Jeannine Atkins's Blog, page 47

Scrap by Scrap, in Hunger Mountain Review

I'm so pleased that Hunger Mountain Review, the VCFA journal of the arts, just put live an article I wrote called Scrap by Scrap: Turning History into Poems. I wrote about the process of writing Borrowed Names: how it began as a book of prose for children, and why it changed it form; some of the poetic standards I set for myself, ways I mined images, and how I blended imagination and research. Here's an excerpt:

Writing these poems, I lingered with the images the way I once turned over old g...

Twenty-Seven Years

Here's a view of what I've been seeing while writing in a hotel in Portsmouth, New Hampshire this morning. I like the seagull chirps, or are they cries or caws? Although my husband and I came to this gorgeous coastal city near where we got married to celebrate our anniversary, as we walked to breakfast he asked if I'd like some time to write today. I said, "Yes."



Our very simple wedding vows included the usual for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, but not: and Jeannine should h...

Eight Per Cent

Over breakfast my husband asked, "Maybe you can't answer this, but do you know how much of your writing is done with a view to how much anyone else may like it?"

"Eight percent," I said.

Okay, maybe it could blur over to seven or nine. I really don't know, but Peter agreed this was around what he would have guessed. Most of my writing comes from questions I pose to myself and start trying to answer. I wonder about the ordinary moments of people I admire. I pursue themes that matter to me in li...

Feed the Birds

My husband and I watched Mary Poppins recently, along with the lengthy and fascinating special features at the end of a new dvd edition. The 1964 movie that we hadn't seen for many years held up, and we didn't see a misogynist message some had led us to expect: family is crucial, and at the end while Mr. Banks makes it's clear he'll be a better dad, Mrs. Banks never indicates she'll give up her work as a suffragist. The interviews with Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, and the girl who played Jan...

Today

1. Make tea.

2. Set flowers on the table.

3. Remember to love the quiet morning.

4. Write. For a while I've been slapping down ideas, most landing splish-splash or scattered, trying to keep faith that if I kept slapping down more words, raking away others, something would start to look good. Yesterday a few phrases glimmered and my faith feels stronger. Though there's a long long way to go.

Thank you, Jeni Bell!

Jeni, I'm grateful for your thoughtful review of Borrowed Names.
http://jeniwrites.livejournal.com/28092.html

Sending virtual peonies from my garden. And a glimpse of a happy, constructive trip to the library this afternoon.

Green Books for Babies and Those Who Love Them

I recently mentioned rereading Mary Poppins, finding my favorite chapter was the one in which the two babies talk with birds. All infants, we're told, understand the language of animals until their baby teeth fall out.



Maybe we don't quite believe this, but we encourage children to believe they're animals at least for the short times that they spend with books. When we read them The Hungry, Hungry Caterpillar, children might not only wiggle their fingers through the holes in the pages, but im...

It's just the edge of a lawn, or ...

In the morning, dew on grass can remind us to look close.



Of course stepping back is good, too.




pictures by my husband, Peter

Chariots and Clouds

When my husband and I were bicycling this weekend, he brought up a sentence on the first page of my book in process. "The mud-bricks under her bare feet hummed the way they did when chariots clattered toward the palace."

Peter said, "I know you've never lived in a palace and I don't think you've ever heard a chariot, so how did you get to that humming floor?"

It's a kind of physical imagination, I said. It's what we do in life when we exercise compassion, or really try to feel myself into ano...

Slim Books

When much of life is sitting at home, it can be hard to know what to blog about. Or if you move your laptop to the library or a coffee shop, well, how interesting is that? One thing I love here at LiveJournal is the conversations that sometimes get started in the comments, and how sometimes a question will bring out the seed of a new post. This happened a few days ago when Melodye newport2newport looked past my cute baby geese, which truly are worth looking at alone, to my words about writing...