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Here's the next book in my series of 6 Capstone poetry books.

I wrote this collection after And Then There Were Eight: Poems About Space. I had requested this theme of school poems to be kind of near the end of the set of six because I had a feeling it might be kind of tough. And it was.

I am most inspired by outside images, moments captured in nature. Obviously, school pictures were not going to contain a lot of those! And on top of that, many of the photos had children in them. Children with faces, with expressions on those faces. I completely struggled with those images and used as few as possible! I know some people would feel just as hamstrung by a picture of a volcano, just as restricted. But I always feel like I can create whatever mood I want for a nature image. With kids, however, their mood is already evident, and then my poem becomes stilted, some kind of explanation for their joy, sadness, or whatever. I just don't do that very well!

Luckily, even though there were kids in many of the images, there were also bright, evocative objects I could focus on: a globe, lockers, a school bus, a skeleton, a beaker of fizzing chemicals! Those were things I could sink my linguistic teeth into.

So I set to work, writing 26 poems. I actually only had to turn in 16-17 poems for each collection, because they only had room for about 13-14 in each book. But I always turned in all the poems I wrote, so that my editor would have more to choose from to create the best, most balanced collection possible.

My feedback from Jenny said, in part: Many of the poems are exactly what we had in mind, but there are a few others that may need some tweaking. Take a look at my feedback (I think I wrote a bit more than usual—just trying to be helpful!)

Jenny is a wonderful, tactful editor.

One poem I wrote was a kind of best friend quiz that one girl might pass to another. Jenny said: This is so cute, fun, and realistic—maybe too realistic! It’s actually so much like a kid’s note that readers may not be satisfied with classifying this as a poem?! (Also, I guess librarians tend to dislike it when books invite the kids to write in them [“check one”]!) Is there another way to do this? We love the title and the content, so I hope it can be altered. (If not, I’ll understand.)

For another poem, I wrote in response to an image of a girl with a globe.

My initial poem was:

Finding My Place

Where will I go?

Who will I be?

The answer’s a seed

That’s growing in me

Will I explore?

See foreign lands?

My future’s right here

the world’s in my hands

Jenny rightly pointed out the cliches:

Some of these ideas seemed very familiar to me when talking about children’s potential—saying the world is in their hands, or comparing the situation to a seed that will grow. Still, one of my readers pointed out that, to a child, these ideas may be new. So this poem may be alright, as-is. What do you think?

I responded:

I agree, Jenny, these are two time-worn metaphors for the potential of kids.  I do like both of them in theory, but maybe it’s overkill to have them both in one poem?  I’ve tweaked the first verse a bit…Do you think that gets rid of some of the clichéd feeling?

Here's the revision, which did make it into the book:

Finding My Place

Where will I go?

Who will I be?

How will I love?

What will I see?

Will I go far?

Explore foreign lands?

I get to choose;

the world’s in my hands.

A couple of the poems that didn't make it into the book are on my website. You can read them by clicking on the small pictures of the globe and the basketball.

 

Here's the next book in my series of 6 Capstone poetry books.

After the fall poems, I headed into the weather batch of photos. This group was full of more stunning images. I was so glad I got to start with two subjects--autumn and weather--that really appealed to me. I love pictures of nature, and that's, of course, mostly what the weather pictures were.

I flipped through all the images and began making notes on them. Basically, I just wrote down whatever occurred to me, right there on the page. Sometimes it was a certain poetic form I thought the image lent itself to, but other times it was a thought about the topic or mood of a possible poem. On the lightning bolt image, I wrote "haiku?" For a boy playing on the beach wearing goggles and a towel cape, I imagined a poem about a superhero. For boys looking out a rainy window, I wrote, "magic of rain, how it softens everything." 

I did have a slight problem, though. There were a number of images with kids in them, and you could almost always see their faces. I found this really hard to work with! I was surprised by that. Actually, I don't know why I was surprised. I don't tend to like artwork with people in it, especially if I can see their faces. (That probably reveals some horrible psychological defect in me!) And with these images, I had a hard time imagining anything but the mood and thoughts of the kid in the image. So it felt very restricting to me. I wanted to focus on the weather phenomena, but I needed to work on the relationship between kids and weather, too.

And on top of that, there were kids of both genders and various ethnicities, and I needed to be balanced. Capstone did not want a book full of kids that all looked the same. But I had a few choices for most topics. Caucasian girl flying a kite. African-American girl with her hair blowing behind her. Asian boy with his hat blowing off. That kind of thing. So whatever image I chose for the wind poem, I needed to keep that in mind when I was choosing the rain poem, which also offered several choices of ethnicities.

So, it was a little tougher that Shrinking Days, Frosty Nights for me. More logistics to consider.

Also, I turned in a couple of poems that showed the fascination and even appeal of deadly weather. One was about a tornado, and it was kind of light-hearted. The other was about the deadly beauty of a hurricane seen from space.

From a Tornado (That Doesn’t Know Its Own Strength)  

My whirling funnel’s
a windy slide!

I’m a twirling jump rope—
Step inside!

I’m a monster
roller coaster ride!

I don’t know why
you’re terrified!

I knew this might not fly, because the book is for young kids, and tornadoes are scary things! But poetry for me is about seeing the other side of things, and I loved imagining the tornado's point of view. The editor apologetically passed on that this poem, though she liked it and so did the higher-ups, at first, didn't make the cut. They were worried about parents or some reviewers having trouble with it. And while I thought that was too bad, I could understand their point. I actually revised the poem somewhat and put it on my website. 

Here's the tornado poem I wrote on revision for the book. Please note: None of these images are from the book. I just wanted to add photos to give you a tiny idea of what they go with.



Wild Wind

Rushing wind
Roaring wind
     Whirling, twirling
          Warring wind

Ripping wind
Whipping wind
     Please release your
            Gripping wind

Nearing wind
Clearing wind
      Finally,
            Disappearing wind


I also placed the hurricane poem on my site.

So, those were a couple of issues I ran into with this collection. But I still loved writing these poems. Here are a couple more poems from this book.





Softer

Through a windowpane
Streaked with sliding rain
Outside world has changed:
Blurry, velvet stain

Every house and car—
Soft where edges are…
Waterpainting sky
makes each light a star 


 



Wind Is An...

Expert blower
Seed sower
Sailboat go-er
Hat thrower
And, best of all, a
Kite tow-er


And this one goes with a glorious image on rime ice on trees against a Parrish blue sky.



Winter Blooms

branches
blooming with ice
paint a shocking picture
of frosty white trees on winter's
blue sky

[cinquain]

Last night, the friendly UPS man brought 2 heavy boxes to my door, and they were the author copies of 4 more of my 6 Capstone poetry books. Woop! Woop! I now have copies of all of them except Flashy, Clashy, and Oh-So Splashy.

So, as promised (or threatened!), I'll be sharing a little of my process about each of the books. Today is the day for patriotic poems.

This book, Tiny Dreams, Sprouting Tall, was one of the toughest of the first set of 6 books. In fact, I think it was the toughest. Part of the reason for that was that my other collections all had a certain degree of silliness to them, even with serious pictures. In Then There Were Eight, for instance, the picture of the Mars Rover is a silly dog poem, because it looked like a metallic dog to me. Tiny Dreams was the last book of the 6 that I wrote. So my editor, Jenny Marks, and I had a good system down, and I followed it. I wrote my manuscript and turned it in the same way I had done all the other collections.

But then came the feedback. My revisions on the other books had been fairly specific and minimal. But on this one, there was a bigger change underway. They wanted the poems to be more specific to the United States. She explained that "For some photos/poems, the connection is obvious—like MLK Jr. or the flag. They are uniquely and obviously American. Other subjects, like surfers, light houses, beaches, cows, etc..., are definitely American, but those things are found in other countries, too. For those subjects, especially, the poems must make a more explicit connection." 

This hadn't been planned from the start. But upon reading the manuscript, the product planning committee felt this title could come under greater scrutiny than the other titles, and would be more likely to be criticized for what was included or left out. So they wanted every poem to really have a strong, overt connection to the United States somehow.

This new directive meant heavier revisions just before I was leaving for a family reunion--so I was a bit stressed out about it! Jenny was, as always, encouraging and supportive, so there was no feeling of having screwed up. It was just an unanticipated shift or tightening of focus. Still.

I ended up going to the reunion and finishing up the revisions afterward, and I was really happy with the completed book. But boy, was I happy to be finished!

Something else unique to this manuscript was trying to express pride in my country but being honest as well. An early draft of a poem about the Statue of Liberty was a cinquain:

Doorway of the U.S.A.

Statue
of Liberty
welcomes all refugees
streaming in seeking the promise:

Grand Canyon

rock
hard, red
rising, rippling, towering
water flowing, canyon growing
carving, wearing, eroding
sunken, brown
river

While the book isn't stuffed with uber-patriotism, I did want to show pride, too! Here's one I had fun with:

Flag Music

Luff-luff-luff-luff
like a clipper’s great sail

Rat-a-tat-tat
Like a stormy day’s hail

Creak up and down
Like squeaky old brakes

No matter the sound
that our flag outside makes

Still day or windy

Quiet or loud 

It makes me feel safer

And stronger and proud  


As with the other books in the collection, gorgeous, dramatic photos complement the poems, and impressive design work makes the poems themselves visually interesting. I'm thrilled my words got such great treatment!

 

I wanted to blog just a little bit about each of my Capstone poetry books as I get my author copies. Each had its own joys and challenges (some more so than others!). I shared my basic process in an earlier post.

Here are a few tidbits just about this title.

Then There Were Eight: Poems About Space was my fourth book in the series, so Jenny Marks and I had a pretty good routine down by then. The photos were just stunning, and I enjoyed doing the research on the various space phenomena. My dad worked at NASA for his entire career, and space exploration and space science are fascinating to me.

I remember one thing that I questioned was that I didn't have images of all the planets. I think there are poems about 4 or maybe 5 of them in the book. I asked Jenny about it, and she explained that, with only 15 or 16 poems in the book, they didn't want 8 of them to be of planets. I think it would be too many similar photos. Not enough variety. Also, these books are for young kids and they were wanting the book to inspire them to learn more, to be excited about space. The book didn't need to serve as an encyclopedic reference of them. Of course, she was right. But it still bothered my slightly compulsive, completist, list-loving self to showcase only some of the planets!

For the first time in the series, we used captions here to explain the images. This had been my request. I felt that without them, each poem would basically have to name and define for young kids whatever was shown in the image. That would get old and non-poetic very quickly!

Here are a few poems from the book. The images shown are not the ones from the book. They're just similar, to give you an idea of what the poem is about. I hope you like them!



Great Red Spot

It's not a huge red ocean
It's not a desert form
It's twice as big as Planet Earth
And it's a great red storm

It's been around three hundred years
It's still around today
According to the weatherman
This storm is here to stay

     (at least until some future day
     still centuries away!)

Caption: The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is actually a giant hurricane.




Then There Were Eight

Poor ball of ice, we know you exist; but you're
Little and solid and we must insist on
Undoing the past, so though you'll be missed, we've
Taken you 
Off of the "real planet" list

Caption: Pluto was removed from the list of planets in 2006.



Here, Girl!

She rolls
   and roams
      and wags her tail
She never needs to see the vet


I love her
   silver
      shiny coat
She's my planetary pet!

Caption: The mars Lander explores Mars.

 

  

I am so excited!

Last week I started getting author copies of my 6 poetry books for Capstone Press. I've only gotten one of the six so far, because the others are backordered. But soon, I hope!

Anyway, some people have asked about what it was like to write work-for-hire poetry, and I thought I'd share my overall process. Plus, I'll probably do one post about each book as I get my copies of it. I want to have some record of the whole experience.

A woman who used to be with Lerner (and whom had assigned my Isaac Newton bio) and was now with Capstone Press (which I've been writing for for years) emailed me to say that she saw I had a poetry book coming out from Clarion and was writing a Write Your Own Poetry book for Compass Point. She wanted to know if I'd like to get together for lunch to talk about a possible poetry project. Of course I would!

Over lunch, she shared her vision of poetry books illustrated by striking photos for young kids. But the photos would not, for the most part, be studio shots; they would be stock images. She asked about the best way to work, and I said that I thought it would be fun to actually write the poems to the images, rather than have them try to find images that illustrated my poems.

Her idea hadn't been approved yet. She was trying to convince whomever she had to convince that poetry was viable for them. That enough school libraries would buy it.

And within a couple of months, she had approval and the project was moving forward.

The actual hands-on editor I would be working with was Jenny Marks at Capstone Press. She was a delight to work with, and this is basically how our process went.

She would tell me when the team was meeting to discuss images for each title. I would brainstorm my own list of possible images that I thought would be inspiring for poems and fun to look at. I'd email her the list, and they'd include my ideas in the meeting.

I had 4 weeks for each of these first 6 books. So here's how the schedule shook out.

Week One - I receive the images. The batch always includes extras, because I won't be inspired by everything! Each collection needs 14-16 poems. I need to submit 18 or so so that they have a couple of extras to allow for variety, design decisions, etc. They send me images of 20 or so objects/scenes, and I have more than one choice for some of those. For weather, for instance, there were 2 or 3 different pictures of a kid with a kite. I could choose which one to write to.

I spend a few days sifting through photos. I jot notes on the ways certain images strike me. If an image has a capacity for opposites (like a rainbow and a cloudy sky in the same image), I might write "diamante" on the page, because it's an image that lends itself to that form. Or I might note a silly picture that could make for a good limerick. I also jot words or phrases that occur to me, that might or might not make it into the poem, as well as angles/topics for the possible poems. (I'll give examples of this when I talk about the individual books.)

Then I start writing. I write like mad. I do research along the way, as necessary--more for space poems than for color poems! For the 20 or so images that I choose, I write a poem rough draft for each one. Many of these are bad! I try to have the rough draft complete that first week. I often end up with closer to 25 poems.

Week Two - I go back through the poems and revise them. Sometimes I write entirely new poems at this point, but mostly I'm reworking, rewriting, reseeing these poems.

Week Three - I let the poems sit. I am sick of them now and need a break! Sometimes, my wonderful critique groups have time to do a quick read and give me feedback on which poems work, which don't, and how I might fix them.

Week Four - I write the end matter (glossary, poetry terms, read more, etc.). I polish and tweak and make decisions about which poems to submit. At the end of the week, I submit the poems to Jenny.  Another deadline met--hurray!

After a week or so, Jenny gets back to me with comments on the poems. She has had a group of people read them. I think, but am not sure, that her group consists of teachers and librarians. She passes along their comments/feelings about various poems and her own, too. She is incredibly encouraging and complimentary, and also points out what doesn't work about various poems.

I do revisions the following week and turn it back in.

With few exceptions, the process went really smoothly. (I'll share stories when I do the individual books.) I wrote these books last spring, and I was so thrilled to see the galleys this past fall. The books are gorgeous! The images look spectacular, and the design work is fabulous. I have no say in any of that, of course, and I was a little nervous. But I couldn't be happier with how they came out. I can't wait to hold every one of them in my hot little hands, in fact.

So that's the (too long--sorry) story of how I wrote these books. If you look at them on my site, you can read one brief excerpt from each title and see each cover. I hope you like them!

I was reading a poetry collection last week called Dying Old and Dying Young, by Susan Williams, and I got a kick out of her poem, "Personals."

Personals