Blog Archive: November 2008

The UK Guardian's Bad Sex in Fiction Award has been announced! This year's winner is a book called Shire Hell, by Rachel Johnson. John Updike was also awarded a lifetime achievement award.

You can read (and possibly cringe over) excerpts from some of the short-listed books online. I'd share some here, but, well, this is a family blog.

Welcome, all! It's my privilege and pleasure to host Poetry Friday this week. Seeing as it's the day after Thanksgiving, I'm particularly, well, thankful you've found time in your busy schedule to drop by.

As you may know, I've been working through the exercises in Stephen Fry's poetry book The Ode Less Travelled (highly recommended). I ought to be writing a Ballade this week, but I'm skipping ahead to the Rondeau because it seems well-suited to jolly holiday poems.
 

Thanksgiving Rondeau

We give our thanks for autumn sun,
for turkey smells and cinnamon.
With open arms, our friends we greet
and guide each to a comfy seat.
We drink a toast to everyone,

and now, at last, our feast’s begun.
For every drumstick, corn cob, bun,
and slice of pumpkin pie we eat,
we give our thanks.

And when our bellies weigh a ton,
and Dad can’t make another pun,
we stagger back onto our feet.
At last the yawning guests retreat.
For quiet house and chaos done,
we give our thanks.
 

OK, yeah, that's the Hallmark card version of the day's events. Just the same, I am deeply thankful to have shared a delicious Thanksgiving meal with friends and family (my father's puns and all). I hope you were able to find some joy and comfort in your own life this Thanksgiving and that those good feelings warm you into the winter.

If you would like to be included in this week's round-up, please leave a comment with a link to your contribution. I'll check in throughout the day and add you to the list below!

Original Poems

- Stacey at Two Writing Teachers shares "In One Year," a list poem inspired by The Aspiring Poet's Journal.

- Janet at Across the Page shares "Obituary for a Stranger," inspired by a tragedy last Thanksgiving.

- Schelle at Brand New Ending shares "Giving Thanks," written in Seussian anapestic tetrameter.

- Lorie Ann Grover shares a haiku, "Tea Flower."

- Anastasia Suen shares the story of her picture book poem, Subway.

Poems We Love

- HipWriterMama shares "Colors Passing Through Us," by Marge Piercy.

- Julie Larios shares "Starfish," by Eleanor Lerman.

- PoetLoverRebelSpy at Less Than a Shoestring shares "The Blindmen and the Elephant," by John Godfrey Saxe, illustrated with original photos from the Garden for the Blind in Bonn, Germany.

- Laura at Author Amok shares "Eliza's Jacket," by Calef Brown (one of my own favorite writers of poetry for children) and ideas for using it in the classroom.

- TadMack at Finding Wonderland shares "In memory of George Lewis, Great Jazzman," by Lou Lipsitz.

- Mary Lee at A Year of Reading shares "Grace," by Wendell Berry.

- Ruth shares "My Deliverer," by Rich Mullins and Mitch McVicker.

- Janet at The Write Sisters shares two poems by R. G. Vliet.

- David at The Excelsior File shares "anyone lived in a pretty how town," by e. e. cummings.

- Laura Salas shares "Michigan Sahara," by Lisa Westberg Peters.

- Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect shares "Thanks," by W. S. Merwin.

- Sherry at Semicolon Blog shares "The Prodigal Son," by James Weldon Johnson.

- Little Willow at Bildungsroman shares "November," by Elizabeth Stoddard.

- Sam Riddleburger shares a nasty poem by his young friend Sweet Daisy.

- The bloggers at PaperTigers share "Snow," a haiku by Sei Shonagon.

- Carol at Carol's Corner shares an anonymous poem, "A Thanksgiving Blessing."

- Anne Shirley shares "Avonlea," by Tammie Lynn Vaughn.

Poetry News & Reviews

- Sylvia at Poetry for Children shares information about Lee Bennett Hopkins, who recently received the NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children.

- David at The Excelsior File also reviews My Letter to the World, and Other Poems, a new Emily Dickinson collection.

- Cloudscome at A Wrung Sponge reviews When Louis Armstrong Taught Me Scat, by Muriel Harris Weinstein, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie.

- Karen Edmisten shares a list of poets for whom she is thankful.

- On the Just One More Book podcast, Andrea and Mark discuss Snow, by Cynthia Rylant.

Thanks for sharing, everyone!

In storytime this morning, I asked the children what they were doing for Thanksgiving.

Me: There's a special holiday later this week. What is it?

Kids: Thanksgiving!

Me: Right! What are you going to do to celebrate Thanksgiving?

Kid 1: I'm going to be a skunk!

Kid 2: I'm going to be a fireman!

Kid 3: I'm going to be a fairy princess!

Me: OK, let me tell you what *I'm* going to do on Thanksgiving. My parents and some good friends are coming over, and we're going to eat a nice dinner together and celebrate the things that make us happy. What about you?

Kid 4: I'm going to be Bob the Builder!

Kid 5: I'm going to be a ladybug!

Kid 6: I'm going to be a skunk, too!

Clearly I've been going about this Thankgiving thing all wrong. I need a costume for Thursday, stat.

After weeks of avoidance, I finally tackled the sestina which, Stephen Fry says, "is a bitch to explain but a joy to make." (This kind of commentary is why I love The Ode Less Travelled.)

I feel like I'm jumping the gun with the snow poetry, seeing as Chicago's only seen a light dusting that melted within a day, but snow's definitely on folks' minds. And I'm generally weather-obsessed. And to get "meta" for a moment, the sestina's strict form seems quietly oppressive—sort of like being snowed in.

Without further ado...
 

Snowbound

It’s January, and my family falls
asleep to storm warnings, drifts
through warm dreams, our blankets
shielding us a little longer. Still,
morning brings the truth. Close
to seventeen inches has stuck

to the streets, leaving us all stuck
at home. All day the snow falls.
We sigh and layer on warm clothes,
as snow gathers at the door in drifts.
The world outside is hushed and still,
draped in soft crystal blankets.

The news station issues a blanket
statement: all city plows stuck
plowing “important” roads. Still,
we hope. We visualize waterfalls,
rapids, hurricanes—anything but drifts
of powdered water, heavy and close.

When bedtime comes, I don’t close
the curtains. Wrapped in wool blankets,
I drowsily watch as each flake drifts
downward. I dream that I’m stuck
in a plastic snowglobe, trapped in its false
blizzard forever. When I wake, it’s still

snowing. Life is at a standstill,
every school and church closed.
Under the snow’s weight, a pine falls
across the road. New snow blankets
it, the clouds permanently stuck
on “high,” and once again the drifts

rise. I’m past bored. My mind drifts,
wondering if there’s a lesson to distill
from these days of confinement—stuck
with no one but family, in such close
quarters. No. My mind is blank. It’s
muffled more with every flake that falls.

Then night falls again on our snowy, still
world, and we all drift together, cuddling close,
blanket to blanket—for a moment content to be stuck.
 

Stephen Fry also writes of the sestina, "You can do it, believe me you can. And you will be so proud of yourself!" I grudgingly suppose he's right.

This week's Poetry Friday round-up is hosted by Holly Cupala Brimstone Soup. Please check it out!

Here's a scattering/smattering of blog articles I've enjoyed this week:

• Leila at Bookshelves of Doom interviews Kathleen Duey. Duey wrote Skin Hunger, the first in a pretty darn dark fantasy trilogy. I loved it, and it was short-listed for the National Book Award in 2007. The second volume, Sacred Scars is apparently off to the copyeditor, which means it will be on the shelves in only... wait... what's that? It won't be on shelves until Fall 2009? Evil, evil, evil snail's pace of publishing!
• Molly at Bowen Press notes the similarities in the marketing of The Phantom of the Opera and Twilight. The similarities are so glaring, it's a wonder no one's pointed them out before.
• Speaking of Twilight, Carlie at Librarilly Blonde calls Stephenie Meyer on her assertion that "no one was supposed to read these but me." I'm with Carlie. Writing itself is generally a highly personal endeavor, but once you start querying agents and editors, you're assuming (or, at the very least, hoping) other people will want to read your book, too. Maybe Meyer didn't expect the books to be such a blockbuster, but considering her mega-advances? I have to imagine she got a clue pretty early on.
• At the Carolrhoda blog, Andrew Karre discusses the importance of "naughty bits" in books for children and teens to make them appealingly subversive... or subversively appealing... whichever.
• Hosted by Cynsations, Gail Langer Karwoski gives children's authors and illustrators the ABCs of School Visits. This article is going in my file for that magical, miracle, maybe day I can call myself a published children's author.