem Ars Poetica by Archibald MacLeish.
The Poetry Friday Roundup is at The Well-Read Child.
JANET WONG
Believe it or not—I first heard about
Janet Wong when I was traveling with a Children’s Literature and Language Arts Delegation in the People’s Republic of China in the autumn of 1994. One of the other delegates, with whom I became friends, was a professor at a college in Southern California. She was all excited when she told me about this “talented new Chinese American author” who had just published her first collection of children’s poems entitled
Good Luck Gold. Of course, I had to have the book! I’m always looking for bright new voices in children’s poetry. I ordered
Good Luck Gold soon after I returned home.
In
Good Luck Gold and in her second book,
A Suitcase of Seaweed, Janet reflected on her years growing up as an Asian-American child. Both books received the prestigious Claremont Stone Center Recognition of Merit Award. Here is the first poem from
Good Luck Gold:
Good Luck Gold
By Janet Wong
(Poem copyright 1994 by Janet Wong.
Good Luck Gold published by M. K. McElderry, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division. All rights reserved.)
When I was a baby
one month old,
my grandparents gave me
good luck gold:
a golden ring
so soft it bends,
a golden necklace
hooked at the ends,
a golden bracelet
with coins that say
I will be rich
and happy someday.
I wish that gold
would work
real soon.
I need my luck
this afternoon 
Janet had me hooked with her first collection. I’ve bought every poetry book that she has published since then. Janet writes not only poetry that speaks to her ethnic heritage (Chinese and Korean), she also writes of one’s unconscious imagination in
Night Garden: Poems from the World of Dreams. She writes about relationships in her book
The Rainbow Hand: Poems About Mothers and Children, which was the recipient of a Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award Honor. Janet’s most recent collection,
Twist: Yoga Poems, was written for her friend
Julie Paschkis, the award-winning children’s picture book illustrator. Julie loves doing yoga—so Janet wrote a book of poems about different yoga poses, which Julie illustrated. (Click
here to read my review of
Twist: Yoga Poems and my interview with Janet and Julie.)
I had the great pleasure of meeting Janet at a Children’s Literature Institute at Simmons College in Boston several summers ago. Since that time, Janet and I have become friendly. I have gotten to know this woman who is a tiny, determined dynamo and force of nature. She’s a talented writer and a great speaker—straightforward, ebullient, and funny. She has been featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show and, in 2003, was invited to read her picture book
Apple Pie Fourth of July as part of the Easter festivities at the White House. I have no doubt in my mind that Janet Wong could accomplish anything she sets her mind to.
About the InterviewJanet and I decided to focus my interview with her on her experience as a student in a master class on poetry taught by the late
Myra Cohn Livingston, one of America’s foremost children’s poets and anthologists. In addition to Janet, other students in the class included
April Halprin Wayland,
Tony Johnston,
Ann Whitford Paul,
Joan Bransfield Graham,
Alice Schertle, and
Kristine O’Connell George.
INTERVIEW WITH JANET WONG
Elaine: You were a student in the master class in poetry that the late Myra Cohn Livingston taught at UCLA. How did you come to know Myra and when did you become interested in writing poetry for children?
Janet: I heard Myra speak at a one-day UCLA Extension seminar, an “everything you need to know about writing a children’s book” class. I didn’t want to write poetry; I was there to hear an editor speak about the acquisition process.
When I heard Myra, I knew I could learn something from her. She was so confident and smart, and clearly a demanding teacher. Myra taught a Beginning Poetry class through UCLA Extension and also a Master Class (which was invitation-only). I signed up for her class in Beginning Poetry after receiving a pile of rejection letters. I had decided that it was time to learn to write for children—to learn about rhyme, repetition, and rhythm, poetic devices that would help me write a picture book. Picture books were my passion, and I simply wanted to use poetry to “sharpen my prose.” I only became interested in writing poetry for publication several months later, once I’d started raiding the 811 shelf at the library (fifty books at a time, at Myra ’s urging) and had fallen in love with poetry.
The next term I was invited to take the Master Class—because of luck, the bad luck of Ruth Bornstein (author/illustrator of the simple but brilliant book Little Gorilla), who had to skip the term because of a family emergency. It was truly incredibly good luck for me: many people had waited for years to get into the Master Class, yet I was invited to take Ruth’s spot very soon, probably because I happened to talk to Myra shortly after Ruth called her. Tony Johnston, Alice Schertle, Monica Gunning, April Halprin Wayland, Ann Whitford Paul, Kristine O’Connell George, Deborah Chandra, Joan Bransfield Graham, and more: this was quite an accomplished and talented group!
Elaine: Can you tell us anything about your experience in Myra’s class?
Janet: During class, we would go around the room and we would read a homework poem aloud, in rapid succession, without explanation. If someone started to apologize or give background info, they would be interrupted and reminded of the rule. Then we’d return to hear some poems again, and discuss briefly which parts we remembered. This was an excellent way to teach form and rhythm; after hearing a dozen poems that used anapest or a dozen sonnets, you’d have a great feel for what that rhythm or form was all about.
For the rhythm exercises, Myra would allow us to break a rhythm only if we could explain why. For instance, I might break a bunch of happy anapests with an iamb to draw attention to a couple of words that were more poignant. I rarely write in set forms and strict rhythms now, but these exercises gave me a great education, and many of my free verse poems do have a loose rhythmic structure that holds the poem together.
One exercise that Myra used to do every few months was a “grading” exercise—which helped spur a discussion of what makes a poem good. She would read a stack of poems in rapid succession, not identifying the poet, and we’d make a list of grades. When you don’t know that a poem is written by a “brand name” poet, you sometimes give his poems lower grades than you would if you knew. After our grades were marked, we’d go back over the poems, hear them and discuss them. I felt, early on, that I had such “McDonald’s taste” in poems, while Alice Schertle’s taste was clearly “gourmet.” After studying with Myra for about two years, I was finally able to give grades that matched Alice’s. My taste had “developed”—either that, or I had become really good at guessing which poems I was supposed to like!
Elaine: What kinds of writing assignments did Myra give her students to work on at home?
Janet: Myra’s weekly homework assignments usually required us to write a half-dozen poems: a poem using a certain metrical structure (iamb, trochee, dactyl, or anapest), another poem in a certain form (villanelle, triolet, limerick, tanka, etc.), a haiku (always a haiku), a poem on a certain subject theme, poems exploring voice or another technique (assonance, consonance, alliteration, personification, metaphor, simile).
One of my favorite homework assignments was the “voice change” exercise. If we had written a poem in a third-person narrative voice, we’d have to do a second poem in the first-person lyrical voice. After that, we’d write versions in the voice of the mask, and apostrophe, and conversation. The change of voice often resulted in fresh new language and insights. For instance: a narrative poem about the wind might simply describe a scene where the wind blows the hat off a girl’s head. In the lyrical version, the girl might talk about losing her hat to the wind. In the voice of the mask, though, the poet would become the wind, and all of a sudden new ideas might arise: perhaps the wind is no longer just “blowing” but actually “stealing” the coveted hat. Using apostrophe, the girl would talk to the wind, and might plead with it to return her hat, or might threaten or cajole. In a conversation version, the girl and wind (or girl and hat) might scream at each other, or tease. The voice change exercise reliably creates elements and introduces words that will not arise in the course of revising a poem over and over in one voice only.
Another favorite homework assignment is explained in Myra’s book I Am Writing a Poem About…, sadly out-of-print but available at many libraries. Young poets raised on the Magnetic Poetry craze enjoy this exercise, but I rarely use it when I visit schools for just a day or two; instead, I usually use our limited workshop time to do a metaphor/simile poem instead. Recently, though, I did the “Ring/Blanket/Drum” exercise with a group of teachers during a lunchtime workshop at Collegiate School in Richmond, Virginia, and the results were fantastic. First I told them that they’d be writing a poem using the words ring, blanket, and drum. Then I read a few examples from the book, which contains the homework assignments of Myra’s Master Class students. Here is my ring/blanket/drum poem:
Oh, Brother!
By Janet Wong
The little squirt,
begging for boiled eggs and toast,
circles me like a wrestler in the ring,
bouncing on my bed,
bouncing,
bouncing,
bouncing,
bouncing,
and when I try to hide my head,
he dives under the blanket,
to drum my stomach
until it surrenders
a growl.
I spoke for three minutes about rhyme, off-rhyme, repetition, and rhythm—and they wrote for five minutes. Here are three examples of what they accomplished:
The Ring
By Stephanie Franz
She sees his ring
Memories
Her wedding day, the children, the trips, the
first time they conquered a mountain,
the last time they struck a golf ball...
Memories
Soon she will remove the ring
while wrapping him in a blanket of love
His soul will soar to meet his maker
while the drum of her heart carries on their tune
She will wear his ring.
A Poem
By Fletcher Collins
A blanket of silent fog
The glasslike ring of an invisible mast
No need for a drum
A Poem
by Nathan Goodwyn (7th/ 8th grade English)
A drum ring:
a place where
hands cackle together
throwing aside the day's more mundane obligations
as if they were the morning's blanket
I told Janet that I would also try writing a Ring/Drum/Blanket Poem. Here’s my contribution:
The Early Sixties: A Summer Day
By Elaine Magliaro
On an old army blanket,
a rough, khaki-colored island
floating on a sea of sand
at Devereaux Beach,
we sit in a circle…
a ring of friends
playing kitty whist,
drinking cola,
talking about boys, and
listening to rock and roll music…
to the sexy sound of the sax
wafting over us
moaning about love,
to a drum beating
like a young heart in overdrive.
Invitation to Write a Poem
Janet and I would like to invite all of you reading this interview to try writing your own poem using the three words—ring, drum, and blanket. You can post your poem at your own blog, if you have one, and send me the link—or email me your poem and I will post it at Wild Rose Reader.
NOTE: I would like to thank Janet Wong for this informative interview in which she discussed her experiences as a student in the master class on poetry taught by Myra Cohn Livingston. I would also like to extend my appreciation to Janet, Stephanie Franz, Fletcher Collins, and Nathan Goodwyn for granting me permission to post their original poems at Wild Rose Reader.
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At Blue Rose Girls, I have a poem by Billy Collins entitled Workshop.
Cloudscome has the Poetry Friday Roundup at A Wrung Sponge.
Here’s an updated version of a Blue Rose Girls blog I posted for National Poetry Month last year. It includes links to websites with poetry resources for children, teachers, homeschoolers, and anyone else who happens to be a poetry lover like me.
ESPECIALLY FOR KIDS: SCHOLASTIC’S WRITING WITH WRITERS
POETRY RESOURCES FOR TEACHERS AND HOMESCHOOLERS
Teach Now! National Poetry Month (From
Scholastic): Here you will find a wealth of poetry ideas and resources under the following headings: Poems and Classroom Activities, Poetry Writing Workshops and Events, and Poetry Resources.
Poetry Resources: Tricia Stohr-Hunt provides links to more than two dozen websites with poetry resources at
Open Wide, Look Inside, her blog about using poetry and children’s literature across the curriculum.
From the Yale New Haven Teacher Institute: Three Entire Curriculum Units for Teachers
From the Children’s Book Council
CHILDREN’S POETRY BOOK LISTS
From the Children’s Book Council: Lists of Children’s Poetry Books from 1999 to the PresentONLINE ARTICLES ABOUT CHILDREN’S POETRY
From the Children’s Book Council
From The Horn Book Website: The following articles appeared in the May/June 2005 Horn Book Magazine Special Issue: Poets & Poetry.
I highly recommend ordering the May/June 2005 issue of The Horn Book Magazine. It not only includes articles about poetry—it also has poems written by Douglas Florian, Mary Ann Hoberman, Eloise Greenfield, Nikki Grimes, George Ella Lyon, Marilyn Nelson, David Greenberg, Kristine O’Connell George, Ron Koertge, Paul B. Janeczko, Marilyn Singer, Walter Dean Myers, Alice Schertle, Constance Levy, Betsy Hearne, Karla Kuskin, Jane Yolen, Janet Wong. It’s like a mini poetry anthology for children.
A SAMPLING OF CHILDREN'S POETS’ WEBSITES
POETRY WEBSITES
The Academy of American Poets-------------------------------------------------------------
I'm doing the
Poetry Friday Roundup this week. Leave a brief note and the URL of your poetry post
here.
He is surely a wonderful poet & mentor for many. I love the poem you shared. I use the other one for 'poem in your pocket' day, and am glad to be aware of this one, too. Have fun being a granny!
Huzzah for JPL! He was a great choice for the NCTE award!!!
hello) very good post! thank you