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I plan a more complete "tribute" to new NCTE Poetry Award winner, Lee Bennett Hopkins, very soon, but in the mean time, here is a gem to share. Lee has fielded questions about "why poetry?" so many times in his four-plus decades of working in schools he’s penned the following. Enjoy-- and let poetry into your lives!

Why Poetry?

by Lee Bennett Hopkins

Why poetry?

Why?

Why sunsets?

Why trees?

Why birds?

Why seas?

Why you?

Why me?

Why friends?

Why families?

Why laugh?

Why cry?

Why hello?

Why good-bye?

Why poetry?

That’s why!

Reprinted by permission of Curtis-Brown, NY, NY

Picture credit: weblogs.newsday.com

April 13 is supposedly Scrabble Day, one of my favorite word game/board games. Scrabble was created in 1938 by Alfred Mosher Butts. For a fun poetry connection, see how Mike Keith has used the scrabble squares to create a poem: A Scrabble®-Tile Anagram Poem by Mike Keith (2000).

Even more importantly, April 13 is Lee Bennett Hopkins’ birthday. Happy birthday, Lee! He has been the focus of discussion on the CCBC listserv recently as we’ve considered his enormous contributions to the field of poetry for young people. Check out my April 13 posting from last year for more information about Lee, his life, and his work. This year I’d like to talk about his latest anthology, America at War. It’s a beautiful, moving collection with more than fifty poems and paintings divided into eight sections featuring each “American” war, from the American Revolution to the Iraq War. Classic poems by the likes of Walt Whitman and Carl Sandburg appear alongside contemporary voices such as Rebecca Kai Dotlich and Georgia Heard.

However, the book is not about war, as Hopkins points out in his poignant introduction. “It is about the poetry of war…. America at War presents the raw emotions of warfare as seen and felt by poets.” The design and layout of the book are also perfectly tuned to the tone of the work, with each poem appearing to be engraved upon the large, creamy page accompanied by expansive watercolor illustrations that convey a historical sweep that evokes the WPA murals of the past. Together, the poems and art capture both specific details of each conflict as well as deep and tender emotions that sadly cross the ages. Here’s one example:

Missing
by Cynthia Cotton

My brother is a soldier
in a hot, dry,
sandy place.
He’s missing—
missing things like
baseball, barbecues,
fishing, French fries,
chocolate sodas,
flame-red maple trees,
blue jays,
and snow.

I’m missing, too—
missing
his read-out-loud voice,
his super-special
banana pancakes,
his scuffed up shoes
by the back door,
his big-bear
good night
hug.

There are people
with guns
in that land of sand
who want to shoot
my brother.

I hope
they miss him,
too.

From Hopkins, Lee Bennett, comp. 2008. America at War. New York: Margaret K. McElderry.

Be sure and look for Lee’s other poetry anthologies with a focus on U.S. history and geography:
Hopkins, Lee Bennett, comp. 1994. Hand in Hand: An American History through Poetry. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Hopkins, Lee Bennett, comp. 1999. Lives: Poems about Famous Americans. New York: HarperCollins.
Hopkins, Lee Bennett, comp. 2000. My America: A Poetry Atlas of the United States. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Hopkins, Lee Bennett, comp. 2002. Home to Me: Poems Across America. New York: Orchard.

Thank you for your continuing contributions to children, reading, and poetry, Lee!

Picture credit: Me!

Yesterday, Penn State University announced the 2008 recipients of the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award.

Drum roll…

WINNER:
Birmingham, 1963 by Carole Boston Weatherford (Wordsong/Boyds Mills Press)

HONOR BOOKS:
Blue Lipstick: Concrete Poems by John Grandits (Clarion Books)
and
This Is Just To Say; Poems Of Apology And Forgiveness by Joyce Sidman (Hougton Mifflin)

Congratulations all around!
I loved Carole’s true story poem Dear Mr. Rosenwald last year and now she takes a turn to focus spare free verse poetry on the tragic deaths of four young girls in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama 45 years ago. Against a graphic background of black and white photographs, this poetic tribute is eloquent and
gut-wrenching.

And what diversity in the honor books, too. I like Blue Lipstick for it's fun experimentation with form and it's angry and angst-filled girl's voice. It has been hugely popular with kids and helps break down boundaries about what poetry "should" look like for young people.

Joyce Sidman’s latest, This Is Just To Say, is a collection of poems of apology and forgiveness in the voices of a classroom of children. It’s funny, poignant, and true, with Sidman’s trademark gift for the craft of poetry in an amazing variety of poetic forms.

The Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award was established in 1993 and is presented annually to an American poet or anthologist for the most outstanding new book of children's poetry published in the previous calendar year. The award is made possible by a gift from Lee Bennett Hopkins himself and is administered by Pennsylvania State University College of Education and the Pennsylvania State University Libraries. Since its inception, the winning poet or anthologist has received a handsome plaque and now a $1000 honorarium made possible by Mr. Hopkins, himself a poet and anthologist.

Based on the award web site, the terms of the award specify that the award shall be granted annually to an anthology of poetry or a single volume poem published for children in the previous calendar year (as per copyright) by a living American poet or anthologist. Their criteria specify that “good poetry is imaginative. It deals with emotion and has significance beyond the act of creation. It uses figurative language, yet is compact in thought and expression. Good poetry has an element of beauty and truth which appears unstable outside of the poem. The book which wins the Lee Bennett Hopkins Award for Children's Poetry must be accessible to children and its presentation must serve the poem or poems in an attractive and appropriate manner.” In recent years, the committee has also cited several honor books each year.

Previous Lee Bennett Hopkins Award Recipients
2006 Jazz by Walter Dean Myers, illustrated by Christopher Myers (Holiday House)
2005 Song of the Water Boatman and Other Pond Poems by Joyce Sidman (Houghton Mifflin)
2004 Here in Harlem by Walter Dean Myers (Holiday House)
2003 The Wishing Bone and Other Poems by Stephen Mitchell (Candlewick)
2002 Splash! Poems of our Watery World by Constance Levy (Orchard)
2001 Pieces: A Year in Poems and Quilts by Anna Grossnickle Hines (Greenwillow)
2000 Light-Gathering Poems by Liz Rosenberg (Henry Holt)
1999 What Have You Lost? by Naomi Shihab Nye (Greenwillow)
1998 The Other Side by Angela Johnson (Orchard)
1997 The Great Frog Race by Kristine O’Connell George (Clarion)
1996 Voices from the Wild by David Bouchard (Chronicle)
1995 Dance with Me by Barbara Esbensen (HarperCollins)
1994 Beast Feast by Douglas Florian (Harcourt)
1993 Spirit Walker by Nancy Wood (Doubleday)
1992 Sing to the Sun by Ashley Bryan (HarperCollins)

FYI: Hopkins also established the Lee Bennett Hopkins Promising Poet Award, presented every three years by the International Reading Association to a new poet with two or fewer poetry books published.

The Poetry Friday Roundup is at Mentor Texts, Read Alouds & More.

Picture credit: http://www.caroleweatherford.com/books.htm

Just a few things....

Lucy Anne pointed out that there was a tiny promotional film up for Wolves in the Walls at the New Victory site. I just popped it up on YouTube, suspecting that they won't mind at the New Victory, especially if a few of you watching it are impelled to order tickets... (http://www.newvictory.org/show.m?showID=1028522)



YouTube embiggened it slightly, I'm afraid.

I was both saddened and sort of glad he was properly remembered when I saw that Melvin McCosh had died and had a nice obituary and photo in the Star Tribune. I loved going to McCosh's house of books (his motto, You Need Them More Than I Do) as long as it, and he, were there. I bought my favourite book in the whole world there (it's a huge 150 year old 500 page leather-bound blank accounts book. Either I will write a novel in it, or I will want to write a novel in it until I die. Either's fine). The obituary is up at http://www.startribune.com/west/story/1221731.html -- you may have to log in to read it.

Many years ago I put a character based on Melvin McCosh into an SF TV series I never made (it was called Back of Beyond), because I had never before met anyone so transparently fictional in real life. And my love for John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester's poetry goes back to buying some books from McCosh, and when he looked at the pile he wandered off into a back room and put a book of Rochester's poetry on top of the books I was buying. "If you like all that, you'll like this," he said.


Hey Neil,
I picked up American Gods this weekend and have been really enjoying the book. What's been bugging me, however, is the chili recipe you describe in Chapter 2. It sounded delicious and I'm pretty curious to try it. Is it a personal chili recipe you use? And if so, are you willing to share it?

Thanks,
WDW

It was my variant on the Silver Palate Chili for a Crowd recipe (which I just googled and found at http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/recipe_collections/simply_delicious/recipe_arch/06_01_29_R#r_1) I could never be bothered with the olives or sausage meat, and everything else was a sort of generalised "adjust quantities to taste", which is how chili works best anyway. I still don't think the dill ought to work in a chili, but it does, magnificently.

Neil,

Today is the World's End Message Board's 6th Birthday, and I just wanted to thank you for providing a place for all these lovely people to get together.

Thank you :)


amy/aitapata

Which is one of those unexpected side effects of something like this. You turn around and there's a whole community there, and I tend to forget they exist until they turn up at signings bearing red balloons and alcoholic beverages and chocolate and suchlike. Happy Birthday... (They can be found at http://neilgaimanboard.com/eve/forums for anyone not using the neilgaiman.com website as a way to read this.)

Just a short one ... did you know that there is a book out there, written by some Miss Laurell K. Hamilton, (fantasy and quite different from your writing) that is called DANSE MACABRE?

(It's not one of my faves by her, I admit, but I remembered the title and wondered how it comes that both of you got to it ... have to check my French and see whether it is some saying or ...)

BB

There are many, many things called Danse Macabre out there. Stephen King's excellent non-fiction book about horror, for a start, not to mention a very wonderful piece of music by Saint-Saëns. It refers to the Dance either of the dead, or of the dead with the living, to remind people that they are mortal. It goes back to the Fourteenth Century, to the plague times. Lots of interesting stuff in this Wikipedia article. Did you know that our word Macabre comes from the dance, and was a reference to the Maccabees? S'true.

And it was originally pronounced macabray. (More details at http://thomondgate.net/doc/companion/Companion.htm#dance)

Rich and poor dance in the same way, said poet John Lydgate in The Dance of Death, and that squashed together in my head with Shelley's "I met murder on the way..." and instead of thinking "He had a mask like Castlereagh" I thought "I met murder on the way, come to dance the macabray..." and suddenly there was a story in my head where there wasn't one before.

Which is too much information, and won't make much sense until you've read the story, but there are probably a few word-buffs out there who will take as much joy in it as I did.

Hey Neil,

Its not so much as a question as shameless self promotion. I did an interview with Barron Storey today. It was for my radio show Inkstuds. The show is all about interviewing alternative and underground creators. I thought your fans would be interested in this interview. We talk a little bit about the 15 portraits of Despair.

Here is a link directly to the posting. http://www.inkstuds.com/?p=173
Cheers,

robin

Of course. (And if you don't know what Barron Storey's work looks like you can find some of it at http://www.geocities.com/negsleep/main/links/barron/barron.html)