This past weekend, I was reading my ICL e-newsletter, and I clicked through to a transcript of a recent ICL Writer's Retreat workshop. The topic was "Poetry from the Poet's Side," and the guest was JoAnn Early Macken. JoAnn writes poetry, rhyming fiction and nonfiction, prose fiction and nonfiction--you name it, she writes it! So I happily settled in to read the transcript, and I was surprised and honored to see references to my website there. Thanks, JoAnn, and Jan Fields, ICL Web Editor and all-around terrific writing teacher/resource! And for those of you who like to write poetry or rhyming texts, check out the workshop for thoughts on meter, form vs. content, marketing your work, and more.

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Image: Laura Purdie Salas

Wake up your poetry brains with 15 Words or Less (guidelines here)!

I was downtown (Minneapolis) earlier this week, and my parking meter was all fogged up. It looked kind of cool. To me, this image makes me think of:

*  A jukebox
*  Odd creatures in a foggy aquarium
*  An astronaut helmet
 
Here's my poem:

Jukebox After the Flood

Song titles?
Inky blur

Artists?
Damp mystery

Deposit quarters
Dance

to the
beat you're given

--Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved


What does the image make YOU think of? Start typing and free your thoughts! But only in 15 words or less!

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My youngest daughter turns 16 today. I can't believe it! I thought about writing her a poem, but I stink at writing poems for people I love. I wrote one for Randy a few years ago and put it in his birthday card, and he never even mentioned it. And anything I would write for Maddie would probably embarrass her.

But I love this Linda Pastan poem, "To a Daughter Leaving Home." Maddie's not leaving home, but her joy and energy remind me of the daughter in Pastan's poem, and this poem also reminds me that she has been in the process of leaving home from the moment we brought her home from the hospital, even as I rocked her during the night, her little body feeling as fragile as a baby bird. Now she's growing up into a wonderful young adult, and it's time to start college visits. Ack!

Anyway, here's the poem:

To a Daughter Leaving Home
by Linda Pastan

When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,

Read the rest of the poem here.

Happy Birthday, Maddie! I love you!

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I wanted to play in The Miss Rumphius Effect poetry stretch this week, which was about scale and magnitude. My dog, Captain Jack Sparrow, was sick last night, and it made me go into worrying mode. Here's a poem that swam around my head as I was falling asleep last night.

The Loudest Quiet

The screen door bangs shut behind me, and then
it is quiet

I call out "Pebbles!" but
it is quiet

I listen for nails on floor
It is quiet

The house is wrong
It is too quiet

--Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved

Poem Starter: Write a poem about silence. What's the quietest place you've ever been? Do you like it to be quiet, or do you like lots of noise? What kind of noise do you like to make if a room feels too quiet?

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Saturday night we had a surprise party for my almost 16-year-old daughter. Yesterday, I read the poetry collection A Dazzling Display of Dogs, by Betsy Franco, illustrated by Michael Wertz (Tricycle Press, 2011), guaranteed to make any dog lover smile (and probably most non dog-lovers, too). 



I love it when poems connect to my real life in an obvious, immediate way. Saturday night, Jack got into party treats of some kind. He was not feeling good.




Neither was I as I washed his bed and blankets the next morning.

But I did have to laugh as I read "Baloo Got Out."

Baloo Got Out

Baloo got out!
Baloo got out!
Baloo raced out the gate.

He went inside Ms. Johnston's house
and this is what he ate:

Some popcorn
and an apple,
a cupcake
and a steak.
A teddy bear,
a grapefruit peel,
a green organic shake.
Some coffee grounds,
the cat food,
a taco
and some peas,
an apricot,
a home-made tart,
and some moldy cheddar cheese.

I hear Ms. Johnston yelling.
I guess we're all too late.
Baloo got out! Baloo got out!
He'll have a bellyache!

--Betsy Franco, all rights reserved

Poem Starter: Write a list poem about what your pet might eat if he or she got out. If you don't have a pet, imagine if you had a really unusual one, like an orca or a rhino!

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I will have a poem included in Jill Corcoran's DARE TO DREAM anthology with Kane Miller. Kelly Fineman and I paired up to write two poems related to a certain group of tech innovators (not sure how much info I can give out), and that pair of poems will be one of 14 in the picture book collection. Woohoo!

And, for your writing pleasure, a Poem Starter:



What's wrong with this picture? Write a poem that includes the word "birth or "ray." Bonus points if you include both! Here's mine.

Ray of Night
 
The moon makes a liquid ray—
 
One pearl spear shooting
Into  a waveless bay

--Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved

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Keepers (Lothrop, Lee and Shepard, 1996) is an older poetry collection that I have and just love. Alice Schertle is a wizard!




As the weather turns cooler, spiders are invading the house. Bigger ones than usual, too. In honor of them, I'm sharing today's poem:

Spider

Spider
in your mansion airy
Patience!
It will not be very
long
before a fly unwary
blunders
in

With your
tender
touch
you'll tap him
Lovingly
in gauze you'll wrap him
And with any luck
you'll trap
his next of kin

--Alice Schertle, all rights reserved

 

Poem Starter: Write a love poem to a spider.

The wonderful Amy at The Poem Farm has the Poetry Friday Roundup!

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Image: Laura Purdie Salas

Wake up your poetry brains with 15 Words or Less (guidelines here)!

I was at the Anderson Center in Red Wing, Minnesota, last weekend for a terrific children's literature event. I climbed up the 76 steps in the picturesque old Water Tower to check out the view. And there it is.

What does this image make me think of?

*  Rapunzel. I felt like I should be tossing braids over those bars.
*  Sometimes a picket fence is just a costume for prison bars.
*  Watching fireworks from rooftops as a kid (roofs in Florida are flatter than roofs in Minnesota, because they don't have to worry about snow building up and caving in the roof)

Here's my poem:

Picket Fence

Chisel away
whitewashed wood

Carve down to
charred iron bones

Expose what
nobody knows

--Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved


What does the image make YOU think of? Start typing and free your thoughts! But only in 15 words or less!

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I've been working on a fiction shared reader of fewer than 150 words. It has to be a journey, use a certain phonetic sound throughout, rhyme, and include the basic shapes. Whew! What a puzzle to work all that in. I turned in a draft yesterday (instead of an outline, because I couldn't figure out how to outline something like this and be sure I could actually write it without just doing the writing!) to the editor. Fingers crossed their client likes it! If not, I'll be circling back and starting over at the beginning of the process.


Poem Starter: Write a poem that includes circles in some way. Here's a rhyming list poem I did.

Things That Come Full Circle

Arms
Bracelets
Crowns on kings

Earth
Cats
Underdog swings

--Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved

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"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them." 

~Mark Twain, attributed


We place a lot of emphasis on literacy, and rightly so! But this quotation made me think of how many people read only for functional reasons (work reports, sports scores, etc.) but who don't read for pleasure as well as for information. I know everyone has different passions, and an athlete might say one can't have a full life without sports, and a religious person might say one can't have a full life without church. So I guess it's presumptuous of me to say you can't have a full life without reading for pleasure, just because it's true for me. But I'm gonna say it anyway! So there.


Poem Starter: Write a poem made up of book titles. Here's one I just found in the books in the pile closest to me.

If There Would Be No Light

dark emperor
tap dancing on the roof,
switching on the moon

flicker flash


--Laura Purdie Salas

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On Saturday, poet/author Lindsay Lee Johnson and I helped man the Children's Literature Network Wheel of Poetry tent at a literature event that took place at the Anderson Center in Red Wing, Minnesota. Along with CLN founders Vicki and Steve Palmquist, we spent the afternoon guiding kids and adults through the process of choosing a poem, getting costumed up (optional), reading the poem aloud, and spinning the Wheel of Poetry to determine their prize.

It was very cool to see so many people (200+) reading poems out loud. Especially when many of them were poems written by me! My pix aren't uploading to FB properly, but if you click on the CLN link above, you'll see the event on the homepage with a photo scroller. The first few pix show you the tent setup and Lindsay and me, and then it gets into all the readers. I have a couple of fun videos I'll share tomorrow. If I can upload them.

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Sad news: ALA has decided not to include the fabulous Poetry Blast in 2012 at their annual convention. Marilyn Singer and Barbara Genco have always worked so hard to put on this amazing event (which I featured video clips from in several recent Poetry Friday posts).

On a happier note, I just read and loved Lemonade: and Other Poems Squeezed from a Single Word (Roaring Book Press) by Bob Raczka. Fabulous! What a great premise: take a one-word title and create a poem using ONLY the letters from that one word.



Here's one of my favorites:

constellation

a
silent
lion
tells
an
ancient
tale

--Bob Raczka, all rights reserved


Poem Starter: Give a squeezed poem a try. I'm going to! I suspect it might take several tries to find one word you can get enough other words out of. But that's going to be the fun part. I'm going to try destination, caveman, and glacier.

The Poetry Friday roundup today is at Secrets and Sharing Soda. Enjoy!

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My Minnesota Brass drum corps adventure came to an exciting close this weekend--we won the world championships in Rochester, NY! It's the first time in the 30+ years that Minnesota Brass has been competing in DCA that we've won the championship. How lucky am I to have picked this year to participate!?

I'm sure I'll have a few more observations/thoughts about this challenging and rewarding adventure to share once a few more days pass. Right now, my aching body is relieved that the season is over, and I'm thrilled to turn my attention to writing again--finally! It's fall (I don't care what the calendar says; it's fall when school starts), and I am excited to be back to my routine and to have a new work-for-hire book assignment to start. Meanwhile, here are a few pix from this past weekend.


Randy and I after prelims on Saturday


The whole color guard (I'm in the hat in the back row)--what a talented bunch of people!



We take the field in our boat formation (more visible from higher up). I'm the front oar on the right. The guy in the cape is our Viking hero, who dies in battle but lives again in Valhalla, the heaven for Viking warriors.


Guard and staff after the win. We stayed and celebrated on the field in the rain, dancing around and clutching our medals and hugging each other. So many of them (the whole corps, not just color guard) have been in MBI for quite a while, and have been working toward this win year after year.


Whew! We made it. There were times I wasn't sure we would...

Thank you, all of you online friends who have been offering me support and encouragement since I started this adventure in January. Your words always meant a lot to me -- I was so far out of my comfort zone, but I knew I had people cheering me on. You rock.

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I went to the Loft Literary Center last night for a gathering of mentors and mentorship winners. I'm going to be giving a picture book master class this October, and 5 of the 7 participants I chose (based on specific manuscripts) were there. It was great to meet them and get a little preview of the chemistry of the group. I think it's going to be a terrific class, and we'll all learn from each other. It's a wide variety of types of manuscripts, so it'll be an interesting challenge to find the common threads to all of them that we can discuss and work on. Exciting stuff!

The only downside was the awkward cocktail party small talk when I first arrived. I hate that stuff. At some point, you'd think I'd get better at it. But not so far.

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A couple of weeks ago, I visited a friend's almost-kindergarten classroom to do storytime. I read my book, Does an Elephant Fit in Your Hand?



And pulled out different props so they could see how tiny a dwarf gecko is, how huge an albatross' wingspan is, etc.

Then I read a few poems to them, too.

The next I time I saw my friend, she delivered a little stack of letters from the kids, and they were just too cute.

While one of the notes does mention that the drawing is of the ocean and all its animals (cute!), most of the decipherable notes were about love and friendship--a good reminder that even though you visit classrooms to share books, information, excitement about reading, etc., the way to do that is to connect with the kids themselves.









:>)

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One of the biggest things I've realized over the course of my drum corps adventures is that I have a very inaccurate sense of what my body's doing when it comes to learning flag work. In slow motion, I have excellent body control, so I'm fine in yoga, workout classes, weights, etc. But the speed and the unfamiliarity of spinning flags and running through drill make flagwork so tough for me! Staff will show us a move, and I'll do it. But it turns out I only think I'm doing it. Really, I'm doing my feet differently, or my hands, or my flag, or something. They'll correct me, and I could swear I was already doing what they're saying I need to do. It's so messed up! Often, it's not until I can see it on video later that I really see what they mean and can try to correct it.


Photo: Jessica Hammond - Saturday was Ke$ha day for the color guard. Animal prints, fishnets, and glitter
galore. I stuck with just glitter eyeshadow:>)

Sometimes in the course of working with beginning writers, I'll ask them to try changing some aspect of their manuscript. I'll be very concrete and specific and they'll revise it.

And the aspect I've asked that they focus on is not any better the next time around! I'm always patient, because all writers deserve that. But I've been puzzled. How can they not see that they still have way too much description--they just changed what they are describing? (Or whatever aspect of their manuscript we're talking about.) Now I get it. Their manuscript awareness is as bad as my flag-spinning awareness.

That doesn't mean it's hopeless, though! Focusing on small, very specific changes can produce progress. Going through the same segment (or manuscript) many, many times will be helpful. Writers with a really accurate manuscript perception might be able to revise much more quickly or incorporate new techniques easily into their next manuscript. Others may have to take a more painstaking approach and work a lot harder at it.

But if you end up with a great manuscript (or a decent drum corps show performance), the reader (audience) won't know it was 10 times harder for you than for anyone else. Which I guess, in the end, is an encouraging thing.

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In case you, like me, missed Sylvia Vardell's fantastic series of clips from the ALA Poetry Blast (organized and hosted by Marilyn Singer and Barbara Genco), I'm posting links here. She shared the text of Marilyn's lovely introduction for each poet along with a brief video clip to give you a taste of the work presented. Brilliant!

I last posted links to Sylvia's posts about Nikki Grimes, Mike Artell, and Tracie Vaughn Zimmer.


Here are the final three!

Marilyn Singer - Marilyn is a fabulous poet and the co-organizer/host of the ALA Poetry Blast. Here, she reads several very brief animal pair poems (I'm assuming they're couplets and can't wait to track this book down!) from Twosomes!

Janet Wong - Janet, another fabulous poet, is also co-editor of the premiere children's poetry e-book, Poetry Tag Time. Here she reads her poem from that anthology.

Alan Katz - Sublimely silly poet Alan reads a wonderful poem called, "The English Teacher."

All these clips are very short. Hope you'll find a few minutes to visit the posts and learn more about poets you might not know or just experience the joy of watching and listening to skilled word-wranglers share their work!

The Poetry Friday Round-Up is with Irene at Live. Love. Explore!

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Image: Cam Fortin



Wake up your poetry brains with 15 Words or Less (guidelines here)!

Here's what this image makes me think of: 



*   A kelp forest
*   A mermaid's hair
 *  A forest after a forest fire

So, what does this picture make you think of? Write a quick 15 Words or Less poem and share it in a comment below. I'm looking forward to seeing your poems!

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It's almost that time! In two weeks, drum corps will be over. I'll miss it, but it will also be a relief to my schedule. And school will start. My schedule will calm down, the days will cool off, and hopefully my brain will become super productive and creative. Fall is my favorite season, and this year, I especially can't wait! I love thinking about my new fall routines each year, and it's time to start brainstorming... Read the rest of this post

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Crazy, by Han Nolan, is intense and sad and funny and beautiful. 15yo Jason is trying to live a normal life with his schizophrenic dad who is obsessed with Greek mythology. He doesn't want anyone to know what's happening at home, but he also can't cope much longer. I have a couple of loved ones with brain disorders, and how they would cope with being a parent is always a big question. A stolen violin, a school counseling group, and an anonymous advice column are just a few of the elements expertly woven throughout this novel. One of the best I've read this year.






I also really liked Small as an Elephant, by Jennifer Richard Jacobson. (Small-scale spoiler alert) This mg novel features an 11yo main character whose mom disappears on a camping trip. He, too, is trying to keep his parent's illness (in this case, bipolar) a secret, because he doesn't want to be separated from his mom. So he's trying to find his way home without bringing attention to the fact that his mom has abandoned him.


Both of these novels acknowledge that one of the hardest truths about mental illness is that there's no easy cure. And a child trying to keep a household together and take care of a mentally ill parent is in way over his head. But taking a kid away from a mentally ill parent is traumatic, too. No easy answers, but both of these books are tribute to the power of friendship and of caring adults to help find the best situation possible.


Even though I especially enjoyed these books because of their topic, they are not "problem novels" to be given to kids in similar situations. They're just really good books!

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If you're a regular reader, you know about my summer drum corps adventure and how far out of my comfort zone I am. I thought it would get easier as the summer went along, but, well, that's just not happening. Instead, I just keep realizing how much further I need to go.

A couple of weeks ago in Pennsylvania, I had my best show of the season so far. But then I saw this picture (and watched video) and realized how much more performance I need. I should look like a pillaging warrior. Instead, I just look irritated, like the person in front of me in the grocery store express lane has 23 items in her cart.



Last weekend in Wisconsin, I tried to up my performance efforts. I had my absolute worst show so far. Thank god I don't have a picture of the wrestling match I had on the field when my oar got tangled up in the pants leg of my uniform. Not pretty. And I messed up simple work that I'd been doing fine until then. Grrrr.

Just when I get a handle on one aspect of the performance, I lose track of another element. And my fingers, wrists, and forearms are alternating between sore, feeling like they're on fire, and numbness.

Finals are Labor Day weekend, so I'm just trying to hold on through that and get better each week.

What does this have to do with writing? Not much, except that this is causing me to have my least productive writing summer in many years. Yikes. And that it's that same overwhelming feeling you get when you're trying to revise a manuscript, and each time you fix one thing, you totally screw up another. Trying to pull it all together into a cohesive story feels impossible.

But I'm having fun, too, in some weird, masochistic way. Even though I'm not very good at it, learning to spin has been really satisfying. I might be the worst guard member, but I'm miles from that first January night of practice. So at least it's progress.

Here are a few other recent pics.


In our Valhalla angel-warrior uniforms


Ran and me after a show


Escorting the funeral pyre to pick up our fallen hero (I'm the oar on the left)


My nemesis: the oar


Advancing on the field with the giant Viking ship sail. That thing is heavy!

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