National Poetry Month: Guest Post from Laura Purdie Salas: Looking for Poems in All the Wrong Places
Poetry is like dust. It’s everywhere if you just look closely. I think a lot of us make the mistake of thinking we need beauty and silence and long stretches of time in order to be inspired. But I find poetry to be the most fun when you come across it unexpectedly.
Milbrook Press, February 2012.
Last week, for instance, I was at an orchestra concert. I do not like orchestral music. I’m a word person. I often have trouble staying awake when subjected to music with no words. But the concert we attended was Eric Whitacre, who does compose choral music, so there were words (hallelujah!). At least for some of the pieces. I took my handy dandy notebook with me, and I’ll admit that I actually found the concert interesting and enjoyable instead of boring. But I was still happy to take out my mini-notebook and supplement my listening with poetry writing.
First I looked at the stage through squinty eyes. I like to do that and see what things transform into. I noticed that the choir’s white music folders looked like a hundred flying seagulls, so I wrote:
Choir: five deep rows of black ocean
White vees of sheet music perch against chests–
preening and ruffling to the music,
on the verge of surging upward,
soaring into song
Later, during a piece with no words, I studied the huge acoustical blocks along the wall behind the stage.
A rockslide falls
down the wall of Orchestra Hall:
sugar cubes
igloo blocks
dotless, spotless dice
frozen, mid-tumble
Several pieces and poems later, during the performance of The River Cam, which was gorgeous and kind of haunting, I wrote:
Bridge the seasons–autumn to night!
Snuff out the burning trees
Let liquid sun run down the drain of dusk
Crack open the moon so its snowy core can
bury October
I like the crack open the moon line. That was a gift from a student on a school visit. A third- or fourth-grader with a big ketchup stain on his sweatshirt said the moon looked like an egg and I asked, “What’ll happen if we crack it open?” He said maybe it would snow. And—ping—I knew I wanted to use that image somewhere.
Milbrook Press, April 2014.
The kids who don’t already love poetry are often the ones to utter the lines that make my head explode in a good way. The poetry lovers are sometimes trying too hard to be deep and meaningful. They’re looking for poetry instead of just discovering it in its natural habitat.
Don’t get me wrong. I love poetry about beautiful things. And I sometimes intentionally sit down to write about amazing topics. I love water in all its forms, for instance, and my newest picture book is WATER CAN BE… (Millbrook Press, 2014), a rhyming nonfiction book that celebrates the fantastic and scary and necessary things water does in our world. It is basically a love poem to water, and I had so much fun writing it.
Water is water—
it’s puddle, pond, sea.
When springtime comes splashing,
the water flows free.
Water can be a…
Well, you’ll have to read the book to find out what all it can be:>)
A riddle-ku clue!
It’s just that I think a lot of poets (kids and adults) put pressure on themselves to write poetry only about things they find awe-inspiring or deep. I’ve been having a total blast this Poetry Month writing riddle-ku, which are combinations of mask poems, haiku (really senryu), and riddle poems. I’m posting one every single day of April on my blog, and I have poems on all sorts of mundane, everyday objects like dog leashes and feathers and brooms.
Our whole world is a poem, and you don’t need something spectacular to write about. When you fail a math test or you have to wait for your sister’s gymnastics class to end, when you’re fired from your job or you see an animal that completely grosses you out (daddy longlegs in the shower—eek!), when you’re bored or scared or sad or just annoyed that your pb&j sandwich went soggy—those are all great times to write poems. Just look around and you’ll find just the right poems in so many wrong places!
Laura Purdie Salas.
Laura Purdie Salas is the author of more than 120 books for kids and teens, including WATER CAN BE…, A LEAF CAN BE… (Bank Street Best Books, IRA Teachers’ Choice, Minnesota Book Award Finalist, Riverby Award for Nature Books for Young Readers, and more), and BOOKSPEAK! POEMS ABOUT BOOKS (Minnesota Book Award, NCTE Notable, Bank Street Best Book, Eureka! Gold Medal, and more). She loves to introduce kids to poetry and help them find poems they can relate to, no matter what their age, mood, and personality. She has also written numerous nonfiction books, and she mentors writers through Mentors for Rent. See more about Laura and her work at http://www.laurasalas.com.
Twitter: @LauraPSalas
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/LauraPSalas
