How to use this Page

- Read the complete results of the latest ABACUS Survey from the ABA -- those stats from indie bookstores nationwide were a big factor in my business plan

- Read bookseller Tova Beiser's account of WI3

- Catch up with my Brooklyn blog reading! I just met Myka of MotherSister Brooklyn this weekend (look for a chronicle of meeting with the amazingly wonderful Fort Greene Association soon), and I think I have a lot of back posts to read. There's always Louise Crawfords indispensible Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn, which will also lead you to almost every other Brooklyn blog worth reading (and she also had a supernice congrats on my PowerUp win). And I've recently discovered Brooklynometry, and specifically the write-up of a new Brooklyn bookstore practically in my backyard that I didn't know existed: Babbo's Books on Prospect Park West. Exciting news!

- Post book reviews! Here's what I read in January but haven't yet found time to write about (and they're all GREAT, in different ways):
THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY by Michael Chabon
THE A.B.C. MURDERS and A MURDER IS ANNOUNCED by Agatha Christie
THE BOOK OF OTHER PEOPLE, edited by Zadie Smith
A GOLDEN AGE by Tahmima Anam
THE SIZE OF THE WORLD by Joan Silber
THE ESCAPISTS by Brian K. Vaughan
LAIKA by Nick Abadzis
and currently reading MUDBOUND by Hillary Jordan, which has now officially made me miss a subway stop -- the sign of an irresistibly great read.

- tell you lots of details about the TitleWave event I've beeen working on putting together that BookStream is hosting on February 27, with Richard Price, Steve Toltz, Hillary Jordan, and sales rep extraordinaire Ken Abramson. If you haven't heard the details in Publishers Weekly, Shelf Awareness, Bookselling This Week, the NAIBA and NEIBA newsletters, or the blogs, then email me or Carolyn Bennett and we'll tell you all about it. Remember, it's free, but you DO have to RSVP!

- find out if I can vote in the primary on Tuesday even though I'm registered as an independent... when my sweet mom, who's a Republican from California, and New York City bookish type like me can agree on a candidate, it's clearly a good time to vote.

What's hanging over your head, dear readers? There are always too many books to read -- but that means we'll never run out!

My poem today—a cinquain—is for Sylvia Vardell of Poetry for Children. Sylvia served with me on the Cybils poetry-nominating panel. She was also the co-chair of the 2006 Selection Committee for the NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children. Sylvia usually posts at her blog once a week—but she’s been posting every day during National Poetry Month. You may want to stop by for a visit.

The following poem is my first attempt at writing a cinquain. It is not one of my old moldering poems. I wrote this one several months ago for a collection entitled TASTING THE SUN that I began work on about twenty years ago.

CINQUAIN #1
by Elaine Magliaro

Winter,
Weary and worn,
Wearing a muddy white
Robe, frees her icy grip…makes way
For spring.


ABOUT THE CINQUAIN
The cinquain is a poetic form that was developed by a woman named Adelaide Crapsey (1878-1914). Most teachers know a bastardized form of the cinquain that is often taught in language arts classes. The true cinquain is a five-line poem of twenty-two syllables that does not rhyme. Visit Cinquain.org to read twenty-eight cinquains written by Adelaide Crapsey.

THE CINQUAIN
First line: two syllables
Second line: four syllables
Third line: six syllables
Fourth line: eight syllables
Fifth line: two syllables

Award-winning poet and anthologist Myra Cohn Livingston was a master of this poetic form. Alice Schertle and Kristine O’Connell George are two other children’s poets who have written some excellent cinquains.


Here are the titles of poetry books in which you can find some fine examples of “true” cinquains:

POETRY BOOKS WITH CINQUAINS

By Myra Cohn Livingston
Monkey Puzzle and Other Poems (Margaret K. McElderry, 1984)
Sky Songs (Holiday House, 1984)
I Never Told and Other Poems (Margaret K. McElderry, 1992)
Flights of Fancy and Other Poems (Margaret K. McElderry, 1994)

By Alice Schertle
How Now Brown Cow (Harcourt Brace, 1994)

By Kristine O’Connell George
Hummingbird Nest: A Journal of Poems (Harcourt, 2004)