Laura Shovan's Blog, page 3
May 6, 2021
Poetry Friday: Prairie Lotus
Bridget is hosting Poetry Friday this week! Stop by Wee Words for Wee Ones for links to poetry posts from around the kidlitosphere.
It’s Poetry Friday!
I have been featuring Asian American authors on my blog as part of the annual #AuthorsTakeAction initiative. In each post, I’ll share a recommended middle grade or YA novel by an Asian American author and a read-alongside poem.
Before we get to today’s featured book, though–a quick announcement.
This month, on May 18-19, author and poet Padma Venkatraman is offering “Poetry as Inspiration: A Two Part Mini Course” through Highlights. Padma has invited me and verse novelist Aida Salazar to guest teach with her! If you’d like more information, please click here.
Hanging out with Padma, pre-pandemic!
On to today’s book and poem pairing…
This week’s featured book is Prairie Lotus by Linda Sue Park.
According to Goodreads:
Prairie Lotus is a book about a girl determined to fit in and realize her dreams: getting an education, becoming a dressmaker in her father’s shop, and making at least one friend. Hanna, a half-Asian girl in a small town in America’s heartland, lives in 1880. Hanna’s adjustment to her new surroundings, and the townspeople’s prejudice against Asians, is at the heart of the story.
My take:
This was one of my favorite middle grade novels of 2020. I love stories about bicultural kids, because of my own history as a first generation American. In Prairie Lotus, Linda Sue Park shows how racism — whether it’s ugly and overt or communicated through a small gesture of exclusion — can undermine a young person’s self-confidence. Hanna’s story is rich, detailed, and powerful.
But it’s not just the story that stays with me. In the backmatter, the author openly shares how setting out to write a diverse novel inspired (in part) by Little House on the Prairie led to her own learning, especially about indigenous cultures in the Midwest. As authors’ notes go, this one is truly brilliant.
I could do an entire post on dressmaking as a theme in fiction! As I have learned from my collaboration with Saadia Faruqi (my co-author for A Place at the Table), when women and girls move to a new country or even a new community they often rely on soft skills for survival. Even those with advanced degrees (which aren’t always honored in their new home) might turn to cooking, cleaning, and sewing to make ends meet.
If this theme appeals to you, read Ruth Behar’s middle grade novel Letters from Cuba after Prairie Lotus. It’s about a young Jewish refugee whose dressmaking skills help her family adjust to their new life in Cuba. Or check out the play (for adults) Intimate Apparel, by Lynn Nottage. The play is about an African American seamstress who makes intimate apparel for wealthy white women. It is set at the turn of the last century. You can view an introduction to the play here.
Dressmaking, women, and survival. There’s a poem for that. I hope you enjoy, “Dressmakers,” by UK poet Jennie Carr.
Dressmakers
By Jennie Carr
I think of her dresses: cream sateen with beige flower print,
wide-collared, three-quarter cuffed sleeves, full skirt –
rainbow-striped silk, straight and sleeveless, thin belted.
As a girl, she told me, she stood still while her grandmother
wielded the scissors to cut neckline and armholes freely.
Her mother, more the designer, added hand-crocheted
trimmings, buttons or a tassel, so when it came to the thrifty
years on the farm, just the three of them and the evacuees,
they were adept at a tuck and a turn, adapting the pattern
to make do and mend – something that never really left her…
Read the rest at The Poetry Society (UK).
Next week, we’ll head to outer space with Jack Cheng’s middle grade novel See You in the Cosmos.
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April 22, 2021
Poetry Friday: Not Your All-American Girl
Catherine is hosting Poetry Friday this week at Reading to the Core. Follow the link for this week’s Poetry Friday offerings!
It’s Poetry Friday!
For the next few weeks, I will be featuring Asian American authors on my blog as part of the annual #AuthorsTakeAction initiative. In each post, I’ll share a recommended middle grade or YA novel by an Asian American author and a read-alongside poem.
Before we get to today’s featured book, though–a quick announcement.
This Sunday, April 25, I am partnering with Nerdy Book Club for a special National Poetry Month livestream (on Facebook). Since Amanda Gorman’s amazing performance at the 2021 presidential inauguration, educators have been looking for resources in teaching Spoken Word Poetry. I’m excited to introduce you to two spoken word performer/ educators who use this form of poetry in the classroom.
Illya Sumanto is a poet, children’s theater director, and educator from Malaysia, currently based in Guangzhou, China. She is co-author of the book From Me to We : Teaching Children Taboo Topics for Empathy through Spoken Word Poetry in Malaysia.
Award-winning poet and performer Ron Kipling Williams is adjunct professor at the Hoffberger Center for Professional Ethics, University of Baltimore.
Spoken Word is a form of poetry I want to learn more about. I’m excited to moderate the conversation between these two experts!
On to today’s book and poem pairing…
This week’s featured book is Not Your All-American Girl by Madelyn Rosenberg and Wendy Wan-Long Shang.
According to Goodreads:
Lauren and her best friend, Tara, have always done absolutely everything together. So when they don’t have any classes together in sixth grade, it’s disastrous. The solution? Trying out for the school play. Lauren, who loves to sing, wonders if maybe, just maybe, she will be the star instead of Tara this time.
But when the show is cast, Lauren lands in the ensemble, while Tara scores the lead role. Their teacher explains: Lauren just doesn’t look the part of the all-American girl. What audience would believe that she, half-Jewish, half-Chinese Lauren, was the everygirl star from Pleasant Valley, USA?
From amidst the ensemble, Lauren tries to support her best friend. But when she can’t bring herself to sing anymore, her spot in the play and her friendship are in jeopardy. With the help of a button-making business, the music of Patsy Cline, and her two bickering grandmothers, can Lauren find her voice again?
Acclaimed coauthors Madelyn Rosenberg and Wendy Wan-Long Shang return to the 1980s world of Sydney Taylor Honor Book This Is Just a Test with this laugh-out-loud coming-of-age story.
My take:
There is so much to love about this book. It is laugh out loud funny. (The culture clash between Lauren’s two grandmothers is sweet and hilarious.) But I also learned a lot about how relentless microaggressions and othering can feel to a middle schooler, especially when a teacher has rigid expectations about what “American” looks like.
It’s fascinating to me that real life best friends Rosenberg and Wan-Long Shang co-wrote Lauren’s first person voice! Most of the co-authored books I’ve read are written in alternating points of view. Lauren is a seamless blend of Jewish and Chinese cultures. For someone like me, who was a teen in the 80s, the nostalgia of this book added to its appeal. And, as a former theater mom, I found the rehearsal scenes and relationships between the cast and crew members to be not only believable, but entertaining too.
If you’d like a poem to read alongside Not Your All-American Girl, I recommend “How to Hula Hoop,” by Anya Silver.
How to Hula Hoop
By Anya Silver
Love the ridiculous.
Fear not contortions of the body
nor the vibrations of failure.
Place the hoop on your waist
where your husband puts his hands.
Then gyrate like crazy.
There’s no single method:
make of your hips a swivel stool
and your pelvis a pendulum.
Some will spiral slowly,
letting the hoop rock and swing
like a carousel of pastel horses.
I, graceless, wildly whirl myself
from abdomen to knees.
Normally, the hoop tumbles
down my legs in a minute
or three—but occasionally,
it will stay and settle…
Read the rest at Atticus Review.
Next week, I’ll be featuring the middle grade novel Prairie Lotus by Linda Sue Park.
TweetApril 15, 2021
Poetry Friday: The Last Cherry Blossom
Happy National Poetry Month, everyone. According to Poets.Org, it’s the 25th anniversary!
Jama Kim Rattigan at Jama’s Alphabet Soup is hosting Poetry Friday this week. You know Jama will be serving up something scrumptious!
For the next few weeks, I will be featuring Asian American authors on my blog as part of the annual #AuthorsTakeAction initiative.
In each post, I’ll share a recommended middle grade or YA novel by an Asian American author and a read-alongside poem.
Ready?
This week’s featured book is The Last Cherry Blossom by Kathleen Burkinshaw.
According to Goodreads:
Following the seventieth anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, this is a new, very personal story to join Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes.
Yuriko was happy growing up in Hiroshima when it was just her and Papa. But her aunt Kimiko and her cousin Genji are living with them now, and the family is only getting bigger with talk of a double marriage! And while things are changing at home, the world beyond their doors is even more unpredictable. World War II is coming to an end, and Japan’s fate is not entirely clear, with any battle losses being hidden fom its people. Yuriko is used to the sirens and the air-raid drills, but things start to feel more real when the neighbors who have left to fight stop coming home. When the bomb hits Hiroshima, it’s through Yuriko’s twelve-year-old eyes that we witness the devastation and horror.
This is a story that offers young readers insight into how children lived during the war, while also introducing them to Japanese culture. Based loosely on author Kathleen Burkinshaw’s mother’s firsthand experience surviving the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, The Last Cherry Blossom hopes to warn readers of the immense damage nuclear war can bring, while reminding them that the “enemy” in any war is often not so different from ourselves.
My take:
Yuriko’s story is beautifully told. I was drawn in by her gentleness, the conflicts in her blended family, and the changes Yuriko faces at the close of World War II. The reader experiences not only her love of her Papa, her fondness for her best friend, her worries about the impending wedding, but also her shock, horror, and grief when the atomic bomb falls.
Kathleen Burkinshaw has spoken at the United Nations and appeared with disarmament experts as a part of sharing her mother’s story. (Watch a video here.) My kid and I watched a livestream of her chatting with mystery writer Naomi Hirahara (also a child of Hiroshima survivor) through the Japanese American National Museum. What an enlightening conversation!
Kathleen has become a good friend. To me, her social justice efforts in sharing her mother’s story are heroic.
If you’d like a poem to read alongside this book, I recommend Toi Derricotte’s “Cherry blossoms.”
Cherry blossoms
By Toi Derricotte
I went down to
mingle my breath
with the breath
of the cherry blossoms.
There were photographers:
Mothers arranging their
children against
gnarled old trees;
a couple, hugging,
asks a passerby
to snap them
like that,
so that their love
will always be caught
between two friendships:
ours & the friendship
of the cherry trees.
Oh Cherry,
why can’t my poems
be as beautiful?
Next week, I’ll be featuring the middle grade novel Not Your All-American Girl by Madelyn Rosenberg and Wendy Wan-Long Shang.
TweetFebruary 25, 2021
February Poetry Project: Week 4 Prompts
It’s Poetry Friday! Happy birthday to the many February and March bloggers in our community. Karen Edmisten is hosting the Poetry Friday link-up this week. Stop by Karen Edmisten* for links to poetry posts from around the globe.
Hello, Poetry Friday friends.
It’s the last week of the February Poetry Project.
I always have a mix of feelings as we head into the final days of this writing practice. If I’ve managed to draft a poem every day, there’s a sense of accomplishment. There’s the exhiliration of seeing the finish line ahead! But there’s also a bit of sadness, knowing that our community of poets won’t be meeting so frequently until February rolls around again.
Are you thinking, “What is this poetry project of which you speak, Laura?” Read about this year’s project here. And there is background on this project — now in its ninth year! — at this post.
2021 Theme: Bodies
Read more about this theme at my Week 1 project post here.
Every day, a member of the project shares a prompt related to our theme. With their permission, I am posting those prompts here on my blog, for those who’d like to follow along with the project. Your daily task is to write a poem based on that day’s body-inspired prompt. The point of this exercise is to practice the habit of writing regularly, even if it’s just for one month.
For those of you following along, the last week’s prompts are in this post. Feel free to post your poetic responses in the comments.Ready for the next set of prompts?
DAY 22: Monday, February 22, 2021
Prompt by Diane Mayr (Share with permission)
If we look at the body, we also have to look at the malfunctioning of it, and, efforts at remediation. I recently read an article that mentioned quack medicine and I went looking for a little history. I found this page, which includes scans of quack medicine ads and labels.
I won’t vouch for the accuracy of the written portion, but I found the ads and labels leading me off in a hundred different directions. It may provide you with poetry fodder. I hope so, but if not, with the US death toll reaching 500,000+, maybe it’s time for a poem about vaccination.
https://www.historyonthenet.com/…/8-quackery/index.html
DAY 23: Tuesday, February 23, 2021
Prompt by Kathy Mazurowski
Procedural memory is a form of long-term memory that enables people to learn and execute tasks. It has been described as a kind of implicit memory: Unlike when a person recalls facts or images, someone using procedural memory may not be consciously aware that it’s being accessed.
Check out this article about Procedural Memory.
Photo credit: Jimi Jo M Friedman, on Instagram @jmfriedmanphoto
DAY 24: Wednesday, February 24, 2021
Prompt by Lisa Vihos (Shared with permission)
Photo by Jimi Jo M. Friedman (Shared with permission)
Today’s prompt is inspired by an image called “Winged Woman,” by a friend of mine, artist Jimi Jo M Friedman.Look for bodies (could be people, animals, mythical beings, or angels) in unexpected places in nature: in clouds, trees, water, flowers, rocks, mountains, valleys, hills, or….???Write a poem about what you find.
Image source: Science Illustrated
DAY 25: Thursday, February 25, 2021
Prompt by Randi Sonenshine (Shared with permission)There’s more to this photo than meets the eye!
Octopuses (not octopi!) are the masters of camouflage, not only matching the color of their skin to their surroundings, but also the texture (like the one disguised as coral in the photo). Engineers have even developed 3-D technology for “soft robots” by studying this phenomenon.
For your prompt today, perhaps think about the ways we try to blend in, or how we use our bodies for defense, or even about tricks of the eye. Maybe even think about other animal bodies that are unique, wacky, or extraordinary in some way.
Happy writing, everyone! To catch up on any prompts you missed, Week 1 is here. Week 2 is here. And Week 3 is here.TweetFebruary 18, 2021
February Poetry Project: Week 3 Prompts
Ruth is hosting this week’s Poetry Friday link-up. Please join the part at her blog, There Is No Such Thing as a God-forsaken Town.
This past week, we have been working through the saggy middle of my annual February Daily Poem Project.
You may have heard novelists complain that their energy wanes midway through writing a book. That can happen with this project too. I coach participants to focus on getting a poem written without judging it. To embrace the weird and awkward. When stuck, I advise leaning on poetic forms: acrostic, sonnet, Blackjack, or one that’s new to you. The constrictions of a form can force our minds to take unexpected paths.
Are you thinking, “What is this poetry project of which you speak, Laura?” Read about this year’s project here. And there is background on this project — now in its ninth year! — at this post.
2021 Theme: Bodies
Read more about this theme at my Week 1 project post here.
Every day, a member of the project shares a prompt related to our theme. With their permission, I am posting those prompts here on my blog, for those who’d like to follow along with the project. Your daily task is to write a poem based on that day’s body-inspired prompt. The point of this exercise is to practice the habit of writing regularly, even if it’s just for one month.
For those of you following along, the third week’s prompts are in this post. Feel free to post your poetic responses in the comments.Ready for the next set of prompts?
DAY 15: Monday, February 15, 2021
Prompt by Linda Mitchell (Shared with permission)
Prompt by Pat Valdata (Shared with permission)
DAY 17: Wednesday, February 17, 2021Prompt by Rebecca Brock (Shared with permission)
The Brain.
The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
For—put them side by side—The one the other will containWith ease—and you—beside—The Brain is deeper than the sea—For—hold them—Blue to Blue—The one the other will absorb—As sponges—Buckets—do—The Brain is just the weight of God—For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—And they will differ—if they do—As Syllable from Sound—
Emily Dickinson, c. 1862
Here are two articles to guide your writing.
https://www.powerofpositivity.com/five-secrets-of-the…/https://www.brainpickings.org/…/beautiful-brain…/DAY 19: Friday, February 19, 2021Prompt by Patricia VanAmburg (Shared with permission)
Astral Bodies
I mean the light bodies described in this Wikipedia article.If that topic doesn’t interest you, astral bodies can also mean planets and stars.Happy writing, everyone! To catch up on any prompts you missed, Week 1 is here. And Week 2 is here.TweetFebruary 11, 2021
February Poetry Project: Week 2 Prompts
Poetry Friday is a blogging community from across the world and across the kidlitosphere. Today’s link-up host is Molly Hogan at Nix the Comfort Zone.
We are nearly halfway through the 9th Annual February Daily Poem Project.
For several years — in order to practice writing in community — my blog hosted a poetry project. We moved to Facebook in 2017 to accommodate the number of poets and writers who wanted to participate.
2021 Theme: Bodies
Read more about this theme at my Week 1 project post here.Every day, a member of the project shares a prompt related to our theme. With their permission, I am posting those prompts here on my blog, for those who’d like to follow along with the project. Your daily task is to write a poem based on that day’s body-inspired prompt.
IMPORTANT NOTE FOR PROJECT NEWBIES: The point of this exercise is to practice the habit of writing regularly, even if it’s just for one month.
For those of you following along, the first week’s prompts are in this post. Feel free to post your poetic responses in the comments.Are you thinking, “What is this poetry project of which you speak, Laura?” Read about this year’s project here. And there is background on this project — now in its ninth year! — at this post.
Ready for the next set of prompts?
DAY 8: Monday, February 8, 2021
Prompt and photographs by Buffy Silverman (Shared with permission)
I intended to share a snowy-snout for my prompt, as that’s the body part that makes me laugh most these days. But I realized that might be too similar to Jone’s gorgeous brown-eyed pooch [from Day 6], and there might be some in the group who are not canine inspired. So I’m offering an alternative–snow-covered tree skin if you prefer. Choose either one or both for your Monday inspiration. (I’m thankful to have had a reason to take my camera out on this frigid Sunday!)
DAY 9: Tuesday, February 9, 2021
Prompt from Heather Meloche (Shared with permission)
LUNGS.
They are being watched/noticed/worried over by most everyone right now, but for me, they have been a central focus for a long time. My dad suffers daily from COPD. I also remind myself constantly to “Breathe, Heather. Breathe,” so much so that I tattooed it on my wrist as a reminder. Write about lungs or what they remind you of.
DAY 10: Wednesday, February 10, 2021
Prompt from Matthew Winner (Shared with permission)
DAY 11: Thursday, February 11, 2021
Prompt from Molly Hogan (Shared with permission)
Happy writing, everyone! To catch up on any prompts you missed, Week 1 is here.Tweet
February 1, 2021
February Poetry Project: Week 1 Prompts
For several years — in order to practice writing in community — my blog hosted a poetry project. We moved to Facebook in 2017 to accommodate the number of poets and writers who wanted to participate.
2021 Theme: Bodies
In this time of a global pandemic, has your attention turned to the body? Across the world, our human bodies are under attack by a powerful virus. Perhaps, as we all social distance, you have had more time to walk, take your body outside, exercise. Or maybe you have turned inward with meditation or begun a creative practice with your body’s hands. As a poet, has your body of work been affected by the year’s events? Let’s spend this month focusing on the beauty, vulnerability, and vast complexity of bodies — human and otherwise.
Beginning January 31, a group member will post a prompt related to our theme. I hope to share many of those prompts here on my blog, for those who’d like to follow along with the project.When coming up with writing prompts, we interpret the topic loosely.
Bodies:
· are made up of systems· can be human bodies, animal bodies, bodies of work, bodies of water· are where we feel emotions and senses· look snazzy in jazzy clothes· are the source of dysphoria and joyetc.
Your daily task is to write a poem based on that day’s body-inspired prompt.
IMPORTANT NOTE FOR PROJECT NEWBIES: The point of this exercise is to practice the habit of writing regularly, even if it’s just for one month.
For those of you following along, the first week’s prompts will be prompted in this post. Feel free to post your poetic responses in the comments.
Are you thinking, “What is this poetry project of which you speak, Laura?” Read about this year’s project here. And there is background on this project — now in its ninth year! — at this post.
Let’s do this!DAY 1: Monday, February 1, 2021*Bodies Dance*
Choose one of these three routines or a favorite of your own. Write a poem.
Option 1: All girl dance crew covers the K-Pop boy group BTS’s “Not Today.”
Option 2: Christopher Walken in Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice.”Option 3: Gregory Hines and Mikhail Baryshnikov in the 1985 film White Knights.TweetJanuary 21, 2021
Poetry Friday: Battered and Beautiful
Poetry Friday is here this week, my friends. Welcome!Scroll down to the bottom of this post and Mr. Linky will help you join the round-up of poetry links.
It is Inauguration Week.
As poets, we paid special attention to 22-year-old Amanda Gorman, our country’s first Youth Poet Laureate and youngest person ever to write and recite an inaugural poem.
According to Business Insider, Gorman’s poem, ” The Hill We Climb,” referenced several American poets and leaders, from George Washington and Frederick Douglass to Robert Frost and Maya Angelou. (Read the article here.)
I’ve been thinking about her phrase, “battered and beautiful,” from this section of the poem…
“We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover in every known nook of our nation in every corner called our country our people diverse and beautiful will emerge battered and beautiful…”
(from “The Hill We Climb” by Amanda Gorman).
To me, “battered and beautiful” speaks not only to our nation, but also to what it means to be alive, to live in a physical body. It reminds me of the pain of childbirth, of illness, of broken bones, and teenage break-outs. It reminds me of the beauty of taking a full breath, of experiencing the world through our five senses, of the joy we feel when we hug someone we love.
Next month marks the 9th annual February Poetry Project. It’s hard to believe that I started this tradition — generating a daily poem on a set theme — back in 2013! Each year, 30-40 poets join me in a private Facebook group where we write on a common prompt each day. The group is a safe space to share our stumbling, glorious, silly, insightful, heart-centered first drafts with each other.
Did you guess this year’s theme?
It’s BODIES.
There are a few spaces left in the group. Let me know in the comments if you would like to join. If you’re not on Facebook, or if you’re feeling shy, I’m trying something new this year. I hope to share most of the daily poetry prompts (written by members of the group) right here on my blog!
If you need a little bit more information about the project, here is an overview from 2018.
Before we get to the links: The two winners of the Bay to Ocean anthology are Michelle Kogan and Mary Lee Hahn. Congratulations to you both! I’ll send you an email soon about mailing out your book.
Do you need some additional Amanda Gorman resources to share with students?
“5 More Amanda Gorman Poems to Share with Your Kids” (Today Show)
Poet Jane Hirschfield on Amanda Gorman’s inaugural poem.
I’m looking forward to reading everyone’s posts.
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January 14, 2021
Poetry Friday: Toilet Paper & Other Pandemic Poems
It’s Poetry Friday! Margaret Simon is hosting today’s poetry links from around the kidlitosphere. You’ll find them at her blog, Reflections on the Teche.
Poetry Friday friends, do you remember the early days of the pandemic, when toilet paper was scarce? I remember sitting in the bathroom crying (everything made me cry at the beginning of the pandemic) as I counted squares, rationing TP against the potential disaster.
I had to laugh when I saw that my friend Pat Valdata wrote a poem about the toilet paper shortage. You may remember Pat’s book on women in avaiation, Where No Man Can Touch and the cool concrete poem (shaped like a parachute!) I shared in a 2017 PF post.
Before we get to the toilet paper poem, I wonder how the pandemic has shown up in your writing? Many people have been struggling with the focus it takes to write. Others have turned to daily diaries, recording the historical global event that we are all living through.
Covid has been on my mind too. I took some old notes — jotted down after a nightmare in 2018 — and turned them into a pandemic-themed poem that’s now out on submission. And an old poem of mine about the mythological Danae (one of Zeus’s conquests) transformed into the voice of a woman quarantined and sick with Covid-19.
That poem, “Danae Addresses Covid-19”, and Pat’s “Elegy for Toilet Paper,” appear in a new anthology, BAY TO OCEAN 2020: The Year’s Best Writing from the Eastern Shore Writers Association. I’m giving away two copies of this wonderful anthology, edited by Emily Rich and Tara Elliott. Leave a note in the comments if you’d like a chance to win. I’ll pull names randomly and will announce winners next week, when I host Poetry Friday.
ESWA also runs a wonderful writers’ conference — fully online this year. You can learn more about it here.
Now to the pandemic poems!
Does the shape of “Elegy for Toilet Paper” remind you of anything?
Elegy for Toilet Paper
By Pat Valdata
You spanned the shelves
in plastic bundles: one-
ply, two-ply, bonus extra
jumbo rolls. Sometimes you
were recycled, a tad scratchy,
other times you were so soft
you were almost useless. Yet
———————————-
we counted you a necessity,
light-years better than leaves,
corncobs (how did that work,
anyway?), pages torn from
the old Montgomery Ward
catalog. In the outhouse, your
tube a cozy spot for spiders.
———————————-
You came in handy when we
ran out of Kleenex, or when
we needed to wipe splotched
eyeliner or a blob of Clearasil.
When the curse came early,
thick folds of you bought us
time to run to the drugstore.
———————————-
Nowadays, dear absent friends,
forward thinkers, thinking aft,
who installed upscale bidets
sit smug and clean. The rest
of us count every precious
square to see just how much
we can get away with.
From BAY TO OCEAN 2020: The Year’s Best Writing from the Eastern Shore Writers Association. Published with permission of the author.
DANAE ADDRESSES COVID-19
By Laura Shovan
There were days before my father-king
ordered me to shelter in this chamber,
when I sat all morning on the harbor wall.
It was not the ships nor their sails
which drew my gaze, but the way light fell —
almost solid — and broke the water’s surface.
I remember the sun had muscle,
gold as the shoulders of a swimmer.
This I conceived long ago. Enter
if you must, god of fevers. Bring to me
the morning light, that first rush
of heat rubbing my eyelids open.
From BAY TO OCEAN 2020: The Year’s Best Writing from the Eastern Shore Writers Association.
Both Pat and I were nominated for Pushcart Prizes for our work in this anthology. Pat for a punch-to-the-gut poem titled, “I Post Another Sunset on Facebook,” and me for “Danae Addresses Covid-19.” What an honor!
Remember to raise your hand if you’d like to be in the drawing for your very own copy of BAY TO OCEAN 2020.
Poetry Friday is here next week. I’ll be announcing the theme for the 2021 February Poetry Project! See you then.
TweetJanuary 8, 2021
Poetry Friday: A Shattered Visage
This week’s Poetry Friday host is Sylvia Vardell. Hooray! It’s Sylvia’s annual preview of upcoming poetry books for children! Check out the list, plus this week’s PF links, at Poetry For Children.
Do you remember the first time you read Percy Bysshe Shelley’s sonnet “Ozymandias”? I do.
The compelling, mysterious “a friend of a friend” style opening drew me into the poem. Strong visual images made me feel like I was the one standing in an empty desert, staring down at the half-buried face of a forgotten ruler.
The threatening inscription contrasted with the traveller’s observation that the “colossal wreck” was surrounded by emptiness. Reading this poem as a teen, I understood the meaning of irony.
Given the terrible events at the Capitol building this week, I am think of that “wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,” and the barrenness behind it.
Ozymandias
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
If you’d like to hear the poem, here is a video with illustrations from the fantastic Gavin Aung Than of Zen Pencils.https://www.zenpencils.com/
I recommend reading the Poetry Foundation’s essay on this poem, by David Mikics. It includes a history (written on the same weekend that gave us Frankenstein!) and an analysis. “The seemingly infinite empty space provides an appropriate comment on Ozymandias’ political will, which has no content except the blind desire to assert his name and kingly reputation.” Unfortunately, that final phrase could have been written about our current president.
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