Melissa Wiley's Blog, page 153

Poetry Friday: Where to Find It

Carlie asked:

Thanks so much for introducing me to the idea of Poetry Friday. I love it. Can you tell me where I can find the schedule for who is hosting each week so that I can follow along and play too?

You bet! The schedule is posted at Kidlitosphere Central. This week's host is author Liz Garton Scanlon at her blog, Liz in Ink.

Ooh, fun! I just noticed that Amy at The Poem Farm is scheduled to host on my birthday next month. Poetry and cake: will that be a perfect day, or what?

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Win-Win

My dad and I have an informal agreement: he can borrow my children any time he likes, and I get to steal his photos.

I'm pretty sure my end of this bargain is called "eating your cake and having it too."

(Thanks, Daddy!)

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Project Runway, Sculpey Edition

I think Rose and Beanie are ready to start their own fashion label.

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Sculpey Runway

I think Rose and Beanie are ready to start their own fashion label.

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"Spend all you have for loveliness"

For Poetry Friday this week, two poems:

one from Sara, one from me.

Barter

by Sara Teasdale

Life has loveliness to sell,

All beautiful and splendid things,

Blue waves whitened on a cliff,

Soaring fire that sways and sings,

And children's faces looking up,

Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,

Music like the curve of gold,

Scent of pine trees in the rain,

Eyes that love you, arms that hold,

And for your spirit's still delight,

Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,

Buy it and never count the cost;

For one white singing hour of peace

Count many a year of strife well lost,

And for a breath of ecstasy

Give all you have been, or could be.

String of Beads

by Melissa Wiley

Well, I'll tell you

it's a long time

since I've strung words

on these taut threads

My mouth got busy

and my fingers with tales

and showing how the bunny

goes around the tree

and through the tunnel

Busy playing cat's cradle,

learning the shapes,

fingers together then drawing apart

like the sign for story

I learned from my deaf son

Bring the strands close,

slip a finger, loop another.

Catch the top rung of Jacob's ladder

in your mouth for just a moment.

The angular teacup rests on its saucer.

Broom, candles, manger, diamonds.

Anything may happen.

How mutable the forms,

how fluid, more forgiving

than the faceted words winking

thisway thatway as you squint

at the sharp wet end of a line.

If you forget to tie a knot in the string

the words slide off the end and skitter

to all corners

Anyway, which is it?

Yarn shapes or beads on a string?

Sooner or later

you have to make up

your mind.

This week's Poetry Friday roundup can be found at Teaching Authors.

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I'm Glad You're Back

When I woke up this morning, all my comments were gone. Poof. Disappeared. I wrote my web host in a panic. As usual, the amazing Emily Carlin at Swank had me fixed up within the hour. So now your comments are back, all 13,167 of them.

You have no idea what a relief that is to me. Your input is the best part of this blog. The Bonny Glen would be a lonely place without you! Keep talking, you hear?

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Books on Deck

Yesterday I read aloud the preface of The Strictest School in the World: Being the Tale of a Clever Girl, a Rubber Boy and a Collection of Flying Machines, Mostly Broken, a middle-grade novel I heard about at Hilltop Farm. Eighteen word subtitle: you had me at hello. Later I discovered Kelly Herold (whom I had the immense pleasure of meeting in person, at long long last, at Kidlitcon) had praised this one to the heavens also, years ago, and I think I remember jotting it down in my TBR list way back then but then I forgot all about it.

A lot of my stories end with "but then I forgot all about it."

We're already in the middle of a read-aloud, somewhat neglected in recent busy weeks, so I knew I shouldn't really be launching another one, no matter how delicious the title. The preface—the preface, seriously!—made us laugh. More than once. By the end of the page, I'd decided to be strong and delay the gratification until we've finished Adam of the Road. (Remember when we started that one, weeks and weeks ago? Busy autumn.)

I'm thinking maybe we'll do a kind of Victorian Christmas thing during Advent this year, read Strictest School, some Dickens, some poetry, whatever else occurs to me. Ideas welcome!

Meanwhile, I'm eyebrow-deep in CYBILs reading. Here's my current library list:

For keeps / Natasha Friend.

Glimpse / Carol Lynch Williams.

A little wanting song / Cath Crowley.

Boys, bears, and a serious pair of hiking boots / Abby McDonald.

Harmonic feedback / Tara Kelly.

Happyface / by Stephen Emond.

The red umbrella / Christina Diaz Gonzalez.

Every little thing in the world / Nina de Gramont.

Hold still / Nina LaCour, with illustrations by Mia Nolting.

By the time you read this, I'll be dead / Julie Anne Peters.

The cardturner : a novel about a king, a queen, and a joker / Louis Sachar.

The brothers story / Katherine Sturtevant.

Exit strategy / Ryan Potter.

The Duff : designated ugly fat friend : a novel / by Kody Keplinger.

A spy in the house / Y.S. Lee.

The daughters / Joanna Philbin.

The river / Mary Jane Beaufrand.

My double life / Janette Rallison.

The adventures of Jack Lime / by James Leck.

Shakespeare makes the playoffs / Ron Koertge.

Scars / by Cheryl Rainfield.

(I know these titles aren't properly capitalized but that's how my library lists them, and I don't have time to tinker right now.)

Last week I ordered a copy of Mirror Mirror, a Marilyn Singer poetry picture book, after reading Amy's recommendation; it arrived yesterday and I haven't had a chance to so much as peek inside yet, because the kids snapped it up and have been passing it around. It elicited spontaneous "this book is very cool, Mom"s from three separate kids, at three separate moments in the day. More on this one if I ever get a crack at it myself.

This post contains IndieBound affiliate links.

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Reading, 'Riting, Rambling (Our 3 Rs?)

Yesterday we spent a long time exploring The Poem Farm, the kids and I. They loved Amy's egg poem, and the dahlia one, and the haircut one—all of them, really. The mousetrap poem especially generated a lot of discussion.

(Huck was bashing the toy shopping into things all through this conversation, which, because we were reading poetry, inspired the following beginning of a poem called "House Rules for Toy Carts":

Racing down halls is encouraged.

Ramming the walls is not.

The couch where your sister is resting

Is not the best parking spot.

There's room for a verse about not using your big sister's dolls as crash dummies, I think, and a reminder that the piano is not a gong and the shopping cart isn't a mallet. I'm just saying.)

Today I read the middle girls "The Cremation of Sam McGee," which is terrifically cadenced and creepily evocative. A satisfyingly grisly narrative with a surprise at the end. Went over big.

And that led to a discussion of narrative voice and person (1st, 2nd, 3rd). Rose says she likes first-person books best because she feels like the story is really happening right that minute (which I enjoyed because that's what writers talk about choosing first person for, the immediacy). Beanie agreed but said she wouldn't have wanted the Rowan of Rin books to be in first person, she isn't sure why, she thinks the stories are better in third person so you can see everything that's happening to Rowan from the outside.

"That's true," said Rose thoughtfully, and then she told me all about why Shannon Hale likes to write in third person. She read this in an interview in the back of Enna Burning.

Shannon Hale: "I spent eighteen years writing unpublishable stuff, and I now realize it was all in pursuit of my voice. I found the kind of story that I love to read and the type of narrator I feel I can do well. I'm in love with the 'close third person' narrator, a narrator that knows only as much as the main character and yet can step back just a tad and tell the story in a slightly different voice. This allows me freedom of language  I wouldn't have in a first person narrator but lets me keep close to one character and follow her through the entire story."

I feel exactly the same way, I told Rose. Almost all my books are in close third person. I have some poems and short stories in first person, and I'm playing with a novel right now that wouldn't work at all in anything but first person. But as a reader, I am drawn toward the third-person narrative—with certain notable exceptions, like To Kill a Mockingbird and David Copperfield; and of course there are some books in which first person is imperative, like Kathy Erskine's Mockingbird (speaking of mockingbirds), or Huck Finn,  or Feed, or The Hunger Games. We need Katniss to be the one telling the story, need to be inside her head feeling her terror and anger and anxiety. A third person narrator would have been absolutely wrong for that story, would have felt like the totalitarian powers-that-be were filtering and controlling the story. We needed to hear it from Katniss, person to person, and to be as in the dark as she was, as confused, as trapped.

So: it's a book by book decision, not something to make a blanket statement about. But the books I love the most and reread obsessively have tended to have (and it may just be a coincidence) third person narrators. Sometimes close third person, like the Maud Hart Lovelace's books, and Laura Ingalls Wilder's, and A Wrinkle in Time. (And how interesting that both Laura and Maud chose third person for their very autobiographical stories. Beverly Cleary, too.) Other favorite authors use omniscient third person, shifting POV from time to time—L. M. Montgomery is brilliant at this. Tolkien, obviously. Elizabeth George Speare. Elizabeth Goudge. Edith Nesbit.

I'm also fond of books in which the narrative voice is not a character in the story yet has a distinctive and quirky personality, usually quite an opinionated one, like the ones in Peter Pan and The Anybodies. Hmm, what are some other examples?

This post went all a-ramble on me. They do that, sometimes.

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Welcome!

Lots of new visitors this week thanks to Liz Burns and other KidlitCon recappers. Hi there! Happy you stopped by!

Here are a few quick links to help you get to know me & the Bonny Glen gang:

• Info on my Little House books

(and another post about writing Martha)

• My book Hanna's Christmas

(more book news coming very soon, and here's a list of upcoming author events)

• A few favorite posts:

—you should definitely meet my Bosom Buddies

—and those awful Junkyard Dogs

—and here's a kind of meditation on museums, moving, and interconnectedness: Helixes

—"Who's on Surp?"

—my trip to Barcelona

—some books I adore

• If you're interested in our "tidal homeschooling" lifestyle, here's a post to start with, and lots more here.

Hope you'll stick around and chat. I love conversation.

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Hallowhine

I was looking through my posts from previous Halloweens in search of a particular picture (which I still haven't found) and detected a bit of a theme.

Bah, Humbug (2005: My true feelings come out. "Forget Scrooge, forget the Grinch—what I really need is an iconic literary character to represent the curmudgeon I become in late October every year…")

Help (Also 2005: A brief postscript.)

Dear Whole Wide World, I Have a Small Request (2006: A plea to postpone Halloween that year. I got no takers. Imagine!)

Something It's Important to Know about Living in Southern California (2006: Pumpkin soup, sun-tea style.)

2007, 2008, 2009: Silence speaks volumes. I can't seem to find anything at all about Halloween. Nada. Crickets! I mean, really, what kind of blogging mother omits to mention the kids' favorite day of the year, three years running?

This is a day when I'm scrambling around, madly helping children put finishing touches on costumes. EXCEPT NOT THIS YEAR because my awesome parents took the kids shopping while I was at Kidlitcon, and voila, costumes accomplished! Let's hear it for the grandparents.

Also for the calendar, for letting Halloween fall on a Sunday this year, which means Scott's around to supervise the pumpkin-carving. He's the trick-or-treat captain, too. Come sundown, he'll sally forth with the crowd, leaving me all alone with my best friend the Giant Bowl of Candy.

Huh, maybe this holiday isn't so bad after all…

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