Sunday Selfie - Time - The Little Prince

I wrote this last night after a day of not doing much. I titled it "Fugit"

It is all about the time
that stretch between sprout and compost -
between droplet and the sea.

All about time...
The broom sweeps
the dust returns.

Time...
The pen scribbles racing against,
but keeping pace with,
Time.

Eyes closed-
blanket clenched -
waiting -
all about time.

---------------------
I worked through several fairy/folk tale collections with my stuffie friends. So, two nights ago, I started reading The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry). Last night, I came to this paragraph.

"The fact is, I don't want my book to be taken lightly. Telling these memories is so painful to me. It's already been six years since my friend went away, taking his sheep with him. If I try to describe him here, it's so I won't forget him..."

Time.

I found tears running down my face as I read that. That paragraph is not at the end of the book when we know where the Little Prince went and how he got there. No, it comes not all that far into the book, right before we learn of the Little Prince's journey through the planets.

I know how the book ends. I know why the narrator is in pain. And I know what happened to the author, He met the same fate as thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of pilots during WWII.

No wonder I cried.

Time. There is no chance to go back, no do-overs, no insight that allows a gunner to lower his barrel. Or a chance for a word to be unspoken. Or the joy of a pleasure to be lived again for the first time.

Time is funny - funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha. It can feel, as it did yesterday, that we putter to just fill up the time, "between sprout and compost". Then, we read something that shows just how active time is against us - taking our memories, our only defense against erosion.

Sit under the autumn trees tomorrow. Walk in the crisp leaves. If time is only that stretch between, fill it with images that will sustain you as you slide toward the end.

Love widely. Work for others. Play hard. Sing. Dance. Read.

Take that, Time. I can fill you to the brim.

Phoebe and Her Unicorn - POETRY!!

 

I discovered Phoebe and her Unicorn books by Dana Simpson a few weeks ago and I am in huge like with them.  (Sister Ann insisted that people can only love other people, not things.) So I really, really, really like these clever books very much - and a lot.

D LOVES them.  She never met Sister Ann so she's allowed.


I need to share poetry/lyrics written to the tune of Gibert and Sullivan's "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General" from Pirates of Penzance.  You can find these lyrics in Volume 2 of Phoebe and her Unicorn or Unicorn on a Roll.   Everything written and drawn in these books is done by Dana Simpson!


"I am the very model of a modern magic unicorn
I've information, magic and I never wear a uniform.
My entrances are heralded by trumpets and a flugelhorn.
I've eaten many bagels and my horn can write in cuneiform.

I make up for my lack of hands with magic ingenuity,
manipulating objects with a startling acuity.*
I'm also rather stunning in a way that's undeniable.
To stare at me in wonder is completely justifiable."

If you are not familiar with Gilbert and Sullivan's song, Veggie Tales does a clever and easy to understand version in this video. Enjoy and admire.
 














*This rhyme - alone - places Dana Simpson forever in the pantheon of poets I most admire.

Poetry Challenge - Writer's Digest

Poetry is not all that easy.  Some people, Edward Lear, for instance, made rhymes tumble effortlessly.  Poetry is more than rhyme and rhythm. As Karl Shapiro and Robert Beum state at the end of The Prosody Handbook, "...the rhyme exists for the sake of the poem, and not vice versa."

Fitting the poem to a specific poetic form, a couplet or a limerick or a sonnet, in which line length, rhyme scheme and  number of lines are predetermined is akin to solving a puzzle.  We have the idea and the image or emotion and then we find words to fit the poetic form. 

Over on Writer's Digest's Poetic Asides, Robert Lee Brewer has issued a challenge to write zejels!  Until the challenge landed in my inbox, I never even HEARD or zejels.  Brewer gives instructions on how this old Spanish, or perhaps Arabian, poetic form is constructed.  Check out the challenge here.

I love a challenge.  So, here is my entry.  Hopefully, my effort will show up on Poetic Asides someday soon.

Good or bad?

Every time I rip out a weed
I wonder - could it fill a need?
Does a cure hide in leaf or seed?

That discarded stem, root, or flower -
a blot cleared from my garden bower -
might hold calming good health or power
if left in place to spread and breed.

The foragers might find true worth
in these plants I pull from the earth -
oils to sooth or to promote mirth,
or hungry multitudes to feed.

Still I tug and tear, pull, reject
the plants that grow without respect.
There are rules I cannot reject,
that botanists, long gone, decreed.

Karen Maurer
zejel July 11, 2019

RIP Paul B. Janeczko

So Peter Tork died.  I bet you recognize his name.  "Hey! Hey!  We're the Monkees!  We just monkey around.  We're too busy singing to put anybody down!"  (That's how I remember it.  Don't mess with my youth.)

Someone else died.  Paul B. Janeczko. His name - I always spell it wrong. The "z" and the "c" sometimes change places.  I drop the "e" or stick it where it doesn't go.  But his writing, ah, his poetry - and the poets he introduced to hundreds of thousands of young people - well, I will never forget those.

His poetry is what we think of when we remember Paul B. Janeczko. Even in his obituary, written for Publisher's Weekly, his non-fiction works on spies and spy craft get little or no mention.  I found them fascinating and fun to hand to that kid - the one who wanted to write in code, or play James Bond.

Still, it is his poetry that stands out.  His anthologies introduced me to Naomi Shihab Nye and J. Patrick Lewis.  So I bought their books as well.

And now he's gone. 

You won't find Janeczko's obit all over FB - unless you're a friend of mine.  I doubt that people my age will gather at a tribute band concert or a poetry reading to mourn his passing.  That's a good idea, though.  Anyone want to join me?

I hope that Paul and Peter meet up in the Big Beyond. Maybe Peter could use some help with his lyrics. Paul's got the beat but a little bass accompaniment never hurt.

Another voice silenced. I am grateful for books.

A Year's Worth of Books - Jane Yolen

With the publication of A Bear Sat on My Porch Today, Jane Yolen reached the amazing goal of writing 365 books!  That's a book for every day of the year.

Someone should attempt to read a Jane Yolen book each day for an entire year and then vlog about it.  Some of the days will just be the vlogger reading a picture book.  Other days can be book reports or cosplay - Yolen books offer lots of cosplay opportunities - or even "travelogues".  Oooh, this is a great idea for someone with lots of energy.  I want a cut if the idea goes viral.  Just saying.

A YEAR OF YOLEN.  You are welcome.  Oh....wait....over on Jane Yolen's website, they already have plans for a year of Yolen.  My ideas are almost as good.

With the huge success of the How Do Dinosaurs Say... franchise, Yolen cemented her place in picture book lore.  The Dinosaur books are not my favorite Yolen picture books.  I preferred the Piggins books with illustrations by Jane Dyer.
The poetry of Owl Moon earned a Caldecott Award for the paintings it inspired illustrator John Schoenherr to create.

Yolen's fantasy novels delight middle grade, YA and adult readers.  Her poetry is contemplative, or funny, or sprightly, or inspiring.  She writes biographies, collects and rewrites stories from the bible, and the spiritual traditions of other cultures.  She even composes cookbooks!

Do you have a favorite Jane Yolen book?  I have several and I read them so long ago, I can't remember the titles accurately.  I do remember Boots and the Seven Leaguers: a Rock and Troll Novel  and Wizard's Hall.  I like Yolen's fantasy best of all.

Books of December - Poetry

Joyce Sidman is one of my all-time favorite poets.  Her books concentrate on the natural world and evoke beautiful images.  Coupled with excellent illustrations, these poems are great for sharing with young readers, or for paging through with a cup of tea.

Sidman's latest effort, Before Morning, is illustrated by Beth Krommes!!! (Caldecott award winner, Beth Krommes, that is.) 

I have this book on hold at my public library. 

Check out Sidman's earlier book, Winter Bees and Other Poems of the Cold.   In it, Sidman, examines how various animals and insects survive through the cold months.

Doug Florian is an American poet/painter whose poetry books delight kids everywhere.  Winter Eyes is one of my favorite Florian titles.  The words and pictures remind me of brisk cold skies and the coziness of winter sunsets.  His palette is perfect. 

A Poem in Your Pocket

Thursday is Poem in your Pocket Day!  Carry a favorite poem all day and share it with your friends.  How many poems can you recite from memory?

This may let you know how old I am - not that I keep it a secret - but when I was in grade school, our classes had something called "Poem Study" almost every week.  We learned old standards, like Joyce Kilmer's "Trees" - (I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree..) and didactic poems designed to teach us values.  I particularly enjoyed the poems of James Whitcomb Riley.

I cannot remember any of these poems in entirety, just snippets here and there.  And, my meory, alas, is not sharp enough to start memorizing today.  Still I have a score of favorite poems and will have to pick one to carry around on Thursday.

April is Poetry Month

I have a lot on my mind this morning.  The state of poetry, the state of education, the state of the state budget...how do I put all these weighty concerns in one blog post?

Perhaps I should write a poem about my worries:

Feed me, the child said
But not just with bread.
I need words and birds
and love instead
Of texts and tests
that prove I'm best!
Feed me dreams!
Feed me streams
singing over shining stones;
Rockets winging through
space;
Hands brushing sand from ancient bones.
Stories and history, maps and mysteries,
Numbers that dance in elegant patterns.
Sit with me.

Feed me, the child said.
Share with me bread and time
And I will grow strong and climb and climb.
Feed me.

PS.  Ring of Solomon won the Big Kahuna Round of SLJ's Battle of the Kids' Books.  Do I know how to call them, or what?

Where have all the poems gone? You know - like "I think that I shall never see/a poem as lovely as a tree."
Or, "Blessings on thee, little man /barefoot boy with cheeks of tan..."

The first is by WWI poet Joyce Kilmer - back when Joyce could be a man's name - from his poem "Trees".

The second is by John Greenleaf Whittier, who if I remember correctly was also responsible for the immortal lines , "Under the spreading chestnut tree/ The village smithy stands."

Back in the way, way, way olden times, we had a thing called "Poem Study" in grade school. We had to learn a poem every week and be prepared to stand up and recite it from memory. Since I went to a parochial school, our poem study book had standard poetry in it and poems from Catholic poets like Kilmer. But the poems all had classic rhythmns and they rhymed - all of them. When we got to seventh and eighth grade and were lucky enough to read some Gerard Manley Hopkins (I read him in fifth grade because I was a poetry geek), we learned that poetry that rhymed and had rhythmn could also be exciting and bizarre. We also experienced some Walt Whitman - a poet who rhymed only when he absolutely had to -"Oh Captain, my Captain".

In high school, I fell in love with free form poetry, Allen Ginsburg, and oh my heavens - one of my favorites still - e. e. cummings - Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Dylan Thomas, beloved because a folksinger changed his last name to the poet's first name, T. S. Eliot - heavy intoxicating stuff, even some of the writings of Teillhard de Chardin... and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Sara Teasdale, H. D. Doolittle, Emily Dickinson.

But for recitation purposes, the poems of James Whitcomb Riley still stand firm - "Frost on the punkin", and "Little Orphant Annie's come to our house to stay/ to wash the cups and saucers up/ and brush the crumbs away..."

My MIL is nearing the end of her life. She asked someone to buy her a book of poems - "Best Loved Poems" But times have changed and only one or two Riley poems were in there. He wrote thousands, you know. She asked me to find "Out to Old Aunt Mary's" a couple of weeks ago - but I got busy and then I got sick and I found it only today - Thanks to the 24/7 reference "AskPA" , a 24 hour online helpline staffed by public and academic librarians from around the state and beyond. (You can access AskPA from your public library's website - if you live in Pennsylvania). Claire from New York (New York has a similar help line) found a full text version of this extremely long, maudlin poem with the tear-jerker ending that people of my MIL's generation loved. But in my search, I thought of several other poems that I loved when I was small.

Like "Out to Old Aunt Mary's", the poems are nostalgic, rhythmic and rhyming. Some told stories and others were silly and I love them all.

I have a new quest. I will hunt down and find the best of the old recitables into my personal collection.

Do you have a favorite recitable poem? Let me know.