The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say. ~Anaïs Nin
goings on in january
Waterworks Visual Arts Center, Salisbury, NC
Waterworks Visual Arts Center is hosting a songwriting competition in conjunction with Art of Faiths exhibition, sponsored by Dr. Phillip Burgess and Daryl Bruner. This exhibition includes the artwork done by Michele Wood for my first book, I Lay My Stitches Down: Poems of American Slavery.
year-end joy
I’ve been reading for a “notables” book committee this year, my second of a three-year term, and I’m down to my last seven titles. Those seven books haven’t yet arrived though, so I am granted some free reading time of my own choosing—- unheard of since July.
Because I am off work these two weeks, I was able to read the new biography of E.B. White by Michael Sims, The Story of Charlotte’s Web, which I loved. And I spent time luxuriating over at http://www.poets.org. It’s always nice to hang with poets, and breathe in what they say about their own poetics. I read essays by Eavan Boland, Jane Hirschfield, and Carl Phillips. I re-read poems by Yeats, Williams, and Wilbur. And then I came across a form of poetry I didn’t know called the “lune.”
According to Jack Collom in his essay, “How I Teach Poetry in the Schools,” the lune is like a haiku, only simpler. Instead of syllables, we count words. Three/five/three. I tried writing one while eating a slice of toasted gingerbread and looking out the dining room window into the windy morning:
thin, gray branches
shake and reach, imploring their
leaves to return
I like this thing called lune. Collom mentions in his essay that he wrote 100 lunes in an evening. When he told a junior high school class this, a girl came to school the next day with 120. Little snapshots of what surrounded her at home.
So this has been a lucky week with its unexpected hiatus in notable books to read falling at a time when I’m not working. A lucky find, this new biography of one of my favorite writers; this new form of poetry. A joy to write a new poem, a lune. A lucky week, this last week of December, this last week of the year. May a week in 2012 be as joyful.
wednesday’s words . . .
“ . . . You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads . . .” ~Ray Bradbury
trees and holidays
A BLOG POST OVER AT POETRY FRIDAY reminded me of one of my favorite poems ever: “little tree” by e.e. cummings. I used it to model many of my own poems in my teens and twenties, changing the subject of the poem, but not cadence or tone. Here it is. 
[little tree]
little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flowerwho found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetlyi will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don’t be afraidlook…………………. the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,put up your little arms
and i’ll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won’t be a single place dark or unhappythen when you’re quite dressed
you’ll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they’ll stare!
oh but you’ll be very proudand my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we’ll dance and sing
“Noel Noel”by e. e. cummings
Wednesday’s writerly words of wisdom
“Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. . . . Try to be better than yourself.” — William Faulkner
THANK YOU TO KID’S INK CHILDREN’S BOOKSTORE in Indianapolis for selecting I Lay My Stitches Down: Poems of American Slavery as a STAFF PICK!!
Read This Book. Today.
It’s been some time since I’ve experienced such exquisite prose in a book for middle-graders. It made me go and re-read everything else written by Sonya Hartnett all over again. She uses language the way a sculptor works with clay. I can’t get enough of her layered, imagistic writing.
Andrej and his younger brother, Tomas, run for their lives after their Romany encampment is destroyed during WWII. They come upon a ravaged town and discover a small zoo still intact. The animals are caged, and no one is there to care for them. And being midnight, well, who can say what zoo animals can do at such a magic hour. An incredible story, fable-like, and gorgeous.
THE ORIGINAL ART WORK for I Lay My Stitches Down will be on exhibit at the Waterworks Visual Arts Center in Salisbury, North Carolina from November 26, 2011 – February 11, 2012. The poems will be set to music and performed at various times throughout the exhibition.
start your engines . . . .
Since I’m a middle school librarian by day, and hungry and whiny and worn out by the time I get home at night, I have no energy for NaNoWriMo, but I am going to try PiBoIdMo (Picture Book Idea Month) where I’ll be conjuring 30 picture book ideas in 30 days. My hope is that 3 of them, 10% of the month’s generative work, will become publishable manuscripts in 2012.
My favorite picture books, the ones that I purchase and study tend to fall into three different areas:
The most spare, most literary works. They can be quiet or hilarious, but they must be use language artfully. I’m thinking of Bill Martin, Jr.’s Listen to the Rain. An oldie, but a goodie.
Picture books that stretch to reach the oldest child audience—middle grades and above. The many layered ones with linguistic, intellectual, and philosophic meat to them. Patricia Polacco’s books come to mind; so do the many picture book biographies, such as S.D. Nelson’s Black Elk’s Vision, or Doreen Rappaport’s John’s Secret Dreams: The Life of John Lennon.
And lastly, the rhythmic, and/or rhyming picture book. One favorite is Bats in the Library by Brian Lies. Another, with its smatterings of Spanish, is Los Gatos Black on Halloween, written by Marisa Montes and illustrated by Yuyi Morales. There are several other great ones, but these come most readily to mind because of their seasonal element as well as their perfectly scanned stanzas.
So, the countdown begins next Tuesday, November 1, 2011. I’ll generate 30 ideas, and maybe by next summer, I’ll have generated a manuscript or three to send out to publishers.