Spring Break Beach Reads

Wide swaths of beach four inches deep in shells.

Morning walk at low tide.

I'm finally getting to this book. Did you know that you can now  "borrow" books free at Amazon Prime?

This was a free ebook download back before Christmas. A good book for analyzing a few recent reads and thinking about a new story idea. 

Audio book  for the drive down. Will finish on the way home.  

Hubby brought this one in hardcover. I may delve into it when he's done. 

And I'm playing in the March Madness Poetry Tournament. Round One has started. I'll get my first word (seed #2) tonight. Voting for Round One begins tomorrow. 

Poetry Friday: Why Shouldn't I Sing to Myself?

While browsing my poetry shelves this morning, I ran my fingers across an old copy of "Straw For the Fire." It's a compilation of bits and pieces from Theodore Roethke's notebooks. Roethke is one of my favorite poets, and understanding the poetic process of poets I like is generally eye-opening, often inspiring, and always fun.

Roethke left 277 notebooks behind. Most of them were spiral bound notebooks that he filled with random phrases, bits of dialog, jokes, and all sorts of fragments. Whatever was on his mind. He also left about 8,000 loose sheets of paper. Apparently he moved from the notebook to loose sheets attached to a clipboard as he began to compose. David Wagoner, who selected and arranged the bits in the book, says that Roethke "let his mind rove freely, moment by moment in the early stages of composition, from the practical to the transcendental, from the lame and halting to the beautiful, from the comic to the terrible, from the literal to the surreal, seizing whatever he might from he language, but mulling over and taking sounding of every syllable."

Here are a couple of bits and pieces from Roethke's process:

All day, all day the wind whirled me out of myself.
I saw the sea rolling there in the field...

Lack-love, sing some sweetness into your bones.

The stony garden of the spirit grows
Things never harvested in ordered rows.

Should I forage the stones like a bird
Picking for seeds?...

Stick out your can, here comes a lesson plan.

Acting one's age is just a form.

Why is poetry scary?

I learn by the way of the fool,
The moth, and the child,
My two eyes embracing all,
Ingenuous, wild.

What you should know is that none of these bits ever made it into one of Roethke's published poems. He culled back through his old notebooks often, looking for pieces that were usable, thoughts that he wanted to recapture.

Are you inspired yet?

For more Poetry Friday posts, stop in at Jama Rattigan's Alphabet Soup.

Poetry Friday: Polar Animals

It's been a busy week and my brain is tired, so here goes with some silly, polar poems.

Please Remove Seal
Jack Prelutsky

PLEASE REMOVE SEAL BEFORE USING THIS PRODUCT,
the sign on the box clearly read.
I don't have a seal, but I'm taking no chances—
I'll toss out my walrus instead.


Narwhal
X.J. Kennedy

Around their igloo fires with glee
The Eskimos tell tales
Of Narwhal. Listen and you'll see
This unicorn of whales
Through frosty waves off Greenland's coast
Majestically advance.
And like a knight come forth to joust
Hold high its wary lance.



The More It Snows
by A. A. Milne

The more it
SNOWS-tiddely-pom,
The more it
GOES-tiddely-pom
The more it
GOES-tiddely-pom
On
Snowing.

And nobody
KNOWS-tiddely-pom,
How cold my
TOES-tiddely-pom,
How cold my
TOES-tiddely-pom
Are
Growing.

Be sure to stop by Anastasia Suen's blog, Picture Book of the Day, for other Poetry Friday posts.

Another Polar Poem

I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the Peary/Cook controversy. At some point research must stop and I must find a way to present this to middle-grade readers. The fact that it's still disputed a hundred years later makes me ask myself: What in the world am I thinking? I need more than a pick ax and a sextant to find my way through the morass! There is still a Peary camp. There's still a Cook camp. And they are still as diametrically opposed to one another as contemporary partisan politics. So, I'm taking a break from them and reading about S. A. Andrée, who tried to float over the North Pole in a hydrogen balloon. He didn't make it either.

Polar Explorer Salomon August Andrée (1897)
by Elizabeth Bradfield

O, terrible—silence over ice—
no panting dogs, no hissing runners,
no footfall to break it. Just the crack
and groan of its own awful straining
rising up.

You warm your hands at the flame
that lifts you. The balloon's silk
is a second sun, unsetting. You're always in its noon,
directly underneath its rippling light.

There's a red smear on one floe, white
bear loping away from the seal's meat.
There's a quick spout in a lead,
the whale's back there, gone.

When blizzards, no ground to fix
your boots to, just directionless swirl
and the compass' doubtful arrow.

Who else has breathed air this clear, crystals of it
hardening briefly in your lungs? Who else has so brightly
risen above the dangerous landscape?

And when you find that you are losing height,
when the earth calls you down to its own slogging,
when it's been decided that you've traveled long enough
as ghosts, silent and apart, you know
some disaster of hunger and cold awaits
—your bones' location to be a mystery for thirty years—
you know your limbs may no longer have the knack
of pulling, of recovery, of resistance, and you're glad anyway
to be mortal again, and stumbling.

Poetry Friday: Explorers

This week my research for the reader's theater book on Explorers took me to the North Pole. I'm reading Cook & Peary: The Polar Controversy Resolved by Robert M. Bryce. It was a story that caught the interest and ire of the entire country for years.

I've never been in a place that's extremely cold like the Poles. I don't like being cold, so it's hard for me to imagine anyone wanting to go there, especially more than once. But the explorers who once set foot in these frozen lands always wanted to go back. This poem by Mark Strand, captures the longing.

I Had Been a Polar Explorer
Mark Strand

I had been a polar explorer in my youth
and spent countless days and nights freezing
in one blank place and then another. Eventually,
I quit my travels and stayed at home,
and there grew within me a sudden excess of desire,
as if a brilliant stream of light of the sort one sees
within a diamond were passing through me.
I filled page after page with visions of what I had witnessed—
groaning seas of pack ice, giant glaciers, and the windswept white
of icebergs. Then, with nothing more to say, I stopped
and turned my sights on what was near. Almost at once,
a man wearing a dark coat and broad-brimmed hat
appeared under the trees in front of my house.
The way he stared straight ahead and stood,
not shifting his weight, letting his arms hang down
at his side, made me think that I knew him.
But when I raised my hand to say hello,
he took a step back, turned away, and started to fade
as longing fades until nothing is left of it.

Always Time for a Poem

But not much more. So here's to Poetry Friday.

One Heart
by Li-Young Lee

Look at the birds. Even flying
is born

out of nothing. The first sky
is inside you, open

at either end of day.
The work of wings

was always freedom, fastening
one heart to every falling thing.

Poetry Friday: A Good Cry

Everyone needs one once in a while.

Crying
by Galway Kinnell

Crying only a little bit
is no use. You must cry
until your pillow is soaked!
Then you can get up and laugh.
Then you can jump in the shower
and splash-splash-splash!
Then you can throw open your window
and, "Ha ha! Ha ha!"
And if people say, "Hey,
what's going on up there?"
"Ha ha!" sing back, "Happiness
was hiding in the last tear!
I wept it! Ha ha!"

Poetry Friday

It's late in the day, and the temperature is dropping again. Though it's nothing compared to the last week here in the Deep South. It makes me want to curl up beside a fire, wrap myself in fleece, and read a good book of poems. In honor of the day, the moment, the words, here's one from Emily Dickinson.

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 --

The Last Day of April

My mother-in-law has planted her garden. According to the almanac, this last day of April is the best day to put seeds into the ground and expect a harvest. She's next door to me for the first time in many years. The last time I lived next door to her, my 28-year-old son was a baby, and I hadn't discovered my own love for the garden. This year, I'll pay more attention to the process, though my own affinity runs more toward flowers than food. You never know, though, maybe I'll absorb something by osmosis, just by being close.

The end of April also means National Poetry Month is coming to a close. I have enjoyed posting poems and reading them on some of my favorite blogs. So, one last poem to end the month. This is from Amy Carmichael, an Irish missionary who spent 53 years in South India. She founded Dohnavur Fellowship, a refuge for children. From Elisabeth Elliot's biography of her: "In a far more secular and self-preoccupied time, Amy Carmichael's vision of the unseen and her ardent effort to dwell in its light, making any sacrifice for its sake, seems hardly believable..." Yet "Amma," loved by hundreds children, was just such a woman.

Dust and Flame

But I have seen a fiery flame
Take to his pure and burning heart
Mere dust of earth, to it impart
His virtue, till that dust became
Transparent loveliness of flame.

O Fire of God, Thou fervent Flame,
Thy dust of earth in Thee would fall,
And so be lost beyond recall,
Transformed by Thee, its very name
Forgotten in Thine own, O Flame.

--Amy Carmichael

The Beast

National Poetry Month

Inspiration often comes at inconvenient moments--walking my neighborhood and I've forgotten my phone with it's memo-to-self capabilities, planting flowers in my garden with dirty hands and no pen nearby, in the middle of the night when I try to convince myself I'll remember in the morning. And then the phrase, the next scene, the image is gone.

The same is true in life. How often we miss the moment for a word or an act of kindness that will make a difference in someone's day. We let the opportunity pass, and the act that only you or I could do goes undone. And something is lost.

I'm learning to listen to that inner voice that prompts me to respond, whether it's with pen and paper or a kind word. Regret is harder to live with than failure.


The Beast

I came to a great door,
Its lintel overhung
With burr, bramble, and thorn;
And when it swung, I saw
A meadow, lush and green.

And there a great beast played,
A sportive, aimless one,
A shred of bone its horn,
And colloped round with fern.
It looked at me; it stared.

Swaying, I took its gaze;
Faltered; rose up again;
Rose but to lurch and fall,
Hard, on the gritty sill,
I lay; I languished there.

When I raised myself once more,
The great round eyes had gone.
The long lush grass lay still;
And I wept there, alone.

--Theodore Roethke

Another Favorite

This has been a favorite poem for a long time. I heard Richard Wilbur himself read it last year in Atlanta. I happened to be standing in just the right spot when he walked out of the auditorium and was first to have my book signed. He went on to tell me about his daughter's book. Like any proud father, he wanted to talk about his daughter.

I've had some time with both my girls in the last month. It is a wonderful thing to have daughters who are also friends. Though neither of them are writers, at least not at the moment, they are both great readers and wonderful young women. I'm so proud of them.

The Writer

In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.

--Richard Wilbur

Like a Kid!

This is such a fun poem! The author certainly knows how to think like a kid.


Why?

Why is it…
While other people
Are thinking about all kinds of
Important things…
I am thinking about what it would be like
To jump barefoot
Into an open box
Of jelly doughnuts?

--James Stevenson

Red!

My yard is at its most beautiful right now. With all the rain and the warm days (not counting today when it's in the 30s again!) everything is blooming happily. Buckeyes don't usually grow this far south, but I have two on the bank on the creek bursting with red blooms.

The azaleas vary from the orange red Christmas Cheer to the almost purple Pride of Mobile. They are beautiful. Today's poem is a celebration of garden color. I couldn't agree more.

The Garden Changes

When I was young, I grew
dull plants returning food
for work. But I, now older,
repent my practicality.
I’ve renounced beans, and turned
to crocus, gladiola,
and coreopsis. I’ve moved
past zinnia, marigold,
to bougainvillea.
I’ve even learned to love
poor salvia, which blooms
on August days, when few flowers
will venture anything
but green. The summer’s short
and ornament is what
I want—all vividness.
Not pasty cauliflower
and not potatoes, whose
gnarled flesh is more and more
like mine. Give me bright blossoms
against the teeming green.
Give me orange flags, blue horns,
white faces, yellow wings.
Give me the purple throat,
breathless, of calla lilies—
and red, red, red, red, red.

--Andrew Hudgins

A Poem for Christopher Robin

I didn’t read A.A. Milne as a child. I was an adult before I discovered Pooh Corner and Milne’s lovely stories sprinkled with verse. Any writer for children who has tried to tell a story in rhyming verse knows just how difficult it can be and why editors tend to say don’t send it to them! Here is the perfect explanation.


From The House at Pooh Corner

“Don’t Bustle me,” said Eeyore, getting up slowly. “Don’t now-then me.” He took a piece of paper from behind his ear, and unfolded it. “Nobody knows anything about this,” he went on. “This is a Surprise.” He coughed in an important way, and began again: “What-nots and Etceteras, before I begin, or perhaps I should say, before I end, I have a piece of Poetry to read to you. Hitherto—hitherto—a long word meaning—well, you’ll see what it means directly—hitherto, as I was saying, all the Poetry in the forest has been written by Pooh, a Bear with a Pleasing manner but a Positively Startling Lack of Brain. The Poem which I am now about to read to you was written by Eeyore, or Myself, in a Quiet Moment. If somebody will take Roo’s bull’s-eye away from him, and wake up Owl, we shall all be able to enjoy it. I call it—POEM.”

This was it.

Christopher Robin is going.
At least I think he is.
Where?
Nobody knows.
But he is going—
I mean he goes
(To rhyme with “knows”)
Do we care?
(To rhyme with “where”)
We do
Very much.
(I haven’t got a rhyme for that
“is” in the second line yet.
Bother.)
(Now I haven’t got a rhyme for
bother. Bother.)
Those two bothers will have to
rhyme with each other Buther.
The fact is this is more difficult
than I thought,
I ought—
(Very good indeed)
I ought
To begin again,
But it is easier
To stop.
Christopher Robin, good-bye,
I
(Good)
I
And all your friends
Sends—
I mean all your friend
Send—
(Very awkward this, it keeps
going wrong)
Well, anyhow, we send
Our love
END.

--A.A. Milne

Poetry

Tomorrow is Easter. April is also National Poetry month. In celebration of both, I thought I would share one of my favorite poems by Amy Carmichael, a missionary to India at the turn of the twentieth century. Her love for India and her devotion to the homeless children there changed lives forever.

Thy John

As John upon his dear Lord's breast,
So would I lean, so would I rest;
As empty shell in depths of sea,
So would I sink, be filled with Thee.

As water-lily in her pool
Through long, hot hours is still and cool,
A thought of peace, so I would be
Thy water-flower, Lord, close by Thee.

As singing bird in high, blue air,
So would I soar, and sing Thee there;
Nor rain, nor stormy wind can be
When all the air is full of Thee.

And so though daily duties crowd,
And dust of earth, be like a cloud,
Through noise of words, O Lord, my Rest,
Thy John would lean upon Thy breast.