Blog Archive: April 2009

Lately I've been plagued by existential gloom and doom. I guess most of us experience it at one time or another. "Why are we here?" "What's the point?" Etc.

A few days ago, as I walked through the cold rain to meet a friend for tea, I thought: why am I trying to define my purpose in terms of an end state? Maybe the question isn't, "Why are we here in the long run?", but rather, "Why are we here at this moment in time?"

This poem is my attempt to answer that question.
 

Why I’m Here

To walk in the misty drizzle
beneath an orange umbrella,
and hear the raindrops’ sizzle
against my sunny mandala.

To pause in a cozy café,
its rain-streaked windows glistening.
To serve up my stories au lait,
a friend beside me, listening.

To fall asleep to the patter
and dream of shipwrecks all night.
To wake to the sparrows’ chatter.
To pick up my notebook and write.
 

Welcome, all! Today's Poetry Friday round-up is here. I like to do things the old-fashioned way, so if you'd like to participate, please leave a comment with a link to your contribution. I'll check in throughout the day and add your links to this entry. And, of course, if you'd just like to say hi... please do!

Poetry News

• At The Drift Record, Julie Larios reminds readers of the Peace Poem Project and reflects on books versus bombs.
• There are still a few Poetry Friday hosting slots available this spring and summer. Leave a comment at A Year of Reading if you would like to host.

Original Poems and Translations

• Black-Eyed Susan shares her lyrical creation, "smells like rain."
• At Political Verses, Elaine Magliaro shares a humorous original, "Knock, Knock, Knockin' on Heaven's Door: John Yoo at the Pearly Gates."
• At A Wrung Sponge, Andromeda Jazmon shares three spring haiku.
• Jeannine Atkins takes the plunge and shares her original poem "The Biographer Becomes a Poet."
• At Lectitans, Kimberley offers her translation of a stanza from The Aeniad.
• At Rooted, Gautami Tripathy shares "moon eats sugar puffs". (For some strange reason, I could really go for a snickerdoodle right about now.)
• At Fomagrams, David Elzey shares a series of twitku (Twitter haiku)—making far better use of Twitter than most of us!
• At Deo Writer, Jone shares "Outside My Window," her response to this week's Poetry Stretch at The Miss Rumphius Effect.
• At Liz in Ink, Liz Scanlon shares a link to her daily haiku, not to mention other haiku fun.
• At My World—Mi Mundo, Stella shares "Things to Do When You Are Feeling Blue."
• At Knocking from Inside, Tiel Aisha Ansari shares "Not from Here."
• At On Point, Lorie Ann Grover shares an original haiku.
• Kelly Polark shares an ode to the northern cardinal.
• Laurel Snyder shares an Arbor Day poem for children.
• Miss Erin shares a personal verse, "Disconnection."
• Maya Ganesan shares her NaPoWriMo poem of the day, "Broken Stars."

Poetry Challenges

• This week, Two Writing Teachers are hosting a Poem a Day Challenge. Today's challenge is to write a sensory poem about your favorite season, but poems on other subjects are welcome as well!
• Laura Purdie Salas shares the results of this week's 15 words or less challenge, "Under the Bleachers."
• At Blue Rose Readers, Elaine Magliaro shares the results of her opposite poems challenge.
• At The Miss Rumphius Effect, Tricia shares the results of her "Outside the Window" challenge.

Book Reviews and Stretchers

• At Wild Rose Reader, Elaine Magliaro reviews four animal haiku books.
• At Just One More Book, Andrea and Mark chat about rhyming picture book Silly Tilly, by Eileen Spinelli.
• At Write Time, Linda offers classroom connections for The Underwear Salesman, by J. Patrick Lewis.
• At A Patchwork of Books, Amanda discusses I Love Our Earth, by Bill Martin, Jr., and Michael Sampson.
• At Biblio File, Jennie reviews Meet Danitra Brown, by Nikki Grimes.
• Fuse #8 reviews My Hippo Has the Hiccups, by Kenn Nesbitt.
• At Poetry for Children, Sylvia reviews Loose Leashes, a collection of dog poems.

Poetry by Kids

• At A Year of Reading, Mary Lee shares her fourth graders' 15 words or less poems.
• MsMac shares fourth graders' Fibonacci poems.

Favorite Poems

• At Writing and Ruminating, Kelly Fineman shares Ben Jonson's classic poem "Song: To Celia," along with her analysis and a recording of the poem set to music.
• At Sandy Cove Trail, Andromeda Jazmon shares Ogden Nash's "Always Marry an April Girl" and some beautiful April photos.
• Shelf Elf shares a haiku by Issa.
• Kurious Kitty shares Robert Penn Warren's "Ways of Day."
• At The Miss Rumphius Effect, Tricia shares Paul Laurence Dunbar's "A Lazy Day."
• Color Online shares Kimiko Hahn's "The Razor."
• At Carol's Corner, Carol shares Anna Denise's "How to Change a Frog into a Prince."
• Laura Purdie Salas shares some favorites from The Underwear Salesman, by J. Patrick Lewis, plus some other fun poetry-related links.
• The Stenhouse Blog shares Donald Graves' "The Night Before Fishing Season Opens."
• Jama Rattigan shares some tasty poetic tidbits about banbury cakes. (Warning: do not read on an empty stomach!)
• At The Book Mine Set, John Mutford shares two favorites from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.
• Yat-Yee Chong shares J.R.R. Tolkien's "Roads Go Ever On."
• Karen Edmisten shares Helen H. Moore's "Reading in Bed."
• At I'm Here; I'm Queer; What the Hell Do I Read?, Lee Wind shares a rumination on love by Sappho.
• Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast shares Dylan Thomas' "In the Beginning."
• At GottaBook, Gregory K. shares a new J. Patrick Lewis poem, "The Poet of the World." Be sure to click back in Gregory's blog for poems by other great children's poets of today (including himself)!
• At Bildungsroman, Little Willow shares Emily Dickinson's "Hope Is the Thing with Feathers."
• Neverending Story shares Julie Redstone's "The Baobab Tree."
• At Read Write Believe, Sara Lewis Holmes shares Mark Jarman's "Dressing My Daughters" and other poetry tidbits.
• At Angieville, Angie shares "Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes," by Billy Collins.
• At Readertotz, Lorie Ann Grover shares "Intery, Mintery," a traditional children's rhyme.
• Tabatha Yeatts shares several musical poems.

Blog reader Mary sent me some disturbing follow-up information on the West Bend, Wisconsin, censorship issue I blogged about last month. (Thanks again, all, for the great discussion that followed in the comments!)

Tuesday night, the West Bend City Council crippled the West Bend library board by rejecting the mayor's suggested reappointment of four library board members. (All other mayoral appointments were approved en masse.) Reasons cited for the rejections? Lack of "common sense," concern for the city's "morality," and—particularly striking to me—difference of opinion.

Excuse me, but I thought the point of a public library was to represent a wide variety of opinions—at least as wide a variety as the community it serves! Apparently not. Turns out if you want to censor materials you disagree with—i.e., if you think the First Amendment doesn't apply to your community—you just need to get rid of all dissenting opinions. Or, failing that, get rid of all dissenting opinions on the library board.

The board members rejected include a retired academic librarian and 24-year board member; an attorney; a retired school teacher and book shop worker; and a high school English teacher. In other words, these are highly educated people who know books, know libraries, know teenagers, know the LAW. They were carrying out library policy in accordance with the Library Bill of Rights. Yet the city council decided they don't know what "serves the interest of their community."

Disgusting.

I hope the citizens of West Bend prove that though the city council may have eliminated four dissenting opinions from the current library board, the "interest of the community" hasn't magically conformed to Jim and Ginny Maziarkas' narrow worldview.

I am, like most children’s librarians, a fiction reader for the most part. But I do have my little nonfiction niches. I gobble, for example, sensational stories of Mormon Fundamentalism and religious cults. I’ll read the occasional book about writing craft, prehistory, mysteries of history, and sociopolitical history. I enjoy memoirs of ordinary people coping with extraordinary circumstances. And above all, I love a good animal memoir.

To me, James Herriot is the king of animal memoir. I suppose you could argue that he’s really the king of country veterinarian memoir, since he’s writing as much about himself as he is the creatures he deals with in his practice. Regardless, he’s an incredible storyteller, full of humor and heart, and the characters—both animal and human—spring warm and solid from the page into the reader’s imagination. It’s no wonder his books—starting with All Creatures Great and Small (St. Martin’s, 1972)—remain popular. The picture book adaptations of his stories are also lovely (and nobody dies in them!).

Another animal memoir I love is Three Among the Wolves: A Couple and Their Dog Live a Year with Wolves in the Wild, by Helen Thayer (Sasquatch, 2004). The writing is plain, but the observations of wolf pack dynamics and interspecies dependence are absolutely fascinating. And I can’t shake my amazement that, in order to survive in the northern reaches of Canada, Thayer and her husband had to eat a pound of butter a day!

Enslaved by Ducks and Fowl Weather, by Bob Tarte (Algonquin, 2003 and 2007), are a hilarious pair of memoirs about the author’s experiences with an ever-growing menagerie of domestic fowl, rabbits, and other feathered and furry critters. Like Herriot’s books, Tarte’s are as much about himself and his family as about the creatures he clearly loves—in spite of his constant griping (Tarte’s obvious but forgivable shtick).

The previously mentioned books were all written for the adult market, but I think they would be enjoyable to many teen animal lovers.

Two years ago, one of my favorite nonfiction reads for elementary age children was The House of a Million Pets, by Ann Hodgman (Holt, 2007). Similarly to Tarte, Hodgman paints herself as a somewhat hapless pet owner who got in over her head. With the arrival of each new animal, wackiness ensues. The chapter about her dachshunds had me wheezing with laughter.

Believe it or not, this all leads up to say how much I enjoyed How to Scratch a Wombat: Where to Find It…What to Feed It…Why It Sleeps All Day, by Jackie French (Clarion, 2009). This book actually focuses more on the animal in question than on the writer observing it. In other words, there are enough facts here that a child could read it and actually write a decent report on wombats. Or that an adult could read it and impress all her friends. Hypothetically speaking.

But what makes this book an exceptional read for anyone who loves a good animal book is its humorous and personal nature. For example, when French writes about wombats’ burrowing techniques—and incredible persistence/stubbornness—she tells the story of Mothball, who would not be satisfied until she’d moved in under the author’s house. (Mothball was the primary inspiration for French’s and Bruce Whatley’s adorable picture book Diary of a Wombat, which, surprisingly, neatly encapsulates much of the contents of this volume!) French’s anecdotal style successfully informs even as it entertains.

Readers seeking photographs will want to seek additional sources. Bruce Whatley’s cuddly caricatures frolic (and sleep) throughout the narrative, though he does take a photorealistic approach when called for. Still, some photographs of real, live wombats would have made a nice addition to the book.

Over all, I found How to Scratch a Wombat a highly readable, entertaining, and informative little volume. Highly recommended for animal lovers from second grade on up.

Pardon me for assking a silly question, butt what's with all the animal posterior books this season? I'm counting three — THREE — such picture books in the first five months of 2009. (And that's not even counting Chicken Butt, by Erica S. Perl.)

• Chicken Cheeks, by Michael Ian Black, illustrated by Kevin Hawkes (Simon & Schuster, January 2009)
• The Tushy Book, written by Fran Manushkin, illustrated by Tracy Dockray (Feiwel & Friends, March 2009)
• Always Lots of Heinies at the Zoo, written by Ayun Halliday, illustrated by Dan Santat (Hyperion, May 2009)

Any others I'm missing? Can the market support so many butt books? And what the heck are they putting in the water over in Publishing Land?

"The National Day of Silence brings attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools. Each year the event has grown, now with hundreds of thousands of students coming together to encourage schools and classmates to address the problem of anti-LGBT behavior."