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By Louise  Hawes
for Cynthia Leitich Smith's Cynsations

From the promotional copy of The Language of Stars by Louise Hawes (McElderry, 2016):

Sarah is forced to take a summer poetry class as penance for trashing the home of a famous poet in this fresh novel about finding your own voice.

Sarah’s had her happy ending: she’s at the party of the year with the most popular boy in school. But when that boy turns out to be a troublemaker who decided to throw a party at a cottage museum dedicated to renowned poet Rufus Baylor, everything changes. 

By the end of the party, the whole cottage is trashed—curtains up in flames, walls damaged, mementos smashed—and when the partygoers are caught, they’re all sentenced to take a summer class studying Rufus Baylor’s poetry…with Baylor as their teacher.

For Sarah, Baylor is a revelation. Unlike her mother, who is obsessed with keeping up appearances, and her estranged father, for whom she can’t do anything right, Rufus Baylor listens to what she has to say, and appreciates her ear for language. Through his classes, Sarah starts to see her relationships and the world in a new light—and finds that maybe her happy ending is really only part of a much more interesting beginning.

The Language of Stars is a gorgeous celebration of poetry, language, and love.

What was your initial inspiration for The Language of Stars?

In 2008, I stumbled on a newspaper article about a group of Vermont teenagers who'd been caught throwing a party in the historically preserved summer home of Robert Frost. They'd vandalized and set fire to the place, but few of them were over eighteen.

A resourceful judge, who couldn't send them to jail, sentenced them to something some of them may have enjoyed even less—they had to take a course in Frost's poetry!

As soon as I read this, my writer's "what-if" machinery kicked in: what if, I asked myself, the poet in question weren't Robert Frost, but an equally famous, Pulitzer-prize winning, world-renowned Southern poet, someone who made his home in North Carolina, where I live? What if, unlike Frost, who'd been dead for decades when the vandalism happened, my fictional southern bard was still alive when young party-goers destroyed his house? And what if he decided to teach those kids himself? What if one of those students was a young girl who showed a natural ear for poetry?

What was the timeline between spark and publication, and what were the major events along the way?

It was a long gestation period! First, I needed to find my narrator, who turned out to be sixteen-year old Sarah Wheeler, a character who came to me almost immediately, but whose voice and interior life took me months of free writing to uncover.

Next, I read all the biographies on Robert Frost and everything he ever wrote (including some pretty awful plays modeled on seventeenth-century court masques!). After that, free writes helped me hear the voice of Rufus Baylor, my book's poet, who shares some life experiences, artistic convictions, and teaching approaches with Frost, but whose personality and poems are all his own.

Next, it was time to write a draft, submit it to my agent, Ginger Knowlton at Curtis Brown Ltd. in New York, and then tighten and re-think major aspects of the book. (No, great agents don't line edit; but yes, they do ask crucial questions about readership and story!)

When it was time to submit, I found out the hard way that a YA novel in which an octogenarian is a major character is not an easy sell! I also learned to treasure the judgement and eye of the brilliant editor (Karen Wojtoyla at Margaret McElderry) who trusted my book enough to acquire it and to ask me to rewrite it. Again?!

Grand total?

Seven years from inspiration to completion! Which may be why, in comparison, the year between signing and publication seems to have flown by!

What were the major challenges (research, craft, emotional, logistical) in bringing the book to life?

Sarah Bernhardt's Hamlet

You've named the usual suspects, Cyn. Research and craft, as well as sustaining emotional and artistic investment through so many years, most of them without a contract—all of it was far from easy. But the thing I found most difficult and at the same time most rewarding, was combining the three formats I wanted the novel to include.

First, Stars is written mostly in prose; it's not a novel in verse. Second, of course, it also features poetry. I mean, hello? Most of the major characters in the book have chosen to study poetry rather than do hard time!

Lastly, because my narrator, Sarah, is a wannabe actress whose role model is Sarah Bernhardt, and because she and her mentor, Rufus, hear the whole world talk, talk, talking to them, I've also included play scripts that feature an on-going dialogue between things and people.

In the vibrant and highly auditory place Rufus and Sarah inhabit, grills sputter, furniture squeaks, sand crabs burrow, seagulls squeal—not just as background noise, but as active, contributing participants. Fun? Yes. But challenging to write!

Talk to us about your audition to read the audio edition of the book for Brookstone.

I have a theater background, so I asked my agent to write an author audition into the audio contract for Stars. After all, I reasoned, I had been a national finalist in the National Academy of Dramatic Arts competition; I had endured NYC audition rounds, portfolio in hand; and colleagues and students at the Vermont College of Fine Arts had listened attentively to my readings from each draft of Stars. Who was better suited to bring the audio book to life?

A lot of people, it turns out! Blackstone Audio required a short five-minute sample—a cinch, right? It took me days to come up with that recording, but it took the company's studio director exactly three hours to respond to my emailed mp3.

What he told me, kindly but firmly, was that audio listeners have well-developed tastes and high expectations, the least of which is that a teenage narrator's voice will sound as if she's between the ages of 14 and 20. To soften the blow, and because I did have prior recording experience, he asked if I would help him select our reader from among their final candidates.

Here's the humble pie part: the part where I tell you that any one of their top ten voice actors were about 900 billion times better qualified to read my book than I was!! Yes, I got to make the final call: Katie Schorr is a full-time actor, an all-round stage talent, and gives one of the most nuanced, sensitive readings I've ever listened to on audio. I can hardly wait for everyone to hear it!

What's new and next in your writing life?

A lot! Current works in progress include The Gospel of Salomé, YA historical fiction about the young woman the new testament credits with having danced off the head of John the Baptist; Love's Labor, an adult novel about an aging playwright; and Big Rig, a brand new middle-grade novel.

In addition to working on my own projects, I'm also cooking up another Four Sisters Playshop with my three sisters—a painter, a musician, and a film-maker. We'll be exploring a new theme in August 2017: Death, Cradle of Creativity. We hope to share writing, movement, music, sculpture and painting with participants, and in the process destroy a lot of stereotypes about death and aging!

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via Unsplash

THE TUFT OF FLOWERS
by Robert Frost

I went to turn the grass once after one
Who mowed it in the dew before the sun.

The dew was gone that made his blade so keen
Before I came to view the levelled scene.

I looked for him behind an isle of trees;
I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.

But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,
And I must be, as he had been,—alone,

As all must be,' I said within my heart,
Whether they work together or apart.'

But as I said it, swift there passed me by
On noiseless wing a 'wildered butterfly,

Seeking with memories grown dim o'er night
Some resting flower of yesterday's delight.

And once I marked his flight go round and round,
As where some flower lay withering on the ground.

And then he flew as far as eye could see,
And then on tremulous wing came back to me.

I thought of questions that have no reply,
And would have turned to toss the grass to dry;

But he turned first, and led my eye to look
At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,

A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared
Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.

I left my place to know them by their name,
Finding them butterfly weed when I came.

The mower in the dew had loved them thus,
By leaving them to flourish, not for us,

Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him.
But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.

The butterfly and I had lit upon,
Nevertheless, a message from the dawn,

That made me hear the wakening birds around,
And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground,

And feel a spirit kindred to my own;
So that henceforth I worked no more alone;

But glad with him, I worked as with his aid,
And weary, sought at noon with him the shade;

And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech
With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.

Men work together,' I told him from the heart,
Whether they work together or apart.'

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A beautiful, frosty day in Saskatchewan, Canada.

The post Polar Poetry appeared first on Cathrin Hagey.

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Flickr Creative Commons Photo by Gilly Walker

Unharvested
by Robert Frost

A scent of ripeness from over a wall.
And come to leave the routine road
And look for what had made me stall,
There sure enough was an apple tree
That had eased itself of its summer load,
And of all but its trivial foliage free,
Now breathed as light as a lady's fan.
For there had been an apple fall
As complete as the apple had given man.
The ground was one circle of solid red.

May something go always unharvested!
May much stay out of our stated plan,
Apples or something forgotten and left,
So smelling their sweetness would be no theft.

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A Prayer in Spring

Robert Frost and Grandma Moses

 

There are plenty of prayers going skyward from farmers and growers of all types as spring, and the growing season, are off to a slow start. Mother Nature packed quite a wallop this winter; then add on Punxsutawney Phil’s prognostication of six more weeks of winter on February 2nd and planting is in a holding pattern.

Yet when I spied this picture book, I felt lighter. The words of Robert Frost’s springtime celebration poetry, coupled with Anna Mary Robertson aka Grandma Moses and her sublime scenes of spring, and you can spur your young reader to get out and revel in the beauty that is awakening from long winter slumbers.

I believe in acquainting young readers with classic picture book reads. That is not to say these books are the sole sanctuaries in picture book reading of what is meaningful and important to children, but they are very special for a reason. And that great leveler is time; and that is why great picture book art and narrative can still, years after its publication, continue to speak to a child’s heart.

And here, in “A Prayer in Spring” two very American masters of art and poetry combine to bring the newness of spring from their quite original perspectives.

In Frost’s evocative poem of springtime sights, sounds and scenery, Grandma Moses matches his words with her very identifiable technique in a depiction of the flowers, foliage, bees, and rolling countryside that mimics Mother Earth’s slow reawakening.

I love these next few lines because they expressly capture the look of apple orchard blossoms at bud break that I have marveled at in our own orchard. It’s a creamy white haze of petals, amassed in row upon row, that all seems to meld together:

 

   “Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white, Like nothing else by day, like ghosts at night;”

 

And the book’s lines of poetry and art even seem to speak to the farmer’s nervousness; as nothing about planting is ever guaranteed:

 

 “Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;

   And give us not to think so far away

 

As the uncertain harvest; keep us here

All simply in the springing of the year.”

 

 

In a world of 24/7 news cycles, where families scramble to fulfill work and play obligations that are still more scheduled than ever, why not take some timeout with two titans? Robert Frost and Grandma Moses will have you and your child immersed during a picture book spring sitdown, poring over pages of art bursting with green newness and renewal of possibilities.

It’s very catching, because this picture book has spurred me on to take a walk in the apple orchard and see the blossoms – now!

New life – new earth – new beginnings – all found with the turn of a page!

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April is National Poetry Month and I have neglected to say anything about it thus far. Well, I am about to fix that.

The Library of Congress today launched the Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature. There are fifty recordings available at the moment and it will be added to every month.

The LOC is digitizing its collection of nearly 2,000 recordings of poets and prose writers who participated in events at the library. Most of the recordings are on magnetic tape reels and until now have only been available by visiting the library.

Among the items available at launch is Robert Frost being interviewed by Randall Jarrell in 1959 and the Academy of American Poets’ 35th anniversary program from 1969 that included readings by Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. That is just the tip of the iceberg. It is a true treasure trove.

This is why I love the internet. Go now, explore the archive and enjoy.

Filed under: Poetry Tagged: Elizabeth Bishop, Library of Congress, Robert Frost

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When I was a senior in high school, I dropped Physics at semester to take Forensics. No, not forensic science, but forensics: the art and study of argumentation and debate. This is also known as speech and drama competition, a place where kids recite poetry and prose, preform monologues, or deliver original speeches in front of a judge.

One of the requirements of the class involved attending at least two meets. My coach/teacher provided me with Robert Frost's "The Death of the Hired Man" to read in the oral interpretation of poetry division. I performed one time and tied for fourth (I lost the coin flip and received a fifth place medal--wah wah). It was my only performance of that poem and the only medal I received in forensics. I went on to coach for 12 years as a teacher.

Okay, what does this have to do with "Silas"? Well, the story is available in the Winter/Spring 2014 issue of The Rampallian, and it is one of those odd, hard-to-place pieces. It is, in part, inspired by "The Death of the Hired Man" and features an old hired-hand named Silas, just like the poem. While horrrific in subject matter, it isn't "horror" in the commercial sense.

This is your spoiler alert. So please read "Silas" or continue with the spoilers. I'm afraid it is one of those tales you'll need to shell out a few bucks to buy the issue, but 50% of the issue's proceeds go to benefit Reading is Fundamental.


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My story implies Silas has molested young Rose, the protagonist. I wasn't sure I wanted to tackle such challenging subject matter, but after reading Peter Straub's masterful "The Juniper Tree" I understood the power of challenging subject matter. (I almost put Straub's story down before finishing it--but it's so damn good in the end.) While "Silas" does not touch the hem of Straub's coat, it is born of "The Juniper Tree" and "The Death of the Hired Man" with a good deal of Aaron Polson imagery tossed in the mix. The original title: "The Hired Man is Made of Worms"--I'll let that conjure an image or two without explanation.

Rose is a brave girl in the face of a horrible, harsh reality. In the story, you'll find Silas is the least of her problems. Thanks to The Rampallian and editor Rebecca McKeown, I have the chance to tell her story.

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You mustn’t take me too seriously if I now proceed to brag a bit about my exploits as a poet. There is one qualifying fact always to bear in mind: there is a kind of success called “of esteem” and it butters no parsnips. It means a success with a critical few who are supposed to know. But really to arrive where I can stand on my legs as a poet and nothing else I must get outside that circle to the general reader who buys books in their thousands. I may not be able to do that. I believe in doing it – don’t you doubt me there. I want to be a poet for all sorts and kinds. I could never make a merit of being caviar to the crowd the way my quasi-friend Pound does. I want to reach out, and would if it were a thing I could do – if it were a thing I could do by taking thought.

—Robert Frost in a letter to John Bartlett, 1913

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The iconic actress Marilyn Monroe may have played the role of a ditzy blonde in many films, but she was actually quite the bookworm whose reading preferences included books by James Joyce and Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Open Culture has more: “Once married to playwright Arthur Miller, Monroe stocked about 400 books on her shelves, many of which were later catalogued and auctioned off by Christie’s in New York City.”

Library Thing has made a list of 261 titles that were a part of Monroe’s personal library. Books on the list include: Out Of My Later Years by Albert Einstein; Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert; The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner; as well as poetry collections from Robert Frost, John Milton, and Edgar Allen Poe, among others. (Via Gothamist).

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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Literary agent Robert Lescher has passed away. He was 83-years-old.

Lescher established his career in the publishing industry as an editor. He climbed his way up and obtained the title of editor-in-chief at Henry Holt & Company. During his tenure at Holt, he edited the works of legendary poet Robert Frost, short story writer Wolcott Gibbs and memoirist Alice B. Toklas.

Here’s more from The New York Times: “When Mr. Lescher began his literary agency in 1965, his reputation for aesthetic insight and painstaking attentiveness to writers made him highly sought after…[Lescher's] clients included Frances FitzGerald, Benjamin Spock, Paula Fox, Madeleine L’Engle, Andrew Wyeth and Georgia O’Keeffe. Isaac Bashevis Singer, having served as his own agent for many years, hired Mr. Lescher in 1972, six years before Singer would receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.” (via Shelf Awareness)

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The Poetry Foundation has published “Poetic Presidents,” a study of 12 Presidents and “the poets that inspired them.”

Just in time for the election, the match-ups include George Washington and Phyllis Wheatley (the first African-American female to publish a book of poetry), John F. Kennedy and Robert Frost (the first poet to perform a reading at a presidential swearing in event) and Barack Obama and Elizabeth Alexander.

Here’s more from the article: “Politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose, former New York governor Mario Cuomo once said. While it’s debatable whether this epically long and tumultuous election cycle has inspired much verse, we at the Poetry Foundation would like to think that poetry has its place at the White House regardless of who emerges as the victor on November 6.”

continued…

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Today Google introduced Google+ Pages, a way for businesses to join the social network and connect with customers. The new feature is currently available for select partners, but publishers can add the pages in the future.

In addition, the network’s “Direct Connect” feature will let people search for a publisher or author’s Google+ page directly through the Google search bar (the video embedded above shows you how). In the release, Google quoted a Robert Frost poem at Poetry Foundation: “we’ve still got lots of improvements planned, and miles to go before we sleep.” Below, we’ve listed the available business and brand pages.

Check it out: “For businesses and brands, Google+ pages help you connect with the customers and fans who love you. Not only can they recommend you with a +1, or add you to a circle to listen long-term. They can actually spend time with your team, face-to-face-to-face … organizations can learn more about Direct Connect in our Help Center.” (Via Simon Owens)

continued…

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...to be reminded what it's supposed to be like and here's one by Robert Frost. I presume he was writing about New England and I love the amethyst/mist rhyme (although I probably wouldn't volunteer to read it aloud).
There's nothing mauve and misty about old England right now. July got lost and ended up here, leaving a metallic taste in the mouth. There is gold in the air from a warm winter sun and bronze on the pavement from fallen leaves: there's even silver in the cash registers from unexpected visitors.

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Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second. — Robert Frost

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.  — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I make it clear why I write as I do and why other poets write as they do. After hundreds of experiments I decided to go my own way in style and see what would happen.  –Carl Sandburg

I wrote poems in my corner of the Brooks Street station. I sent them to two editors who rejected them right off. I read those letters of rejection years later and I agreed with those editors. — Carl Sandburg

 The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean  – Robert Louis Stevenson

*all quotes courtesy of Brainyquote and thinkexist.com*

Filed under: writing for children Tagged: carl sandburg, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Frost, Robert Louis Stevenson

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Renowned poet Maya Angelou has donated 300 boxes filled with her personal papers to the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Angelou had this quote in the press release: “The Schomburg is a repository of the victories and the losses of the African American experience … I am grateful that it exists so that all the children, Black and White, Asian, Spanish-Speaking, Native American, and Aleutian can know there is a place where they can go and find the truth of the peoples’ history.”

The donation contains the notes for her autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and some of her most famous poems. One notable inclusion are the notes for the poem written at the request of former President Bill Clinton, On the Pulse of Morning. The video embedded above shows her reading it at Clinton’s 1993 inauguration. Several unpublished manuscripts and poems have also been included in the lot.

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Click here to learn more about the Golden Coffee Cup.It’s impossible to pick my favorite voice, but one I like is Robert Frost. Here is a Frost high five.



My, it looks like he has a good story to tell Jackie. I loved Frost as a teenager, but now as middle-aged gal, I love him more. I didn’t get his irony when I was a young girl. I totally get it now. I hope you infuse your work with deep meaning. Don’t be afraid for things to mean one thing to some, another to others. I hope that you are working hard. I hope that you are finding your way. You are an original voice. Let it shine out. Who knows who will be moved by your original voice?

See you tomorrow for more hot java.

Sometimes I have my doubts of words altogether, and I ask myself what is the place of them. They are worse than nothing unless they do something; unless they amount to deeds, as in ultimatums or battle-cries. They must be flat and final like the show-down in poker, from which there is no appeal. My definition of poetry (if I were forced to give one) would be this: words that become deeds. Robert Frost

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My niece is getting married tomorrow and spring is in the air. The family has flown in from various places, with more arriving later today. Most of us are staying in a beautiful house on a small canal off Okanagan Lake.

Family members are chipping in to make sure the day is special. Yesterday, we worked on flower arrangements.  While one of the family trimmed and began to collect vases, I sat in the kitchen with rolls of ribbon, beads, small silvery decorations, and a glue gun, assigned with the task of decorating the mason jars my niece had chosen to hold arrangements that would be scattered around the house.

It’s cloudy in Kelowna today, but with beautiful bouquets scattered throughout the house, birds darting above the canal, a wedding and Easter just a day or more away, it’s spring.

In the spirit of new birth and new beginnings, my offering for Poetry Friday is Robert Frost’s poem, “A Prayer in Spring.”

Here’s how it begins:

A Prayer in Spring Robert Frost (1915)
Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Enjoy the rest of the poem here.

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"A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair."

"A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom."  ~ Robert Lee Frost


Frost in 1910 and 1962 (photo by TedSher).


To celebrate Robert Frost's 136th birthday today, I'm sharing an early poem I only just discovered recently. Since my knowledge of Frost is somewhat limited to the well known poems usually found in anthologies, it's always a treat to read something "new."

"A Line-storm Song" first appeared in New England Magazine (1907) when Frost was 33, and was later included in his first collection of poetry, A Boy's Will (1913). This is a different Frost from the one I first encountered pondering "The Road Not Taken," and I like him. It's lovely to meet this poet as a young man, passionate and romantic. I was reminded of Marlowe's, "Come live with me and be my love." I'm all for an entreaty to brave the elements and ride out life's storms in the name of love.

    A LINE-STORM SONG

    The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift.
        The road is forlorn all day,
    Where a myriad snowy quartz-stones lift,
        And the hoofprints vanish away.
    The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,
        Expend their bloom in vain.
    Come over the hills and far with me,
        And be my love in the rain.

    The birds have less to say for themselves
        In the wood-world's torn despair
    Than now these numberless years the elves,
        Although they are no less there:
    All song of the woods is crushed like some
        Wild, easily shattered rose.
    Come, be my love in the wet woods, come,
        Where the boughs rain when it blows.

    There is the gale to urge behind
        And bruit our singing down,
    And the shallow waters aflutter with wind
        From which to gather your gown.
    What matter if we go clear to the west,
        And come not through dry-shod?
    For wilding brooch, shall wet your breast
        The rain-fresh goldenrod.

    Oh, never this whelming east wind swells
        But it seems like the sea's return
    To the ancient lands where it left the shells
        Before the age of the fern;
    And it seems like the time when, after doubt,
        Our love came back amain.
    Oh, come forth into the storm and rout
        And be my love in the rain.
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Frost wrote "A Line-storm Song" while living at this small farm in Derry, New Hampshire:

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Time for another writing quote to start the week. I am cheating and posting this week's quote a day early, because I have set tomorrow aside for a visit by my friend and fellow author Claire Saxby, who'll be dropping in tomorrow to kick off her blog tour. Today's quote is near and dear to me. I'll explain why after I've shared it: No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. (Robert Frost)

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Wallow in the delight of Poetry Friday today at Anastasia's 6-Traits...

I've decided that if the point of our public charter school proposal is a school that is, well, FUN, that the application should be too: full of concrete examples of what children and adults will actually be doing in our classrooms, and written using serious, appropriate educational lingo punctuated by POEMS. (We'll see what our consultant says about this wisdom of this decision.)

So I'm on the lookout for short poems that express our philosophy about education and public schooling in the era of global citizenship (all suggestions welcome). I've chosen poems so far by Ruth Krauss, Octavio Paz and Eve Merriam; last night I discovered this beauty by Robert Frost. I'm beginning to think that my early poetry education was sorely lacking; I keep "discovering" famous poems by famous poets that everyone else seems to know already. But even if I'd read this in high school, I'd want to be revisiting it now, approaching but well in advance of 50.

What Fifty Said

When I was young my teachers were the old.
I gave up fire for form till I was cold.
I suffered like a metal being cast.
I went to school to age to learn the past.

Now I am old my teachers are the young.
What can't be molded must be cracked and sprung.
I strain at lessons fit to start a suture.
I go to school to youth to learn the future.

~ Robert Frost

I wonder what beauties I can scare up for the Finance & Facility section of the application?

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Gianna is just about as scattered as the autumn leaves that she is supposed to be collecting for her science project. Deadlines are just so hard! The only time that her head is clear is when she is out running. Unfortunately, her next track meet could be in jeopardy because of her science project. Her coach lets Gianna know that if she doesn’t turn in her leaf project on time, she will not be running in the sectional meet!

Thankfully Gianna does have some help. Her best friend Zig is pretty much the opposite of Gianna. Organized to a fault, he tries to get Gianna back on track by taking her out on a bike ride and hike that should have Gianna all set.

But Gianna’s dreamy nature, a back stabbing classmate, and some serious troubles at home with her Nonna may just be too much for Gee to handle.

Kate Messner has written a poignant novel about family, friendship, and change. Gianna is so close to her Nonna, and the possible onset of Alzheimer’s is a reality that many families face, but not many kids get to read about in a relevant way. Messner handles this weighty topic with grace. Gianna is a lovely mix of a dreamer, an artist, and an advocate. Messner also excels in her descriptions of Gianna’s Vermont town as well as the market in Montreal. I lived in Montreal for a couple of years during grad school, and the pages describing it had me yearning to go back! Gianna is a girl who readers woul like to meet again.

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"A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness." ---Robert Frost

More posts about Frost here.

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I love this poem because it praises Thought with its "dauntless wings" (I love that!) but it also says what I have to constantly re-discover: Love by being thrall /And simply staying possesses all

Bond and Free
by Robert Frost

Love has earth to which she clings
With hills and circling arms about—
Wall within wall to shut fear out.
But Thought has need of no such things,
For Thought has a pair of dauntless wings.

On snow and sand and turf, I see
Where Love has left a printed trace
With straining in the world’s embrace.
And such is Love and glad to be.
But Thought has shaken his ankles free.

Thought cleaves the interstellar gloom
And sits in Sirius’ disc all night,
Till day makes him retrace his flight,
With smell of burning on every plume,
Back past the sun to an earthly room.

His gains in heaven are what they are.
Yet some say Love by being thrall
And simply staying possesses all
In several beauty that Thought fares far
To find fused in another star.

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Jennie at BiblioFile

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