How to use this Page

This month I'll be highlighting some of the top-notch poetry published in the last year--so top-notch that it was deemed by the Cybils Award Round 1 panel to be a finalist for the award.  As a Round 2 judge, I'm going to share some excerpts from each book this month.  Since it finally got cold here in Maryland this week, I'll begin with...

Winter Bees and Other Poems of the Cold
by Joyce Sidman

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014

This book, illustrated by Rick Allen using a complicated combination of linoleum block prints hand-colored, "digitally scanned, composed, and layered," contains just 12 poems.  Some are free verse and some are rhymed and metered.  This collection has received 5 starred reviews and almost a dozen awards, including in 2014, since it was published in November of 2014.

excerpt from "Winter Bees"

We scaled a million blooms
to reap the summer's glow.
Now, in the merciless cold,
we share each morsel of heat,
each honeyed crumb.
We cram to a sizzling ball
to warm our queen, our heart, our home.

excerpt from "Chickadee's Song"

The sun wheels high, the cardinal trills.
We sip the drips of icicles.
The buds are thick, the snow is slack.
Spring has broken winter's back.

How's that for a little taste of the cold?

Please join Tabatha for some more of the muscle and grace of great poetry--she's got the Roundup at The Opposite of Indifference today.

Add a Comment

• Top of the morning to you, froggies!  I had one heckuva weekend, I tell you.  Actually it was just one heckuva Saturday.  First there was the opening of the new Bank Street Bookstore location here in NYC.  I was one of the local authors in attendance and, as you can see from this photograph taken that morning, I was in good company.

At one point I found myself at a signing table between Deborah Heiligman and Rebecca Stead with Susan Kuklin, Chris Raschka, and Peter Lerangis on either side.  I picked up the name tag that Jerry Pinkney had left behind so that I could at least claim a Caldecott by association.  Of course that meant I left my own nametag behind and a certain someone did find it later in the day . . .

Then that afternoon, after wolfing down an Upper West Side avocado sandwich that had aspirations for greatness (aspirations that remained unfulfilled) I was at NYPL’s central library for the panel Blurred Lines?: Accuracy and Illustration in Nonfiction.  This title of silliness I acknowledge mine.  In any case, the line-up was Sophie Blackall, Brian Floca, Mara Rockliff, and her Candlewick editor Nicole Raymond.  It was brilliant. There will perhaps be a write-up at some point that I’ll link to.  I just wanted to tip my hat to the folks involved.  We were slated to go from 2-3 and we pretty much went from 2-4.  We could have gone longer.

• I’ve often said that small publishers fill the gaps left by their larger brethren.  Folktales and fairy tales are often best served in this way.  Graphic novels are beginning to go the same route.  One type of book that the smaller publishers should really look into, though, is poetry.  We really don’t see a lot of it published in a given year, and I’d love to see more.  The new Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award may help the cause.  It was recently announced and the award is looking for folks who are SCBWI members and that published their books between 2013-2015.  It makes us just one step closer to an ALA poetry award.  One step.

• How did I miss this when it was published?  It’s a New Yorker piece entitled Eloise: An Update.  It had me at “The absolute first thing I do in the morning is make coffee in the bathroom and check to see what’s on pay-per-view / Then I have to go to the health club to see if they’ve gotten any new kettlebells and then stop at the business center to Google a few foreign swear words.”  Thanks to Sharyn November for the link.

• Y’all know I worship at the alter of Frances Hardinge and believe her to be one of the greatest living British novelists working today, right?  Well, this just in from the interwebs!  Specifically, from agent Barry Goldblatt’s Facebook page:

BSFA and Carnegie Medal longlister Frances Hardinge’s debut adult novel THE KNOWLEDGE, about a London cab driver with a special license to travel between multiple alternative Londons, who, after rescuing a long-missing fellow driver, finds herself caught up in a widening conspiracy to control the pathways between worlds, to Navah Wolfe at Saga Press, in a two-book deal, for publication in Summer 2017, by Barry Goldblatt at Barry Goldblatt Literary on behalf of Nancy Miles at Miles Stott Literary Agency (NA).

Mind you, this means I’ll have to read an adult novel now.  I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

• Speaking of England, I’m tired of them being cooler than us.  For example, did you know that they have a Federation of Children’s Book Groups?  A federation!  Why don’t we have a federation?  I’ll tell you why.  Because we haven’t earned it yet.  Grrr.

• Ooo!  A new Spanish language children’s bookstore has just opened up in Los Angeles.  And here we can’t get a single bookstore other than Barnes & Noble to open up in the Bronx in English, let alone another language.  This is so cool.  Methinks publishers looking to expand into the Latino market would do well to court the people working at this shop, if only to find new translatable material.

• Fancy fancy dancy dancy Leo Lionni shirts are now being sold by UNIQLO.  Some samples:

Smarties.

• Roxanne Feldman is one of those women that has been in the business of getting books into the hands of young ‘uns for years and years and years.  Online you may recognize her by her username “fairrosa”.  Well, now she has a blog of her very own and it’s worth visiting.  Called the Fairrosa Cyber Library, it’s the place to go.  However – Be Warned.  This is not a site to merely dabble in.  If you go you must be prepared to sit down and read and read.  Her recent posts about diversity make for exciting blogging.

• Phil Nel has compiled the greatest Dr. Seuss blog post of all time.  I said it.  I stand by it.  Doubt me if you dare.

• Me Stuff: Because apparently the whole opening of this blog post didn’t count.  Now Dan Blank is one of those guys you just hope and pray you’ll meet at some point in your life.  He’s the kind of fellow who is infinitely intensely knowledgeable about how one’s career can progress over time and he’s followed my own practically since the birth of my blogging career.  If I appeared in Forbes, it was because of Dan.  Recently he interviewed me at length and the post is up.  It’s called Betsy Bird: From “Invisible” Introvert to Author, Critic, Blogger and Librarian.  I feel like that kid in Boyhood with Dan.  Really I do.

• It was Adam Gidwitz who alerted me to a theatrical production going on in town right now that holds my interest in its hot little hand.  He says the company is fantastic and that the show is entirely worth it.  Though, with a name like BAMBIF*CKER/KAFFEHAUS: A caffeinated ride through sex, death, deer, and Zionism how could it not be?

• Fact: The Cotsen Children’s Library of Princeton has been interviewing great authors and illustrators since at least 2010.

• Fact: Access to these interviews has always been available, but not through iTunes.

• Fact: Now it is.  And it’s amazing.  Atinuke.  Gary Schmidt.  Rebecca Stead.  Philip Pullman.  It’s free, it’s out there, so fill up your iPod like I am right now and go crazy!  Thanks to Dana Sheridan for the info!

The other day I linked to a piece on the term “racebent” and how it applies to characters like Hermione in Harry Potter.  It’s not really a new idea, though, is it?  Folks have always reinterpreted fictional characters in light of their own cultures.  This year the publisher Tara Books is releasing The Patua Pinocchio.  Now I’ve been a bit Pinocchio obsessed ever since my 3-year-old daughter took Kate McMullen’s version to heart (it was the first chapter book she had the patience to sit through).  With that in mind I am VERY interested in this version of the little wooden boy.  Very.

• Ever been a children’s nonfiction conference?  Want to?  The 21st Century Children’s Nonfiction Conference has moved to NYC this year and it’s going to be a lot of fun.  I’ll be speaking alongside my colleague / partner-in-crime Amie Wright, but there are a host of other speakers and it’s a delightful roster.  If ever this has ever been your passion, now’s thWe time to go.

• Diverse books for kids don’t sell?  To this, Elizabeth Bluemle, a bookseller, points out something so glaringly obvious that I’m surprised nobody else has mentioned it before.  I’m sure that someone has, but rarely so succinctly. Good title too:  An Overlooked Fallacy About Sales of Diverse Books.

• And speaking of diverse books, here’s something that was published last year but that I, in the throes of the whole giving birth thing, missed.  The We Need Diverse Books website regularly posted some of the loveliest book recommendations I’ve ever seen.  We’ve all seen lists that say things like “Like This? Then Try This!” but rarely do they ever explain why the person would like that book (I’m guilty of this in my own reviews’ readalikes and shall endeavor to be better in the future).  On their site, the WNDB folks not only offered diverse readalikes to popular titles, but gave excellent reasons as to why a fan of David Wiesner’s Tuesday might like Bill Thomson’s Chalk.  The pairing of Lucy Christopher’s Stolen with Sharon Draper’s Panic is particularly inspired.  The covers even match.

Daily Image:

I am ever alert to any appropriation of my workplace that might be taking place. Recently I learned that in the Rockettes’ upcoming holiday show there will be this set in one of the numbers.  Apparently Patience and Fortitude (the library lions) will be voiced by (the recorded voices of) Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.  I kid you not.

Years ago when I worked in the old Donnell Library I looked out the window of the Central Children’s Room to see three camels standing there chewing their cud or whatever it is that camels chew.  They were with their trainer, taking a walk before their big number in the Rockettes’ show.  The crazy thing was watching the people on the street.  The New Yorkers were walking past like the it was the most natural thing in the world.  This is because New Yorkers are crazy.  When camels strike you as everyday, something has gone wrong with your life.

Display Comments Add a Comment

Just before Halloween we got our second cat, partly to keep Cat #1 "entertained" and partly to acknowledge the achievement of our sixth-grader, who soldiered through two nights away from home at Outdoor Ed with her new middle-school peers.

He was named Oak by the shelter and the kids decided to keep that name, although at the time I thought Acorn would be more appropriate. No more. At almost 5 months, he resembles our son, long-limbed and lean; when Oak stands on his hind legs to scratch at a fresh section of the parlor sofa his reach comes easily to my hip now. (But I'm short.)

How fortunate that right here in my new copy of Paul B. Janeczko's A Foot in the Mouth I have "A Tomcat Is" by J. Patrick Lewis, newly named winner of the NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children. Our Oak now has a model to strive towards, as do we poets--between midnight mouthfuls of marshmallow paws!

A Tomcat Is (excerpts)
J. Patrick Lewis

Night watchman of corners
Caretaker of naps
Leg-wrestler of pillows
Depresser of laps.

...

The bird-watching bandit
On needle-point claws
The chief of detectives
On marshmallow paws

A crafty yarn-spinner
A stringer high-strung
A buttermilk mustache
A sandpaper tongue

....

See the complete poem here and then buy the book! Scholastic resources here and here, if you like that sort of thing.

Today's tasty Poetry Friday round-up is at Jama Rattigan's Alphabet Soup, where I find that she's highlighting J. Pat too. Coincidence, or fate?!?

*********************************************************
Follow-up from last week's gingerbread man post (and thanks to all for the comments on Mrs. Oven's poem):

Here's the recipe I'll be using to make dough today;
baking and photos tomorrow!

Gingerbread Cookies
(6 dozen gingerbread men or 10 dozen stars )

Cream 1 ½ cups shortening with 1 ½ cups sugar.
Beat in 3 eggs, 1 ½ cups dark molasses, 3 T. apple cider or white vinegar.
Add 7 ½ cups flour, 2 ½ t. baking soda, ¾ t. salt, 1 ½ T. ginger,
1 ½ t. each cinnamon and cloves.

Mix thoroughly and form into dough disc. Chill at least 3 hours.
Roll out thin on floured surface with floured rolling pin.
Cut in shapes and bake on parchment-lined cookie sheet 5-6 minutes at 375*.

Display Comments Add a Comment

Dear Readers:

I was teaching an intro to lit class yesterday and afterward one of my students said that reading Federico's Ghost changed his whole view of poetry. He said he previously thought poetry was irrelevant to everyday people, obtuse, precious. However, Martín Espada changed what he thought and what he was going to read. He went on and on about the use of images that got under his skin, images that made the labor and the suffering a visceral, unforgettable experience.

(Ah, we poets, we teachers, live for that!)

Please take a look at that life-changing poem and a repeat look at my review of his Pulitzer Prize nominated book, The Republic of Poetry.


Federico's Ghost

The story is
that whole families of fruitpickers
still crept between the furrows
of the field at dusk,
when for reasons of whiskey or whatever
the cropduster plane sprayed anyway,
floating a pesticide drizzle
over the pickers
who thrashed like dark birds
in a glistening white net,
except for Federico,
a skinny boy who stood apart
in his own green row,
and, knowing the pilot
would not understand in Spanish
that he was the son of a whore,
instead jerked his arm
and thrust an obscene finger.

The pilot understood.
He circled the plane and sprayed again,
watching a fine gauze of poison
drift over the brown bodies
that cowered and scurried on the ground,
and aiming for Federico,
leaving the skin beneath his shirt
wet and blistered,
but still pumping his finger at the sky.

After Federico died,
rumors at the labor camp
told of tomatoes picked and smashed at night,
growers muttering of vandal children
or communists in camp,
first threatening to call Immigration,
then promising every Sunday off
if only the smashing of tomatoes would stop.

Still tomatoes were picked and squashed
in the dark,
and the old women in camp
said it was Federico,
laboring after sundown
to cool the burns on his arms,
flinging tomatoes
at the cropduster
that hummed like a mosquito
lost in his ear,
and kept his soul awake.

from Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover's Hands

Martín Espada's The Republic of Poetry reminds me of Oscar de la Hoya's boxing. Beautiful to behold, it's unerring in its aim. Pared down to the essential--it's body blows to the chest, to the gut, head blows that annihilate the opponent and leave the viewer stunned, reeling, gasping for air. Democracy subverted in Chile and by implication, everywhere, reverberates on every page.

The Republic of Poetry is not an elegy, it's an upper cut to complacency, a left hook to amnesia. Wake up, remember what was, see what's happening right in front of you. The comparison of Espada to Neruda, to Whitman are many, but to me, what comes to mind is poet warrior, able to fight and raise an army with the power of his words.

But in case you're not convinced, here is some additional praise for this remarkable book.

“What a tender, marvelous collection. First, that broken, glorious journey into the redemptive heart of my Chile, and then, as if that had not been enough, the many gates of epiphanies and sorrows being opened again and again, over and over.” —Ariel Dorfman

“Martín Espada is a poet of annunciation and denunciation, a bridge between Whitman and Neruda, a conscientious objector in the war of silence.” —Ilan Stavans

“Martín Espada’s big-hearted poems reconfirm ‘The Republic of Poetry’ that (dares) to insist upon its dreams of justice and mercy even during the age of perpetual war.” —Sam Hamill

“Martín Espada is indeed a worthy prophet for a better world.” —Rigoberto González

This is tight, muscular writing. Espada make his point with an economy of language, concealing a dense terrain of imagery and meaning. In this universe, the dead are not ghosts, but fully fleshed--staving off the soldiers, marching in the battlefield, struggling in the streets, and inspiring new generations. Read these and you'll see what I mean.

The Soldiers in the Garden

Isla Negra, Chile, September 1973

After the coup,
the soldiers appeared
in Neruda’s garden one night,
raising lanterns to interrogate the trees,
cursing at the rocks that tripped them.
From the bedroom window
they could have been
the conquistadores of drowned galleons,
back from the sea to finish
plundering the coast.

The poet was dying:
cancer flashed through his body
and left him rolling in the bed to kill the flames.
Still, when the lieutenant stormed upstairs,
Neruda faced him and said:
There is only one danger for you here: poetry.
The lieutenant brought his helmet to his chest,
apologized to señor Neruda
and squeezed himself back down the stairs.
The lanterns dissolved one by one from the trees.

For thirty years
we have been searching
for another incantation
to make the soldiers
vanish from the garden.

The soldier leaves, not because the poet is super human, but because he's supremely human. Poetry taps into a power that no bullet can halt nor cancer eat away. Armies of everyday people have been set loose with words like Neruda's. Then and now, the men in power with bloody hands know it's dangerous, know it's subversive. But in the end, it remains unstoppable.

At Isla Negra,
between Neruda’s tomb
and the anchor in the garden,
a man with stonecutter’s hands
lifted up his boy of five
so the boy’s eyes could search mine.
The boy’s eyes were black olives.
Son, the father said, this is a poet,
like Pablo Neruda.
The boy’s eyes were black glass.
My son is called Darío,
for the poet of Nicaragua,
the father said.
The boy’s eyes were black stones.
The boy said nothing,
searching my face for poetry,
searching my eyes for his own eyes.
The boy’s eyes were black islands.

What possibility dwells in those black eyes? What page of history will be written for him to read, and what page will he write himself? Knowing that Espada is a father, I can only imagine how many times he's asked himself those questions in the still hours of the night, watching his own child sleep. Toward the end of The Republic of Poetry, Espada meditates on the "smaller" world of family and relationships, personal joy and private grief. Every fighter has his scars, and every poet, his pleasures.

Now, stop reading this, it won't get the job done. Go. Get the book. Read that instead.
It's time to wake up.

The Republic of Poetry W. W. Norton

• ISBN-10: 0393062562
• ISBN-13: 978-0393062564

Lisa Alvarado

Display Comments Add a Comment