More Poetry Month!

It's lovely having a personal connection to poetry - and a poet. We've all known (for a given value of communicated-on-the-internet-met-in-person-only-once knowing) poet Kelly Ramsdell Fineman for quite a few years now, and though she's a less vocal part of the kidlitosphere on days when she's wrestling down her rheumatoid arthritis, she's one of our core members who has been blogging for probably as long as -- or longer -- than A.F. and I. An original member of Guys Lit Wire and a core contributor to the great Poetry Friday movement that swept the blogosphere, as well as a contributor on the lovely new Poetry Friday Anthology, Kelly has been published in Highlights for Children magazine, and has poems in Summer Shorts, Breaking Waves, and Mountain Magic: Spellbinding Tales of Appalachia (2006), and in the book Write Your Own Poetry by another kidlitosphere buddy, Laura Purdie Salas (2008). Kelly's first poetic picture book AT THE BOARDWALK, illustrated by Mónica Armiño, was released by Tiger Tales Books in 2012, and today we celebrate a new chapbook, The Universe Comes Knocking, out from Maverick Duck Press.

I've blogged personally about a gift of buttons I received (and am gluing to all sorts of things), and I have an affection for sidewalks and windowsills and common things - what I love is that Kelly doesn't just blog about them, she creates poetry around them - or below them, perhaps? - and elevates them. Chairs. Peas. Not even her goofy cat knocking things over escapes her poetic gaze.

This collection contains twenty poems of varying lengths, on various topics - some of which are immediately sticky, like a catchy song, others of which worm their way into your heart on a second reading, taking the place of those first, impulsive rushes of pleasure. Good poetry simply has a way of doing that... Wonderland waves jazz hands and does dubstep (okay, maybe not) and otherwise fizzes about in an irresponsible manner in celebration of Kelly's poetry and her general awesomeness (and wishes her a belated happy April birthday!).

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I received my copy of this book courtesy of the universe. No, seriously. You, however, can find THE UNIVERSE COMES KNOCKING by Kelly Ramsdell Fineman at Maverick Duck Press!

Poetry Friday/TURNING PAGES: TO THIS DAY by Shane Koyczan

because there's something in side you
that made you keep trying
despite everyone who told you to quit
you build a cast around your
broken heart
and signed it yourself
          you signed it
"THEY WERE WRONG"

...
we are graduating members from the class of
WE MADE IT
not the faded echoes of voices crying out
names will never hurt me
      of course
         they did

~ Shane Koyczan, "To This Day"

This past Monday, October 6, was World Bullying Prevention Day. If you didn't know that, that's okay - it's less known than National Pink Shirt Day in February, or STAND UP Day in November, or other anti-bullying campaigns in various schools and in various states across the country, and around the world. Monday was just another tiny stone in the edifice that bravehearts are constructing against bullying and bullies in our schools and in our society.

The book I'm sharing with you today is probably of a poem you've already heard - this spoken word performance got something like 1.4 billion hits on Youtube by its second day up in 2013. After the author performed during a TED talk - which is wrenching and gorgeous - the poem's popularity soared further.

So, you've probably heard this before. But, since July of this past summer, it's in book form, which means it's now Cybils-eligible (woot) and it's also time to share it again. Take a few minutes, and listen to his spoken word performance in its entirety, and see the work of the eighty animators with Giant Ant Studios who helped him make his TED talk video possible.

I found this poem powerfully compelling for many reasons, but especially because of the repeated phrase, "To this day." To this day, I see the faces and know the names of my tormentors, to this day, I still don't know quite what the heck happened between fifth grade and ninth - and onward - to bring my personal social real estate price to rock bottom, and raise the personal values of some of the rest of my classmates so high... To this day, I carry an abscess, a wound I keep thinking is healed, but which is so full of poison that the slightest nudge flares it into hot pain again, and the bitterness roils under the surface. To this day, I, and many others, weep with rage at remembering parts of being in junior high and high school. To. This. Day.

Conclusion: The thirty international illustrators who designed and depicted each page all drew from a place inside themselves that is common to the human condition. We've all experienced the pain, either by unwitting unkindness or deliberate cruelty, of being spotlighted for how well we don't blend with the herd. This artwork highlights the already gut-wrenching words of the poet Shane's memories of being bullied as a fat, awkward child and dips them into the blood and bones of our own experiences and paints them on the page. Despite tragedy, loss, and the lingering echoes of hatefulness, this intensely passionate book is about courage, hope, and beauty - the elements which make all of us who we are as survivors. Whether you were bullied or one of the bullies, this book speaks about hope - and the realization that no matter who we are, we are who we think, and not what anyone else says.

♦♦♦♦ ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ ♦♦♦♦

but our lives will only ever
always
continue to be
a balancing act
that has less to do with pain
and more to do with
          BEAUTY.

~ Shane Koyczan, "To This Day"

---

I received my copy of this gorgeous and heartfelt book courtesy of Annick Press. You can find TO THIS DAY by Shane Koyczan at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect. Pop over for more great poetry!

BOOK BIRTHDAY: Tanya Davis' HOW TO BE ALONE

"Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence."
- The Desiderata

Two weeks ago, I blogged:

I opened an email and read this line: If you are, at first, lonely be patient. If you’ve not been alone much or if, when you were, you weren’t okay with it then just wait…you’ll find it’s fine to be alone once you’re embracing it. And then I squeed a little to myself, because, I could hear the poet reading the line. Yes. I am one of Those People responsible for making Tanya Davis’s poem, "How to Be Alone" have five million hits on YouTube. I'm at least a million hits all by my lonesome. (Okay, maybe fifty.) Visually jazzed up by artist Andrea Dorfman, this is a little video I have come back to over and over, the past couple of years. And now it's a book, out October 22nd. Am I getting it? AM I RIDICULOUSLY EXCITED? AM I, ONCE AGAIN, TYPING ALL IN CAPS?

YES. I AM STILL TYPING IN ALL CAPS.

I first started kvelling about this particular piece of poetry in 2011, around about the time it was one of those short-lived viral video things. It was everywhere, because it was a poem that had come out recently in a Canadian chapbook called AT FIRST, LONELY, and the author, Halifax poet-spoken word artist, Tanya Davis, set it to music and video by the poet with a filmmaker friend, Andrea Dorfman (who also was part of the team working on the book). Only some of what we pass around the 'net has any staying power, however, and this poem has had that for me. I've come back to it again and again. It is the eclectic imagery of the video, yes, the poet's careful voice, yes, but it is also the words. The words - so lucid, so simple, so heart-full and honest - that speaks to the universal we. I needed to take in that heady balance of perspicacity and intellect over and over again, until it became an intrinsic part of myself.

And, now I can.

I thought I'd give away my copy of the book as a gift to a friend, but this isn't that kind of book. It's the kind of book you get for yourself - but you get two copies. Then, when someone picks up your copy and wants to take it away - which will happen, this is guaranteed - you can be calm enough to say, "Oh, sure, yeah, go ahead." And you let it go - not like a book that's going to be borrowed and returned, but like a book that you'll never seen again, because you won't. It's not that type of book.

What it is, is a bedside table book for introverts, one that you can pick up and reread and realize that you're okay, that, living in your head is okay, and that if you're happy there, or uncomfortable because you're not sure it's what you're supposed to be doing, and it maybe doesn't look like what everybody else is doing... it reassures you that Different isn't fatal.

It's a coffee table lifeline for extroverts, who might find themselves in the unenviable position of being in a place cut off from their old connections, and find themselves adrift and panicky, unable to pull in the old charm that used to work so well. It's an under-the-pillow midnight read for the puffy-eyed, heart-cracked and bleeding newly abandoned and broken; it's a sanity saver for the newly together and commingled - it speaks to all of us who need to find and claim space in our heads - whether it's because we're in a life jam-packed with people, or in a world where we seem to rattle along by ourselves - and within are clear instructions as to how.

I wondered if the video's quirky brilliance would translate smoothly again to the printed page. It helps that the filmmaker is also the illustrator of the novel. The hand-scripted poetic words convey an intimacy, as if this is a journal you've written yourself, filled with brilliance you're ready to share. The illustrations show the journey of a single sock, a single knitter, a single tree-climber, all surviving their original-and-only-one status in a paired off and lined up world, all thriving on their differences. Especially in this world of political, financial and employment stresses we experience, where lockstep conformity is expected and desired by so many, we need to step back and reconnect with both solitude and sanity, and reaffirm our commitment to originality - even if that means going it alone. This book is an antidote for out-of-focus living. Stick a copy in your purse, read it in the waiting room at the doctor's office, or in line at Starbuck's, and regain your mental health.

---

Happy Book Birthday, Tanya & Andrea! This book is out today, October 22, 2013. I received my early copy courtesy of the publicist, and Harper Collins, for which I'm grateful! You can find your copy of HOW TO BE ALONE by Tanya Davis and Andrea Dorfman online, or at an independent bookstore near you!

Turning Pages: THE 14 FIBS OF GREGORY K, by Greg Pincus

This is sort of a disclosure: while I've not met The Poet, Pincus in person, I frequently lurk at his blog. While this review is as objectively critical as I can make it, I consider Greg a friend of sorts, so take that as...whatever.

I have to admit that math is not my bailiwick. Perhaps the fact that I casually throw around words like "bailiwick" might convince you of this; I'm a word nerd, not a numbers whiz. But... I like haiku and senryu, with its three-five-three or five-seven-five patterns. I like reproduction in poetry and in words, and I like pi (well, yes: π and p-i-e). I have, since I was a kid. For some reason, knowing the answer to circles - and knowing the answer was always going to be the same, right answer.... was magic.

I wasn't deeply involved in the Poetry Friday world years ago when the whole Fibs thing - short poems based on the Fibonacci sequence - began, but I tried writing some - and mine, to be honest, sucked. I read about Fibonacci sequences, and talked about them to Tech Boy, who showed me his nautilus shell, and got all excited (he is a numbers whiz) and said a lot of things I didn't understand. Still, the magic persisted. I was glad to be offered this book for review. It reminded me, in many ways, of Brendan Buckley's Universe and Everything in It, by Sundee Frazier, and Wendy Lichtman's Do the Math: Secrets, Lies & Algebra. I liked the fibs which kicked off each chapter, and I love, love, love the cover, which is crammed with mathematical equations, doodles, and that all important slice of pie.

Concerning Character: Gregory K. has a lot going for him: his first and best friend, the shin-kicking Kelly - whose aim for Gregory's shin usually keeps him out of (most) trouble, his in at The Slice, the coffee shop Kelly's mom owns, where he gets lots of awesome slices of free pie, and his awesome basement room, where his poster of Einstein hides an old furnace compartment that houses his stash of poetry notebooks. If it weren't for math, Gregory would have a pretty good life. Of course, he's ultimately a sympathetic character because of the number of things piled against him. One: Math. It's inanimate and doesn't care if Gregory gets it or not. Love it or hate it, it just... exists. Ugh. Two: Owen. I spent a lot of time in the book wanting to kick Gregory's big brother Owen. And possibly not in the shin. He's a typical annoying brother who needles and pushes and teases and mocks, and the worse Gregory feels about things, the worse the self-named "O" gets. It's not easy not being seen as "the smart one" and Owen is pretty full of his smarts - but he can't dress his way out of a paper bag. (This, though true, isn't the sort of thing that really is much comfort, a sixth grader about to flunk out of math, like, completely repeat-it-next-year flunk-out.)

Three: Gregory's parents. They aren't exactly against him, as they don't mean to stress him out with the math games at the table, and the equations written on the blackboard walls of his bedroom, and the silent assumption that he's telling the truth about his love for math. His father never meant the notebook "for all your math ideas!" to remain intimidating and blank. Still, no matter what they intended... no one in Gregory's family has actually ever asked him what his own hopes and dreams and ideas are. And, to evenly spread around the blame, Gregory has never told them. He thinks about what he wants, about those hopes and dreams, and he knows this for sure: they have nothing to do with math. Gregory K. is a poet -- and he doesn't think he can get out the words to let his father know. He's not going to grow up to be like Owen and Kay. He's not even going to be like his accountant mother. He's going to...

...pretend like heck until another idea comes to him. Of course, Gregory's dumber ideas is why Kelly kicks him so often -- but even she can't save him from volunteering to be part of the city-wide math competition. And, lying to his parents about how much he loves math. And, she can't save him from flunking.

Gregory's in trouble. Worse than that, he's taken a short-cut on the truth with his very best and most precious first friend and it's coming back to kick him in the bum. Gregory needs to come to grips with telling the truth to his Mom and Dad about his math struggles, and his real dreams... but first, he's got to tell it to himself.

WARNING: This book is filled with discussions of higher math, references to polynomials, and the word "mathemagical." This may give you math flashbacks. There is both π and pie in this book. The best pie in the world is fresh blueberry, unless it is lemon cheesecake, key lime, apple with cheddar or French chocolate silk. Or peach. The theme of "finding your way" works for both life and numbers. Do not read while operating heavy machinery. Long division is only meditative if you can solve for zero. You may go away from this book a little sad, but just like numbers are eternal, so is friendship, if you let it be.

---

You can find THE 14 FIBS OF GREGORY K by Greg Pincus at an independent bookstore near you!

Poetry Friday: Snorting and Inappropriate Laughter

Oh, go ahead and laugh. You know you want to...
Poetry Friday is brought to you by the letters S and Y and the number 3, and is at the blog home of the fabulous Susan Taylor Brown. Check out actual poetry there!

Kidlit NaPoMo Who?

It's not quite April 1 yet, but welcome anyway to Kidlit NaPoMo--the 2010 KidLit Celebration of National Poetry Month!

As usual, there's a lot going on around the kidlitosphere. Laura Evans of All Things Poetry has kindly compiled a list, which I've reprinted here, but it's also posted under the “April National Poetry Month” button on her website.

Let the poetry party commence! (And don't forget to visit Book Aunt this week for Poetry Friday!)

30 Poets/30 Days in April 2010 @ GottaBook

Gregory K. features 30 children’s poets, one-a-day during April in a Celebration of Children’s Poetry. Each poem is previously unpublished.

New GLBTQ Teen Poetry @ I'm Here, I'm Queer, What the Hell Do I Read?

Lee Wind is publishing many new Teen voices during April for National Poetry Month.

Poems about Teaching @ A Year of Reading

Mary Lee Hahn will post an original poem about teaching and/or learning each day in April. She will invite other teachers, librarians, students, learners and poets to send her their original teaching and/or learning poems (or links to their poem posts) for inclusion. The more the merrier!

Also at A Year of Reading, Franki will review poetry books and tell about the Poetry Month activities she conducts in the school library throughout April.

Poetry Book Giveaway @ Irene Lathan

Irene Latham is giving away a favorite poetry anthology each Poetry Friday during April 2010. She has instigated a challenge to write a poem a day during April. She invites everybody to join her.

Poetry Makers @ The Miss Rumphius Effect

Tricia Stohr-Hunt interviews 30 children’s poets. She starts off with Mary Ann Hoberman, Children’s Poet Laureate, USA. The list is stellar!

Poetry Potluck @ Jama Rattigan’s alphabet soup

Jama is posting an original poem and favorite recipe each weekday throughout the month of April by some of the Poetry Friday regulars.

Poetry Tag @ Sylvia Vardell's Poetry for Children

For National Poetry Month in April, we’re playing "Poetry Tag" at PoetryForChildren. Sylvia Vardell will be inviting poets to "play" along by offering a poem for readers to enjoy, then "tag" a fellow poet who then shares her/his own poem THAT IS CONNECTED to the previous poem in SOME way—by a theme, word, idea, tone-- and offers a sentence or two explaining that connection. The poets have responded enthusiastically and will be sharing a chain of poems by J. Patrick Lewis, X. J. Kennedy, Rebecca Kai Dotlich, Avis Harley, Lee Bennett Hopkins, Joyce Sidman, and more!

Poetry Postcard Project @ Jone MacCulloch

Students write a poem which is placed on a postcard. All of the postcards are decorated. If you want one, send Jone (macrush53@yahoo.com) your address and she will mail one to you.

More information can be found here:
http://maclibrary.wordpress.com/poetry-postcard-project/

Thirty Days, Thirty Students, Thirty Poems @ Jone MacCulloch

Each day in April Jone is posting a new student poem on her blog, "Check It Out" (http://maclibrary.wordpress.com).

Share a Poem @ Laura Purdie Salas

Laura Salas will post a children’s poem per day from a poetry book she loves.

Original Poem-A-Day Challenge
The following people are challenging themselves to write a poem a day. Poems will appear on the poet’s site.

Susan Taylor Brown: http://susanwrites.livejournal.com
Mary Lee Hahn: http://readingyear.blogspot.com
Andromeda Jazmon: http://awrungsponge.blogspot.com/
Irene Latham: http://www.irenelatham.com/
Jone MacCulloch: http://deowriter.wordpress.com
Elizabeth Moore: http://tinyreader.blogspot.com/
April Halprin Wayland: http://www.aprilwayland.com/poetry/poetry-month/

There may be more, but for now, go forth and enjoy!

Poetry Friday: April, Eliot, and National Poetry Month

You all already know how much I love the poster for this year's National Poetry Month. But that's because I'm an inveterate Eliot fan. I just can't help it; the way he uses language, the way he evokes images even when I have no idea what he's talking about because he's just too much smarter than I am... so, since National Poetry Month happens to be in April, and I just happen to love Eliot, here's a famous bit about April from one of my favorite Eliot poems, The Waste Land:

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

Summer surprised us...

If you have a spare hour or two (because it's fairly epic in scope), read the rest of The Waste Land here...

Like most months, this April has been both cruel and kind...but there's certainly been kindness in the wealth of poetry links and events. Go check out more at Carol's Corner, the host of today's Poetry Friday, and don't miss her original poem!

Poetry Friday: Words to Live By

Earlier this week, the words of Rabbi Hillel echoed through my head, as the change of administration in the country took place. "We understand," the gentleman said, "that greatness is never a given."

Do we understand?

Nothing is a given, and never has been. No one is handing out greatness or goodness or change or hope. Everything has to be... taken, hands opened, accepted, reached for, grasped, and achieved.

If we are just for ourselves, then who are we?
If we are not for ourselves, then who will be?
If we don't reach out now, when will we?

Perhaps a strange thing, to place the words of an ancient Jerusalem scholar on the side of a whitewashed Presbyterian church. But I think the wisdom of Rabbi Hillel is transcendent enough to work, and the imagery of a plain and practical church, with its churchyard full of the past, speaks to the generations behind and before us who knew:

Nothing is a given.
What a world, in which we have a chance to make something of ourselves...

---

Poetry Friday is at Laura's place. And don't miss her fabulous picture of the dungeon at Urquhart Castle, and the "15 Words or More" poems which came from that prompt. Some pretty intense observations.

Poetry Friday: Unnoticed and Necessary

Margaret Atwood is one of my favorite writers of all time. This poem has been passed around and I don't know if it's in one of her books I haven't yet read, but it's one I love.

She wrote another one, Variations on the Word Love which is also quite popular, but it's this one that touches me, somehow. There's such a vulnerability in sleep, and the way the poem draws one and immerses one into deeper and deeper layers reminds me of actually falling asleep, and in that depth, there is a vast intimacy. The final line clinches it for me -- and it also brings up the question of whether or not I really would ever want to be that person -- so necessary and unnoticed -- and selfless enough to be unnoticed.

Could you?

"Variations On The Word 'Sleep'"
I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

---

Poetry Friday today is hosted at The Blog With The Shockingly Clever Title. Keep a good thought for Karen today as she battles plumbing gremlins!

Poetry Friday: Finnegan, Begin Again

One of those bizarre phrases my mother used to say to me when I was a kid was "Finnegan, begin again." Generally she said it when I screwed up a math problem and had to start over.

Unfortunately, it's also one of those weird things that welded itself to my own vocabulary, and I found myself saying it awhile ago, and realized I had no idea who Finnegan was, and why he had to begin again.

For this reason, there's Google.


There was an old man named Michael Finnegan
He had whiskers on his chinnegan
They fell out and then grew in again
Poor old Michael Finnegan
Begin again.

Not necessarily the stuff of great poetry, more along the lines of "same song, second verse, a little bit louder, and a little bit worse," but I kind of like the idea of teaching the very small that occasionally everyone has to "begin again." One hopes it won't come as such a bitter surprise later on in life. One hopes.

In honor of the New Year, I have dug out a "begin again" poem from the vaults of the fabulous Wesley McNair. If he's a new poet to you, I beg you -- go, delve. Like Billy Collins, he captures the leaping pulse of Americana and the Western World, and translates it to the page in dry, wry syllables. An older poet, he has a different slant on things that are familiar to us, and often sets the reader at a tilt, thinking.

This one is a little longer than what I usually choose, but is worth clicking through and reading all the way to the end.

The Future

On the afternoon talk shows of America
the guests have suffered life's sorrows
long enough. All they require now
is the opportunity for closure,
to put the whole thing behind them

and get on with their lives. That their lives,
in fact, are getting on with them even
as they announce their requirement
is written on the faces of the younger ones
wrinkling their brows, and the skin
of their elders collecting just under their
set chins. It's not easy to escape the past,
but who wouldn't want to live in a future
where the worst has already happened

and Americans can finally relax after daring
to demand a different way? For the rest of us,
the future, barring variations, turns out
to be not so different from the present
where we have always lived—the same
struggle of wishes and losses, and hope,
that old lieutenant, picking us up
every so often to dust us off and adjust
our helmets. Adjustment, for that matter,

may be the one lesson hope has to give,
serving us best when we begin to find
what we didn't know we wanted in what
the future brings.

...
Read the last three stanzas here.

"The Future" by Wesley McNair, from Talking in the Dark. © David R. Godine, 1998.

More poetry by Mr. McNair, audio and print, can be found here. More Poetry Friday selections can be found at A Year of Reading.

Poetry Friday: Finding My Center

I had so much fun reading Sara's post a few days ago -- because I'm in the process of renewing my visa to stay in the UK another two years and I'm reading the absolutely insane questions that require me to "tick yes or no."

In times of either peace or war have you, ever been involved in, or suspected of involvment in, war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide?
...
Have you engaged in any other activities that might indicate that you may not be considered a person of good character?

Tick yes or no.

No. No. No. No. No.
And a thousand times more.

And yet, the last question is sticky. Have you engaged in any activities that might indicate that you may not be considered a person of good character?

Really?
Who are you, then?

Meg Kearny's whimsical, elegant Creed attempts to establish part of an answer to that -- and even as thorough as this poem is, we still see only an outline of the poet.

Isn't that the way it always is.

Creed
by Meg Kearney

I believe the chicken before the egg
though I believe in the egg. I believe
eating is a form of touch carried
to the bitter end; I believe chocolate
is good for you; I believe I'm a lefty
in a right-handed world, which does not
make me gauche, or abnormal, or sinister.
I believe "normal" is just a cycle on
the washing machine; I believe the touch
of hands has the power to heal, though
nothing will ever fill this immeasurable
hole in the center of my chest. I believe
in kissing; I believe in mail; I believe
in salt over the shoulder, a watched
pot never boils, and if I sit by my
mailbox waiting for the letter I want
it will never arrive—not because of
superstition, but because that's not
how life works. I believe in work:
phone calls, typing, multiplying,
black coffee, write write write, dig
dig dig, sweep sweep.

from An Unkindness of Ravens. © BOA Editions, Rochester, New York, 2001.
---read the rest of this poem right here.

From the Earth, only one side of the moon is visible -- ever. No matter how any of us may appear, we are only the sum total of the moment we are in -- a moving picture of who we have the potential to become. We believe that we see all we are, and judge each other -- and ourselves -- so harshly, despite the fact that few of us are ever fully whomever we could be.

Life is more than yes/no, 0/1, either/or. This I believe.

Find your own creed this Poetry Friday at Wild Rose Reader, who has invited us for brunch. I think I'm late, but there will surely be leftovers.

Wha? Oh, Poetry Friday? Um...

My novel, dear people, is kicking my behind, so I'm going to have to send you over to Miss Rumphius' Poetry Stretch to see the climbing poem I wrote the other day. Meanwhile, you'll find the Poetry Friday Round-up between the pages of Mommy's Favorite Children's Books.

P.S. -- It's David E's birthday. Go wish him a happy.

Poetry Friday: The Music of Gratitude

In our family, we never wanted anything to end, so we made a... "rule." It was your birthday until the cake was all gone. It was summer until you couldn't wear your flip flops (sometimes summer lasted until November). It was Sunday until 1 a.m. Monday morning. It's Thanksgiving until all the leftovers are finished.

So. Happy Thanksgiving, Part II, to many of you.

Today's poster is a post-Thanksgiving PSA, brought to you by the WPA, whose artists were making sure the nation had nice bright teeth without cranberry skins in between them. SO. After you make that nice turkey omelette this morning, do brush. Thank you.

It's still Thanksgiving weekend, time to give thanks for silliness. Entertain yourself by making a snowflake and enjoy today's Poetry Friday selection.

Poem: "In memory of George Lewis, Great Jazzman" by Lou Lipsitz from Seeking the Hook: New & Selected Poems. Copyright © 1997 Signal Books.

In memory of George Lewis, Great Jazzman

1

Man is the animal that knows

the clarinet

     makes his living
on the docks, a stevedore,
110 lbs., carrying what loads
he can

the Depression comes along,
his teeth rot, no money, and
he has to accept silence


2

Thirteen years
later
     they put the instrument
back together
     with rubber bands
bought him

new teeth
     and then he began
...

Read the whole of this joyful celebration of music and life here. The final stanza is one I have read over and over again:

4

Alright. There is a frailness
in all our music.
Sometimes we're broken
and it's lost.
Sometimes we forget
for years it's even in us, heads
filled with burdens and smoke.
And sometimes we've held
to it and it's there,

waiting to break out
walking back from the end.
...
Poetry Friday dances on at Under the Covers.

Poetry Friday: Not Simply Silliness

Edward Lear was just a little bit insane, as many painter-poets seem to be (Lewis Carroll, anyone? Dr. Seuss?). Lit theorists point out that he was an "absurdist" partially in self-defense; his father was sent to debtor's prison when he was only thirteen, and he was forced after that to get a job to support himself. His paintings begin to sell well by the time he was fifteen, and he was saved financially, but at the price of drastically altering his life.

Maybe it was because Victorian society was so rigid that Lear continued in his quest for silliness, maybe because his first book was published for the grandchildren of his patron, or perhaps it was because he was making up for having to grow up against his will... no one can say. Still, despite the fact that many of Lear's poems are judged to be for children, and The Owl and the Pussycat is smilingly referred to as "light verse," there always seems to be a couplet or two that makes sense. A little. You just have to squint and tilt your head sideways...

Cold Are the Crabs That Crawl On Yonder Hills

Cold are the crabs that crawl on yonder hills
Colder the cucumbers that grow beneath,
And colder still the brazen chops that wreathe
The tedious gloom of philosophic pills!
For when the tardy gloom of nectar fills
The ample bowls of demons and of men,
There lurks the feeble mouse, the homely hen,
And there the porcupine with all her quills.
Yet much remains -- to weave a solemn strain
That lingering sadly -- slowly dies away,
Daily departing with departing day.
A pea green gamut on a distant plain
Where wily walrusses in congress meet--
Such such is life--

- Edward Lear, from Teapots and Quails,
Davidson and Hofer © 1953, p. 63.

This poem was published posthumously, so we can only assume that brazen has, in this context, its original meaning, that of "made of brass," and that chops are jaws. That still doesn't make much sense of the poem; my only amusement is in agreeing that a.) crabs and cucumbers are cold, and b.) "such such is life." It's a little anti-climactic -- and fatalistic, but true.

This one amused me, since it seems to be about politics:

When "Grand Old Men" Persist in Folly

When "Grand old men" persist in folly
In slaughtering men and chopping trees,
What art can soothe the melancholy
Of those whom futile "statesmen" teaze?

The only way their wrath to cover
To let mankind know who's to blame-o--
Is first to rush by train to Dover
And then straight onward to Sanremo.

-- from The Complete Nonsense Book,
edited by Lady Strachey © 1912, p. 428.

Politics bites; go on vacation. I can get behind that.

I wonder how many ministers found this one un amusing:

It Is A Virtue In Ingenuous Youth

It is a virtue in ingenuous youth,
To leave off lying and return to truth,
For well it's known that all religious morals
Are caused by Bass's Ale and South Atlantic Corals.

-- from The Complete Nonsense Book,
edited by Lady Strachey, © 1912, p. 428.

So... exactly what is the "truth," here?

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Poetry Friday today is hosted over at Holly's Brimstone Soup. Those of you who are poetically inclined are also invited to check out the Winter Blog Blast Tour and peruse author interviews with the funny and talented Nebula-finalist Elizabeth Wein Gatland, the affable author-illustrator D.M. Cornish, the inestimable Tobin Anderson, aka M.T., and YA newcomer and awesome stay-at-home Dad, Dave Anderson. There are tons more interviews with brilliant, funny, self-deprecating on tap for today. Consider:

An intense interview with Mayra Lazara Dole @ Chasing Ray
The file of things other people think Francis O'Roark Dowell should write @ Fuse Number 8 @ SLJ,
The Lear-esque poet, J. Patrick Lewis @ Writing and Ruminating
Your spinach laden teeth, with Wendy Mass @ Hip Writer Mama
A travel imagination with Lisa Ann Sandell @ Bildungsroman
Shopping, fear, breast-feeding, anxiety, & phone sex-- or not -- with Caroline Hickey/Sara Lewis Holmes @ Mother Reader
Chat with dog-loving, non-pirate A.S. King @ Bookshelves of Doom, and
visit the superbly gifted Emily Wing Smith at Interactive Reader

And don't be afraid that if you don't read these interviews this minute, they'll vanish. Chasing Ray is keeping all the links right here.

Poetry Friday: "How Frugal Is the Chariot That Bears the Human Soul"

It's a Dickinson Day, which means that it's a day for a poem that is compact and concise and full of a quiet passion. Go, Emily.

This poem struck a chord with me a few weeks ago, and I'm still thinking through Jen's post at ShelfSpace and the idea of creating a culture of reading. Most people I know have a book in their backpack, purse, pocket, HandSpring, or Kindle wherever they go, but there are other people who always complain that they just don't have time to read, or, see me reading and say they wish they had the time, or were as fast etc. etc. etc., blah blah. May I remind you, to paraphrase a friend, that the only thing we're born knowing how to do is wee and wail? Everything else is a learned skill.

So, anyone can become a reader.

While there is indeed no frigate like a book, there are others of the poems of Emily Dickinson which I wish I had been taught in school. I sometimes wonder at the worn and frayed Dickinson pieces which are used and overused in the junior high and high school canon (and parroted to that dreadful yellow rose song*). Why do we do that to her? And to our poor kids!? I hope teachers are discovering more of her other work through fun outings like Poetry Friday, and expanding their student's interest with words like this:

XXI. He ate and drank the precious Words

He ate and  

drank the

  precious Words –

His Spirit grew

robust –

He knew no more  


that he was poor;

Nor that his

frame was

  Dust –

He danced  

along the dingy

Days


And this Bequest

of Wings

Was but a Book –

What Liberty

A loosened Spirit

  brings –




~ Emily Dickinson


This is the unedited version of the poem; you'll notice that the lines are different from her usual stanzas, and it feels a little more organic to a jotting down in a journal type of thing. Also from Miss Emily's journal: "Not alone we fly . . . he has obligation who has Paradise."

And this is why we give books and talk about them and share them. We have Paradise. Everyone else should, too.

Happy Poetry Friday.
More poetry at Yat-Yee's place.

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* Really, it's an awfully good way to memorize a poem, especially if you're of a musical bent as I am. But... that song is an earworm of the most accurséd sort. Further, there are many Dickinson poems on which it doesn't work! But few people ever get that far in her poetry to know that. Which is a shame.

Poetry Friday Too: Extra Innings With Langston Hughes

(Poetry is song in meter.
How can I keep from singing?)

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Let America Be America Again
by Langston Hughes


Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.


Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!




From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright © 1994 the Estate of Langston Hughes.
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New inauguration poem? ...I think not.

Poetry Friday: That Single January Shooting Star

"Success is counted sweetest," Emily Dickinson says, "by those who ne'er succeed."

I always assume she means that this is because the one who has not achieved success continues to struggle and strive, while the successful person relaxes into the lauds and laurels that are his due.

I guess that depends, really, on how one considers the nature of the success; if we consider a success for one person, then maybe they do relax and reflect on a job well done, and then the moment is over. However, if that success is a team effort, the satisfaction of the whole makes success doubly sweet as it echoes and reverberates between the most tepid members to the fervent and earnest.

Personal victories are extraordinary to watch, as gripping to hear as personal survival stories. Everyone has their "down in the valley" tale, which they may or may not ever share, but you can identify those moments when they have struggled to the mountaintop by their joy, despite the January chill.


in celebration of surviving

when senselessness has pounded you around on the ropes
and you're getting too old to hold out for the future
no work and running out of money,
and then you make a try after something that you know you
    won't get
and this long shot comes through on the stretch
in a photo finish of your heart's trepidation
then for a while
even when the chill factor of these prairie winters puts it at
    fifty below
you're warm and have that old feeling
of being a comer, though belated
in the crazy game of life

standing in the winter night
emptying the garbage and looking at the stars
you realize that although the odds are fantastically against you
when that single January shooting star
flung its wad in the maw of night
it was yours
and though the years are edged with crime and squalor
that second wind, or twenty-third
is coming strong
and for a time
perhaps a very short time
one lives as though in a golden envelope of light


"In Celebration of Surviving," by Iowan poet Chuck Miller, from Northern Fields: New & Selected Poems, Coffee House Press, 1993.

Poetry Friday is hosted by librarian Ms. Mac at Check It Out.

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Pssst. Have you taken the Comment Challenge? Mother Reader & Lee Wind have cooked up a challenge to the YA and children's lit blogosphere to become a more cohesive community and support each other in blogging, thinking and writing for the next twenty-one days. That ties in all too nicely with my commitment to lift weights and start working on that running thing again (all your fault, Colleen), only the Comment Challenge will have prizes. Okay, theoretically lifting weights has prizes, too. But mostly not.

What has changed for writers, now that the President-elect is a writer? From Dr. Susan,

The universal appeal of his books may help move work by other writers of color from the "ethnic" or "black interest" bookstore ghettoes into the mainstream where they belong. (Next on the agenda: recognition that books by women and LGBT writers are also real literature. But that's another, post-euphoria post.)

Read more here, and add your own thoughts in the comments.

Poetry Friday: Telling the Truest Tale

A couple of years ago, I was really excited to meet Our Jane Yolen in person. Okay, yes, I didn't actually meet her; I stood next to her in a hallway while we sipped tea and sat in the row behind her at a conference, but I was this close to saying hello. Anyway, I admire her greatly as a writer, but why I refer to her as Our Lady, Jane, is because of her poetry, which generally contrives to smack me right between the eyes with a small silver hammer called Truth.

I've posted this poem before, but especially now, in the thick of election furor and angst, in the days when acrimony and hope war side by side, it's time to share it, gratefully, again (and since it was passed out at the conference on bookmarks, I am sharing it in full). Let it smack you with that hammer, set you thinking and being and doing. May you see the Other in all your tales in a truer way.


Once Upon
by Jane Yolen © 2007

Once Upon A Time
there was a Wolf,
but not a Wolf,
an Other
whose mother
and father were others,
who looked not like us,
Republican or Dem
in other words--
Them.
They were forest dwellers,
child sellers,
meat eaters,
wife beaters,
idol makers
oath breakers --
in other words, Wolf.
So Happy Ever After means
we kill the Wolf,
spill his blood,
knock him out,
bury him in mud,
make him dance
in red hot shoes.
For us to win
The Wolf must lose.

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Poetry Friday is hosted today by its creator, the one and only Kelly@BigA, little a.

Poetry Friday: the Writing on the Wall

Epigrams are like the graffiti of the poetic world. They're not generally more than four lines with varying rhyme schemes, and the only real requirement is that they're witty and concise, which is what I suppose what people who scrawl things in public spaces think they're being. (Yet so often, they're just incoherent. Like this bird...thing). I love them, and enjoyed paging through my Norton poetry book to select a few for today. These caught my eye~

Epigram, by Peter Pindar, ca. 1780

Midas, they say, possessed the art of old
Of turning whatso'er he touched to gold;
This modern statesman can reverse with ease --
Touch them with gold, they'll turn to what you please.

It absolutely slays me that this was written in seventeen eighty!!!

Epigram, by Matthew Prior, 1710-20

Rise not till noon, if life be but a dream,
      As Greek and Roman poets have expressed:
Add good example to so grave a theme,
      For he who sleeps the longest lives the best.

A more modern epigram comes from Countee Cullen, and while bringing a smile, also brings a bit of a wince:

For a Lady I Know, 1925

She even thinks that up in heaven
Her class lies late and snores,
While poor black cherubs rise at seven
To do celestial chores.

I don't think Mr. Cullen ever bothered trying to straighten her out. I like his wry tone, and how he carefully doesn't say she's exactly wrong, but... you get the point anyway.

Finally, J.V. Cunningham reminds us that all things will take place -- eventually.

All in Due Time, 1950

All in due time: love will emerge from hate,
And the due deference of truth from lies.
If not quite all things come to those who wait
They will not need them: in due time one dies.

And on that cheery note, I invite to you join the gang at Becky's for Poetry Friday.

Poetry Friday: A Selfless Scourge

Today I pulled out one of my college texts, a Heath Anthology of American Literature. (One semester for some reason we strayed from the Norton, and here almost three thousand pages of proof.) I found a poem by Theodore Roethke, 1909-1963, a strangely troubled man from Michigan who grew up amongst his father's commercial greenhouses and is described as a heavy drinker who drank to seek oblivion, a rudely aggressive tennis player, and an "inveterate casual pawer of women." He wrote beautifully of birth and death in growing things, and curiously and eloquently of old women. He won a Pulitzer, a Fulbright and twice the Guggenheim. There is no accounting for who we are and where we come from to what we can produce. A lesson, perhaps.

from Meditations of an Old Woman
Elegy
1958

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Her face like a rain-beaten stone on the day she rolled off
With the dark hearse, and enough flowers for an alderman,
And so she was, in her way. Aunt Tilly.

Sighs, sighs, who says they have sequence?
Between the spirit and the flesh, -- what war?
She never knew;
For she asked no quarter, and gave none,
Who sat with the dead when the relatives left,
Who fed and tended the infirm, the mad, the epileptic,
And, with a harsh rasp of a laugh at herself,
Faced up to the worst.

I recall how she harried the children away all the late summer
From the one beautiful thing in her yard, the peachtree;
How she kept the wizened, the fallen, the misshapen for herself,
And picked and pickled the best, to be left on rickety doorsteps.

And yet she died in agony,
Her tongue, at the last, thick, black as an ox's.

Terror of cops, bill collectors, betrayers of the poor, --
I see you in some celestial supermarket,
Moving serenely among the leeks and cabbages,
Probing the squash,
Bearing down, with two steady eyes,
On the quaking butcher.

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I wonder if everyone knows an Aunt Tilly; tart-tongued and not suffering fools, putting up with no nonsense, and getting things done. The Aunt Tilly's and Miss Pross' (from A Tale of Two Cities of the world ...rock.
Poetry Friday is at Picture Book of the Day, Anastasia Suen's blog.