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Up all night, again.
I'm on a deadly schedule where night and day have no structure or meaning.
It's not insomnia.
I'm a member of the Midnight Gang in a world of Tequila Sunrises. ;}
The cycle must be broken but the carousel refuses to slow down.
I am spinning
and not a golden ring in sight.
I am out of control in all that I am.
Maniacal laughter across the way
I know that sound
The Haunted House is open
and waiting
but I'm on that ride already.

This poem does not need music. The words and rhythm are music. But what a song it would make.

ACQUAINTED WITH THE NIGHT by Robert Frost


I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain --and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

I went to Ripton, VT yesterday for research in the latest revision of my MG novel.  It's currently titled MAPLE GIRL but needs a new title (but that's a whole 'nother story). 

What's in Ripton?   There's a country store that still sells penny candy.  There's Robert Frost's summer cottage, which was in the news recently when kids broke in and trashed it during a party. And not too far away, there's a short trail through a forest and blueberry fields - the Robert Frost Interpretive Trail. 

I'm trying out a scene where my MC comes here with her mother and grandmother collecting leaves for a school project.  There are whispers of Frost throughout the novel, but right now, my MC needs a place where she can understand her mom and grandmother a little better.  She also has to collect a whole bunch of leaves -- fast -- so she doesn't miss her deadline.

I've hiked this trail before, but not recently enough to remember the kinds of tiny details that make writing real -- the electric blue damselfly, the feel of sap stuck on your skin after you touch a pine bough.  And I wanted to read the poems again.

The Frost trail has short poems and quotes from his work posted all along the walkway, in places that relate to the poems.  This was one of my favorites, near a lush marsh buzzing with dragonflies.



And this one...posted at the entrance to a bridge with dark woods on the other side.





Here's the reason my MC wanted to come here...



The trees are already identified for her, so she doesn't have to use her leaf key.

While I was walking the path, I kept a lookout for someplace where my MC might observe her mom and grandmother from a bit of a distance. Then it appeared in front me - the perfect climbing tree!  Of course, I had to climb it in the name of research.



There was an amazing, amazing view from the top, and best of all, I discovered that my MC could duck behind a branch to see and hear people passing on the trail below.

When I climbed down and rounded a bend in the trail, I found another well-placed quote from a Frost poem.

Heaven gives its glimpses onto to those not in position to look too close.
                                                          ~from "A Passing Glance"



I got home last night more than ready to tackle my new chapter. I'm back to manuscript, pen, keyboard & screen revisions today but with visions of mountains and butterflies to carry me through.
 
The research for this novel has fed me in more ways than one.  Last year when I was drafting it, I had to make and eat three batches of Italian wedding cookies before I got one right.  (Definitely more pleasant than getting stung by a bee, which is research lgburns-style!) 

What about you?  What wonderful or painful things have you done while researching a book?

Did you guys read about the vandals of the Robert Frost house? A group of teens broke into and partied in the Robert Frost house in Vermont. They ended up causing $10,600 worth of damage. 



As part of their sentence, they have to take a class with Frost biographer Jay Parini, who hopes to show them "the redemptive power of poetry." The article is here.

Wow. Talk about a tough audience.

I applaud the idea of trying to introduce Frost and his poetry to these teens. The professor is trying to show them how poetry can apply to their own lives. And I'd love to hope that one or two of them will get it--really get it, at a gut level that will influence their lives. But I guess I think most of them will show up, put in their time, and let the words go in one ear and out the other--and God forbid they should absorb and think about any of them.

What do you think? Is this a good idea or a waste of time?

This winter, I posted with sadness about a group of kids who broke into and trashed Robert Frost's former home in Ripton, Vermont. 

But I read this story about their sentence with a smile today.

MSNBC called it Poetic Justice.

(Thanks, writerross, for the heads-up on this headline!)

Don't mess with Robert Frost
or his cabin
unless you're prepared to suffer the consequences:
Poetry Classes for the Offending (and offensive) Vandals
(Makes me want to go out and do something bad) ;}
This is rehabilitation at its finest moment.


I can't compete with the titles of the news stories below:
(For Better or Verse? Groan)

See
"Poetic Justice"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24935777/

My favorite headline: "Rhyme and Punishment"
http://www.startribune.com/nation/19461664.html?location_refer=Nation

Do you think we can petition for similar classes for picture book poets? You know. Break a meter. Toss in some off-rhymes. Steal, er, sample text from other writers. I want a poetry class. What do I have to do to get arrested around here?

It was the birthday this week of Edward Thomas, a quitessentially English poet. This is one of the many poems he wrote in the short period of poetic creativity that came upon him before he was killed in the First World War:


Lights Out

I have come to the borders of sleep,
The unfathomable deep
Forest where all must lose
Their way, however straight,
Or winding, soon or late;
They cannot choose.

Many a road and track
That, since the dawn's first crack,
Up to the forest brink,
Deceived the travellers,
Suddenly now blurs,
And in they sink.

Here love ends,
Despair, ambition ends,
All pleasure and all trouble,
Although most sweet or bitter,
Here ends in sleep that is sweeter
Than tasks most noble.

There is not any book
Or face of dearest look
That I would not turn from now
To go into the unknown
I must enter and leave alone
I know not how.

The tall forest towers;
Its cloudy foliage lowers
Ahead, shelf above shelf;
Its silence I hear and obey
That I may lose my way
And myself.


Thomas' was the first poetry by a FWW poet that I ever read, many many years ago: I was 16 and a friend recited from memory his poem But These Things Also Are Spring's, which impressed itself upon my brain that I sought out a copy of Thomas' poems later that same morning.

Today is the anniversary of the first publication in 1923 of Robert Frost's well-loved poem:

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Note that both men, who were very great friends for a few years before Thomas' death, wrote of woods and sleep.

The Poetry Friday round-up this week is over at The Simple and The Ordinary.

I'm rereading great bouquets of Robert Frost poems now for a project I'm working on, and I'm rediscovering how much I love his work.  So many little gems embedded in simple walks in the woods.  Can any Frost fans out there identify which poems these are from?  (I'll post answers next week.)

1. Earth's the right place for love.
2. Good fences make good neighbors.
3. We have ideas yet that we haven't tried.
4. So all who hide too well away must speak and tell us where they are.
5. 'Men work together,' I told him from the heart, 'Whether they work together or apart.'
6. 'Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.'
7. It's a nice way to live, just taking what Nature is willing to give.
   

Having the tales of a Time Lord in my head means that I keep finding bits of poems about Time rising up out of the stores of poems that are also in my head, so this week I bring you three poems about Time by three different poets in different ages.

The Fleeting Years

Alas, Postumus, the fleeting years
fall away, nor will piety cause
delay to wrinkles or advancing
old age or indomitable death.
Even if you sacrificed a bull
each day you couldn't placate tearless
Pluto, who with his waves imprisons
thrice-strong Geryon and Tityos -
and those waves, my friend, must needs be crossed
by all who feed on the earth's bounty
whether we're kings or wretched peasants.
In vain we'll try to avoid cruel Mars
and the inconstant disturbances
that course the roaring Adriatic -
in vain through the autumn will we fear
the south wind, harmful to our bodies.
We must see the wandering, sluggish
Cocytos - the infamous offspring
of Danaus - the son of Aeolus:
Sisyphus damned to his ceaseless toil;
we must leave behind the earth and home
and pleasing spouse, and none of those trees
you tend will follow you, its short-lived
master, except the hated cypress.
A worthier heir will drink the wine
you guard now with a hundred keys: he'll
drench the pavement with your best - more fine
than that on which the highest priests do feast.

- Horace


On Time

Fly envious Time, till thou run out thy race,
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours,
Whose speed is but the heavy Plummets pace;
And glut thy self with what thy womb devours,
Which is no more then what is false and vain,
And meerly mortal dross;
So little is our loss,
So little is thy gain.
For when as each thing bad thou hast entomb'd,
And last of all, thy greedy self consum'd,
Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss
With an individual kiss;
And Joy shall overtake us as a flood,
When every thing that is sincerely good
And perfectly divine,
With Truth, and Peace, and Love shall ever shine
About the supreme Throne
Of him, t' whose happy-making sight alone,
When once our heav'nly-guided soul shall clime,
Then all this Earthy grosnes quit,
Attir'd with Stars, we shall for ever sit,
Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee O Time.

- John Milton


I Could Give All To Time

To Time it never seems that he is brave
To set himself against the peaks of snow
To lay them level with the running wave,
Nor is he overjoyed when they lie low,
But only grave, contemplative and grave.
What now is inland shall be ocean isle,
Then eddies playing round a sunken reef
Like the curl at the corner of a smile;
And I could share Time's lack of joy or grief
At such a planetary change of style.
I could give all to Time except - except
What I myself have held. But why declare
The things forbidden that while the Customs slept
I have crossed to Safety with? For I am There,
And what I would not part with I have kept.

- Robert Frost

* * * * * *

(I finished the third of my Doctor Who novellas on Wednesday night and I'm about to spend most of the long Easter weekend in starting to write the fourth one, the idea for which unfolded in my head nearly two weeks ago. The idea's been buzzing around my head ever since, whilst I finished the third one, so it's going to be a relief to get it out of my head and onto paper !)

(apologies to Robert Frost)

Nothing Gold Can Stay

1. Nature's first green is what color?
A. Blue
B. Violet
C. Gold
D. Green

2. This hue is her hardest to what?
A. Fold
B. Hold
C. Cold
D. Mold

3. Her early leaf's a what?
A. Shower
B. Bower
C. Glower
D. Flower

4. For how long?
A. An hour
B. A minute
C. A day
D. A season

5. Because of the evidence in the poem that "leaf subsides to leaf./ So Eden sank to grief,/ so dawn goes down to day./ Nothing gold can stay." would you say that this poem is
A. Optimistic
B. Pessimistic



(Answers: c, b, d, a...and the jury's out on number 5. I'll poll the audience on that one. Let me know in the comments whether you see this poem as an optimistic one or a pessimistic one. There's a story behind this question that I'll share later this weekend.)