Jeannine Atkins's Blog, page 45

Stuff and Silence

My husband has been looking for a single treasured photo that has disappeared from albums and piles. And there are lots of piles here. As part of the searching, he's realized how little in those stacks and shelves he needs or wants, and trash bags are filled, boxes set aside for fund-raiser tag sales.

It's something like the kind of researching I do before or while writing poems based in history. I look through a lot, then put most aside, while searching for just the right image. Lots of the ...

Waiting for Words

I'm on a writing retreat for a few days, where I love talking about books and poems with people who've often read what I have, but I spend most of the time gazing at water and writing.

Yesterday my goal was to write a poem. I failed, but collected about eleven pages of flotsam and jetsam. Stuff that isn't poetry, but might make its way into some. Some ideas and some images – those words evoking the tangible being more valuable. And, what looks like a usable metaphor.

I started yesterday telli...

Summer Birds: The Butterflies of Maria Merian by Margarita Engle, with pictures by Julie Paschkis

As an admirer of the the subject of this picture book and the author, Margarita Engle, who won a Newbery Honor for The Surrender Tree, and whose other histories told in verse include, most recently, The Firefly Letters, I looked forward to Summer Birds (Henry Holt). And wasn't disappointed. The first person narrative focuses on the life of the artist and scientist at thirteen, though the book ends with her wondering about her life as adult. Accompanied by Julie Paschkis's most whimsical pain...

Picasso, Degas, and Swimming

My niece Rachel just visited before leaving Brooklyn for Berkeley to start grad school. We saw "Picasso Looks at Degas" at the Clark Art Institute http://www.clarkart.edu/exhibitions/picasso-degas/content/exhibition.cfm

Pablo Picasso famously, or mythically, said: Good artists borrow, great artists steal."

But like many who speak memorable lines, did he mean it? The bravado and decisiveness of stealing appeals, but I thought the back and forth of borrowing held more truth as I looked at the pa...

All the Not Knowing

I'm moving into new territory with my revision. Which is exciting: there's so much I don't know. And horrible and scary: there's so much I don't know.

It's a necessary phase. If you want to create something new to the world, it probably has to be at least partly all new to you, too. You don't want readers to feel that they read this, or something very much like it, already. So you hurl yourself into some kind of abyss, shining lights this way and that. Something sticks, followed by doubt.

And ...

The Semi-Dark Cave of Writing

When I began writing in my twenties, honestly it was kind of to save my life. I had thoughts, feelings, memories, doubts I hardly dared to put in words, and they certainly weren't going to be spoken ones. My notebooks were entirely secret at first. Then I enrolled in writing classes, and stories had to come out on tables surrounded by a dozen or so other writers. But I was careful about what I typed onto what a few of you may remember as carbon paper to make duplicates. Before I showed my wo...

Sharing the Seasons: A Book of Poems edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins and illustrated by David Diaz

Sharing the Seasons: A Book of Poems edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins and illustrated by David Diaz (Margaret McElderry/Simon and Schuster) offers a joyful way for the very young to learn about the seasons, while it may remind older readers of the varied pleasures of the year. Lee Bennett Hopkins introduces the four sections with an epigraph from an established, beloved, and deceased writer, while most of the poems have been written by living people, some of whom happily have several poems inclu...

Whining Wednesday

"So you bloggers have Thankful Thursday, and Nonfiction Monday, and Poetry Friday," my husband observed. "Why not Whiny Wednesday?"

I suppose a certain amount of complaining might naturally precede the grateful lists we sometimes post on Thursdays. Face it. Writing can be hard. Words don't go where we want them to. The people who should get what we do don't always seem to, and even when they give good advice, well, it's hard to love those who set us straight. Somewhere there's gratitude in my...

Uh oh, Perfection

Most of us have been told that nothing's perfect.
Or we've said it. Maybe when somebody was whining.

But it doesn't mean we don't crave what's at least perfect enough to make us sit up straighter and think: yes.

Often there's itchiness involved in writing. We get distracted by the cat, the lawn mower next door, the humming refrigerator, the unread email that seems bound to be more charming than anything in our heads. And imperfect words on screens or paper can make me even itchier. Too often, in...

Mint

My friend Michelle Kwasney http://www.michelledkwasney.com/ has been struggling with a terrible case of lyme disease for too long. She's had to stop teaching and neurological problems have made writing hard for her, too. Last fall she was unable to do much publicity for her wonderful novel for teens, Blue Plate Special, which is told in three voices, one of which is free verse. Time, money, motivation, creative spirit are all important in how much we can give to writing, but of course health ...