Poetry Friday: Sharing Some Shadows

Here's a little poem by Robert Louis Stevenson to accompany Julie Paschkis's reflective new post over at Books Around the Table. When I was little, I remember reading that line about the "india-rubber ball" and thinking it was so exotic, so strange....ditto the word "nursie"....I had to ask my mom what both of them meant! Read Julie P.'s post, then head over to Reflections on the Teche, where Margaret hosts the Poetry Friday round-up.

   

MY SHADOW

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,

And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.

He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;

And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow—

Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;

For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,

And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all.

He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,

And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.

He stays so close beside me, he's a coward you can see;

I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,

I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;

But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,

Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

Poetry Friday: Awards Season!

Blue on Blue by Dianne White, illustrations by Beth Krommes

Next Monday morning the ALA will make its Youth Media Awards announcement and I, for one, will be listening when they do. I love following the Mock Caldecotts and Mock Newberys right up to the day the winners and honor books are revealed. And I'm just as excited to hear about the Sibert (non-fiction); the Batchelder (translations); the Pura Belpre (Latino); the Geisel (beginning reader); and the Coretta Scott King (African-American.)  Now if only the ALA would make the announcements in the evening, I'd have an ALA Pizza-and-Popcorn party where we sit around, just like it's the Oscars, and bet on who will win.  

Let's hear it for the wonderful books of poetry being mentioned as possibilities for the Caldecott - the stunning illustrations by Rick Allen for Joyce Sidman's Winter Bees; ditto the artwork by Melissa Sweet for Paul Janeczko's Firefly July; Jon Muth for both text and illustrations for Hi, Koo; Becca Stadtlander's illustrations for On the Wing by David Elliot, and the illustrations by Gary Kelley for J. Patrick Lewis's Harlem Hellfighters. This year I'm going with a dark horse, hoping that Blue on Blue by Dianne White, with wonderful illustrations by Beth Krommes, will get some of the love it deserves from the Caldecott committee.

Having looked at the Mock Caldecotts and Mock Newberys, I think Marla Frazee is likely to get the picture book medal for The Farmer and the Clown, and it looks like both the Newbery and the CS King are headed the direction of Jackie Woodson for her verse novel, Brown Girl Dreaming (which also won the National Book Award.) Maybe The Family Romanov will get the Sibert? and Frida by Yuyi Morales for the Belpre?  I have no idea what book will win the Batchelder, though I do love the fact that books originally published in another language are finally getting translated into English in the U.S. 

Well, I can't have a Pizza-and-Popcorn party, but I can ask which books you would like to see get the medals. Any of the poetry titles mentioned above? Other favorites? I'd love to hear about them in the comments below.

The Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted today by Paul at These 4 Corners. Head over there to see what other people have posted.

On the Idea of Learning More

First, watch this video from NASA. Pure visual poetry that reminds us the world is large and amazing, its people varied. 

Little darling, you know the sun is slowly rising....

   Next, try reading this poem aloud (and it should definitely be aloud): 

Upriver, Downriver

Bella Coola, Clallum, Comox, Halkomelem 
Lummi, Lushootseed, Musqueam, Saanich, 
Salish, Songish, Sooke, Squamish, 
Twana, Couer d'Alene, Columbia-Wanatchi, 
Kalispel, Lillooet, Okanagan, Shuswap, 
Spokane, Thompson, Tillamook, Chehalis

It sounds like one of those wonderful children's counting games out on the playground, doesn't it? But it's a list of the different permutations of the Salishan language group spoken by many Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest. And the list comes to me via the The World Atlas of Language Structures.   

A World Atlas of Language Structures???? Who knew there was something so strange and wonderful?  Granted, it's not for everyone. But as far as I'm concerned - ooh! For example, Chapter 13 talks about "tone" in different world languages: 

"All languages make use of variations in the musical pitch of the voice as part of their sound systems, but they differ in the ways in which modifications of pitch are used and how many different types of functions are served by pitch variations. Linguists distinguish between two of the major uses of pitch as tone and intonation. Intonation is the term that is used to describe sentence types, such as question versus statement, or to indicate whether a speaker has finished or intends to continue speaking, or to show which parts of an utterance present new or highlighted information versus old or less significant information.

Tone is the term used to describe the use of pitch patterns to distinguish individual words or the grammatical forms of words, such as the singular and plural forms of nouns or different tenses of verbs. In the simplest cases, each syllable of a language with tones will have its own characteristic tonal pattern, which may be a relatively flat pitch at a particular level, or may involve the pitch rising or falling over the duration of the syllable. When the pitch has a moving pattern of this sort, the tone is described as a contour tone."

Contour tone = moving pattern of pitch. Must learn more!

Visi-Pitch Displays Chinese word wenti  - I have no idea how to read this.

Click here for a world map that shows tonal pattern groups. Apparently, English is one of 307 languages that has "no tone." How can that be? That can't be right. Must learn more. Navajo and certain forms of Japanese are on the list of 132 languages that have "simple tone systems" and Cantonese, Mandarin, Thai and Vietnamese all have "complex tonal systems." Something to do with tone within syllables. Must learn more!

 
Be sure to click on Gender Types (some languages include five genders that have to have subjects, modifiers and verbs agree syntactically, while English only has three -he, she, it - and Spanish/French only have two - he/she.) Hard to imagine what there is besides he/she/it - isn't it? (Must learn more.)

And don't miss Rhythm Types (English is essentially trochaic, that's a surprise. Swedish, Russian, Turkish have no rhythmic stresses, how is that possible? Winnebago and Yup'ik are iambic - wish I could hear that.)  Here's the map that shows Rhythm Types around the world.

The list of language features at that site goes on and on. Some sound dull. Some sound like Interesting Stuff, bound to inspire a few poems. My kind of site.
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The Poetry Friday Round-Up this week is being hosted by Carol over at Carol's Corner. Head there to see what other people have posted.

Poetry Friday: The Games Have Begun!!

Round One of the 2nd Annual March Madness competition (a thrilling, maddening, intoxicating poetry-under-pressure playoff) is underway at Ed DeCaria's THINK KID THINK. How he manages to organize and keep up with the avalanche of  work involved (this first round = 64 poems from 64 poets!) just boggles the mind. He designed the competition, posted the brackets, posted overviews and a calendar, assigned us all our Round One words (no, we can't just write anything we want - we have assigned words, with different levels of difficulty.) Tomorrow? New words, new poems.  For a good explanation of how it all works, click here. Ed, thanks!

What makes it a competition?  Readers get to vote for their favorites! (Don't hesitate - voting ends on a staggered basis throughout the day today.)

Here's my approach to the contest: If, as a poet, you enter the Madness feeling anxious, terrified and/or cutthroat, it's probably not too pleasant. But if you enter for the delight of it (it's amazing to see what people can come up with quickly) then it's a lot of fun. 64 poets at play!

My assigned word for Round One? "Diphthongs."

English Vowel Sounds (those with two separate symbols in one box are gliding vowels, aka diphthongs.....as in #20 - "how")

Yes, DIPHTHONGS! (I thought that was bad - someone got "anthropomorphization" and someone else got "necrotize.") My word turned out to be the perfect challenge - I had a ball coming up with something kids might enjoy (and I might, too.) Bottom line: Win or lose, I have a new poem I like.

Click here to read it (I've also pasted it in below) and also read its rival, a poem by Victoria Warneck (assigned word: "dazzle) yesterday.

And click here for "the scoreboard" - a list of links to all Round One pairings, divided into Flight One (vote by early afternoon today - Friday) and Flight Two (vote by 7:30 tonight.) You can vote easily at each link.

I know that by the time you read this, there might not be much time left to vote. But if you miss the Round One deadlines you can still vote in all the other rounds - they'll come fast and furious in the next few days (which is why we say "poetry under pressure"!) so be looking for new scoreboards and poems posted overnight at Think Kid Think.

Many regular Poetry Friday poets are part of the competition - check out poems by Laura Purdie Salas, Renee LaTulippe, Mary Lee Hahn (whose poem sent me down for the count in Round Three of last year's Madness!), April Halprin Wayland, Amy Vanderwater, Heidi Mordhorst, Robyn Hood Black, Greg Pincus, Katya Szaja, Linda Baie, Laura Shovan, susan Taylor Brown and Charles Waters - all of them have poems up in the First Round. Special shout-outs to Vermont College of Fine Arts students and alums Anna Boll, Callie Miller and Jim Hill. Go, Team VCFA!

Take a few minutes to vote for your favorites!

Here's what I submitted for Round One:

Hound Dog’s Lament


I’m the Duke of Diphthongs – I know that it sounds nuts,
but when I howl the vowels glide around, unlike a normal mutt’s.
I howwww-owwww-owwwl my head off. I never bark, I mourn.
I have to play my diphthongs just like Louis Armstrong played his horn.
A dachshund is no Blues Man – his song consists of yips.
But I’m a hound, my sound is true
to how-owwwwww-OWWWWWWWWWW a diphthong dips.


[Ed. Note: Alas, my poem did not prevail! Hound dog, I still love you, but I am out of the running, so I'm going to kick back and enjoy the show for the rest of the tournament.Have fun, poets!] 

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The Poetry Friday round-up today is being hosted by Jone at Check It Out. Head over there to see what other people have posted.  

Poetry Friday: Barley-Corn Thoughts

Walt Whitman - "This is the city and I am one of the citizens...."

Three weeks before an important election, and I have been thinking about participatory democracy, and about how far removed poetry feels from politics. But partly due to a recent trip to New York City (which is a poem  - a multitude of poems - in itself)  I've also been thinking about the most democratic of poets, Walt Whitman - how he embraced life, embraced people, valued them, refused to assign them "high" or "low" status, simply breathed the multitude in. And that man could BREATHE. I wonder what he would think of America in 2012?Would he have been saddened by the devisiveness? Of course, he lived through the Civil War, so he knew a bit about intransigence and combativeness. Just look at the young man in the picture above, and the Walt Whitman of later years. He still seems to have the ability, with that face, to pull you toward him. He still held multitudes. 

If you last read Whitman when you were a student in high school, read "A Song of Myself" again before you vote.

"...for every atom belonging to me, as well belongs to you...''

"In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn less...

"I am large, I contain multitudes."

I'll be thinking about these words - about our deep connection to all people - "none more and not one a barley-corn less" than me -  when I cast my ballot in a few weeks.

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The Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted by Irene Latham today over at her blog, Live Your Poem. Head over there to see what other people are posting.

Poetry Friday: Ursula Le Guin, Poet!

The multi-talented Ursula K. Le Guin - "Art is work. No one ever said it was going to be easy."

I'm pleased to hear that a book of new and selected poems by Ursula K. Le Guin will be published soon. The title is Finding My Elegy, due out in September. Le Guin is not thought of as a poet, but a poet she is and has been since before she was publishing fiction. As a poet, she summons not only the necessary leap of imagination good poetry requires, but also a fine control of the formal elements of a poem. These qualities show up in her fiction, of course. Here are two of my favorite Le Guin poems; both can be found at her website, along with many others, and I have my fingers crossed that they will be in the new volume of her work. if you came to The Drift Record today via Poetry Friday, please go read a few more poems at her website after you finish the PF rounds. While you're at it, sample the essays, prose fragments, writing advice, speeches, political writing, rants  - she calls them rants -  and links inspired by her social activism. She's amazing. And thanks go to Leda Schubert, for pointing me to this interview today in Slate and to Uma Krishnaswami for this audio conversation with Le Guin and Margaret Atwood on Oregon Public Radio.

The Old Lady

I have dreed my dree, I have wooed my wyrd,
and now I shall grow a five-foot beard
and braid it into tiny braids
and wander where the webfoot wades
among the water’s shining blades.
I will fear nothing I have feared.
I’m the queen of spades, the jack of trades,
braiding my knives into my beard.
Why should I know what I have known?
Once was enough to make it my own.
The things I got I will forget.
I’ll knot my beard into a net
and cast the net and catch a fish
who will ungrant my every wish
and leave me nothing but a stone
on the riverbed alone,
leave me nothing but a rock
where the feet of herons walk.

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Learning the Name 

               for Bette

The wood thrush, it is! Now I know

who sings that clear arpeggio,

three far notes weaving

into the evening

among leaves

and shadow;

or at dawn in the woods, I've heard

the sweet ascending triple word

echoing over

the silent river —

but never

seen the bird.

The wood thrush sings a song of its own.

Le Guin is also a translator of the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. I wish all poets took it upon themselves to do some translation work - it makes a difference in our own writing to have studied at such a close level the musicality and rhythms of poetry written in another language. 

Gabriela Mistral

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You'll find the Poetry Friday round-up this week at Life Is Better with Books. Head over there for links to what other people have posted.

Bad Signs and Omens

Face in a window, window cracked....bad sign...

It's Friday the 13th - superstitions abound. Mustn't rock a rocking chair if no one is in it. Mustn't open an umbrella indoors. When I was in Rome several years ago, I wrote a poem about "bad signs" - all a part of the world of superstition. You'll find it below. And don't miss the post (and wonderful illustrations) of my fellow blogger, Julie Paschkis, over on Books Around the Table - she's thinking Friday he 13th, too!

BAD SIGNS

 

Yellow hen in the left hand,

left hand touching dead fish,

dead fish on a white plate:

Bad signs, sorrow-bait.

Listen for bells, don't wait.

Bells on the right: Bad night.

Bells on the left: Love in doubt.

Bells straight ahead: Watch out.

Bad sign. Touch salt.

Salt spilled in the morning hours,

flowers tossed in the afternoon:

Tears soon, sighs soon.

Tall flowers in a short vase,

black sky: Hide your face.

Face in a window, window cracked:

Bad sign, worry and waste.

Bread in half, in half again,

crumbs in a circle: No friends.

Circles in a square, squares in a line,

lines in a circle: Bad signs.

Circling swallows, no rain:

Roll the dice. Try again.

Roll the dice...try again....

Dead fish on a white plate...bad sign....

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 The Poetry Friday round-up today is over at CHECK IT OUT, so head over there to...check it out.

Poetry Friday: Robert Frost in a Mood

Robert Frost 1958 - Photo by Yousuf Karsh

For Poetry Friday, I'm just going to post this photo of Robert Frost owning a chair. He looks pretty relaxed for a guy who thought in iambic pentameters, though maybe the height of his waistband says something about that. Love the tie going the opposite direction of the body. Love that dog, who seems to have survived a Frost-like blustery day in New England.  The photo is by Yousuf Karsh, a wonderful Armenian-Canadian photographer - when you think of portraits of Winston Churchill or Ernest Hemingway (in his Papa Hemingway years), you're probably thinking of iconic photos by Karsh. I wonder if he had to tell Mr. Frost, "Try putting your right leg up over the arm of the chair"? Or maybe he just asked politely. Or maybe Frost just sat like this with no urging - what a wonderful thought.

I should really post a poem by Frost, too, but somehow the photo is a poem of its own. To give credit where credit is due, I found the photo over on Vulture.com, at the top of a review of the new book The Art of Robert Frost by Tim Kendall, which I am going to go right out and buy. Sounds terrific. I hope this photo is on the cover. I might just make it my screensaver.

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The Poetry Friday round-up is hosted today by Mary Lee Hahn over at A Year of Reading. Head over there to see what other people have posted.

Idioms, Anyone?

Over at Books Around the Table today, I'm taking a look at idioms in different languages. Head over there to see what the following photos have to do with it all:

The Poetry Friday round-up today is being hosted by Elaine Magliaro at Wild Rose Reader. Head over there to see what other people have posted.

POETRY FRIDAY: THE WORK OF TODD BOSS

Minnesota poet Todd Boss and his book YELLOWROCKET

 BRRRRRRR - it is cold in Seattle right now. Maybe a cold snap? Well not really, but I love the phrase "cold snap," so let's pretend. In honor of the dip into freezing temperatures, here's my contribution to Poetry Friday - Todd Boss's poem Icicles (from his collection YELLOWROCKET - see also the masterful poem One Can Miss Mountains, over at The New Yorker's web site.) I'd love to get the poetry of Todd Boss into the hands of every Senior in every high school English class in America, if only to remind them  - as they head out into the world -  that poetry can be fun, inventive, imaginative, crazy, musical and still be deeply heartfelt and smart.

ICICLES

are made of melt.
The same course
that makes them
takes them away.

They stay as long
as the temperature
lets them, and go
by the same way,

and in the same
direction. On
that intersection
their existence

hangs -- as hangs
a heart by how
and for how long
what's felt is felt.

Boss's new book, PITCH, will be released in February, 2012.

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The Poetry Friday round-up today is being hosted by Robyn Black Hood at Read, Write, Howl. Head over there to see what other people have posted.