Poetry Friday: Houdini

Happy early Halloween!  I wanted something other than pumpkins or vampires to feature today, and was lucky enough to have my book club friend, children's author Jacqueline Jules, offer me the chance to feature her poem about Harry Houdini.

Houdini, if you don't know, DIED on Halloween. (Cue the spooky music.) More than that, in this poem, Jackie manages to illuminate a little-known side of the great escape artist:  he loved books. Yup. Carted hundreds of them around with him everywhere, in a special traveling bookcase.

You can visit Jackie's web site to find out more about Houdini and her process in writing this poem, including pictures and links to original Houdini letters at the Library of Congress.

And, now, the main event!


ENCHANTED BY BOOKS
by Jacqueline Jules

A teenager nicknamed “Ehrie,”
raised by a scholar skilled at Torah,
but not English or earning a living,
and a mother, who more often
than not, had only love
to serve her son at the table,
opened a book one day
and pulled a new persona
from its pages.

He became “Harry Houdini,”
borrowing his idol’s name
the way a ravenous child
swipes an apple,
and taught himself to
escape handcuffs, hunger,
and homelessness,
with books collected by the hundreds
and kept as close as the buttons on his shirt
through years of traveling from stage to stage.

The Great Houdini,
who freed himself from locked trunks,
milk cans, straitjackets, and jails,
never tried to escape
the charm of a book.

(© Jacqueline Jules, 2009, all rights reserved

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Jennie at BiblioFile

Meanwhile, in other corners of the blogosphere, more interesting happenings....

Little green army men hurling raisins! Takin' down a pumpkin! All because Jama at Alphabet Soup is giving away TWO copies of OPERATION YES to support my book signing on Nov. 8th. And don't miss the best part: reading everyone's tributes to their favorite teachers. (My own shout out to a great teacher is here.)  Go, now, be amused and inspired.

Also, I tell Jody Sparks why I hate the smell of cardboard boxes, how many bags of little green army men are in my house, and how improvisation inspires me as a writer. Thank you for the interview, Jody!

That is all. Back to revisions.

"Never Use a Paperclip . . ."

Hey, there. I'm deep in revisions, so if you think I'm ignoring this blog, you're right. I get to a certain point in the heavy lifting where I become completely obsessed, and do nothing but write and eat soup (or cereal.)

Meanwhile, if you'd like something more interesting to read, check out my new teacher's guide for Operation Yes, written by talented teacher and former military kid, Natalie Lorenzi. You can can download it here or use the link in this blog's side bar or try viewing it at my new teachers page at the Operation Yes site. (If you have any ideas for items to add to that teachers page, please let me know.)

Here's a sneak preview of two of the fun imrov activities that Natalie created for the guide:

FLYING FARMER:  

In the spirit of the Flying Farmer, set up an obstacle course with students, chairs, tables, and low objects (such as blocks) on the floor.

One student is the Flying Farmer and must make it from one side of the stage to another while blindfolded. (You may use two X’s formed with tape on the floor for starting and ending points.)

An “air traffic controller” gives directions. If the pilot brushes or touches an object more than twice, the airplane goes down and the game starts over. You can set a time limit when the airplane will “run out of fuel.”

GOOD ADVICE:

Miss Loupe’s new 6th grade students could use some advice from Bo, Gari, and the rest of the Ugly Couch Players.

Brainstorm a list of “school” words—school supplies, teachers, objects found in school etc. Write the names of each object on an index card, and put the cards in a bag. Students go to the front of the class in pairs and draw one card each from the bag. Each pair must offer a one-line pearl of wisdom for next year’s students.

Rules:
1. One student begins the sentence, using the word on the card he or she drew from the bag.

2. The second student must complete the sentence using the other word drawn from the bag. The advice may be wacky, but it must make grammatical sense.

Example: If the following words are drawn from the bag: paper clip, water fountain... Student 1 might begin with: “Never use a paper clip...”

and Student 2 might finish: “...to fish your gum out of the drain in the water fountain.”

Hey! I thought of a good one: Never use a paperclip. . . . to eat soup.

See you guys on Poetry Friday!

Paul is running a marathon; I'm (maybe) doing pushups (if you'll come to my book signing)

First, a big shout out to Paul McCollom, who is running the Marine Corps marathon today to benefit the Fisher House Foundation.  As he says, he hopes the spectacle of his 61-year-old self hobbling across the finish line causes people to find out more about Fisher Houses, which provide housing for military families so they can be close to their wounded loved ones as they recover.  His fundraising page is here.

Second, a blanket invitation to all of you (and your friends) to come see me at the fabulous indie book store, Hooray for Books! in Alexandria, VA on Sunday, Nov. 8th at 1:00.  I'll be signing OPERATION YES, doing a reading, and perhaps demonstrating a few Miss Loupe style moves such as pushups. :)

For each book sold at this event, I'm donating $1.00 to Musicorps, which is another Fisher House program which helps wounded warriors recover through music.  I blogged about it at my Operation Yes site, beginning with:

How do you keep playing drums when the limb you use to operate the foot pedal is missing?  What if you have an artificial hand---can you learn to play the piano? If you were hit by a bomb and lost your leg, would you think to write a rap song for your son?  Read the rest of the post here.


If you want to support this great cause, but can't make it in person to the book signing, Hooray for Books will take your order over the phone: (703) 548-4092. Be sure to tell them how you'd like your copies personalized, and I'll sign them when I'm in the store on Nov. 8th. You can pick them up later in store (if you're local) or have Hooray for Books mail them to you for a flat fee.


Thank you so much for your support. We all lean on each other, and I'm grateful for each of you.

Poetry Friday: Banana Pudding

Sometimes, you get lucky. This morning, in the mood for not-so-serious poetry, I googled "banana pudding poem."   My search returned a link to a lovely villanelle, not at all about dessert, but the end of summer. The reason it was drawn into my Google net was because the poet, Karin Gustafson, compared the making of this layered form of poetry to the banana pudding at Magnolia Bakery in New York City, the very place I ordered pudding from to celebrate the launch of Operation Yes. (You can find the recipe for it here.)

I would've savored this coincidence and moved on, except that the villanelle itself shimmers with images and leaves me wondering if all things are as deeply connected as Google search and the interlocking layers of both villanelles and banana pudding would have us believe.



Swimming in Summer
by Karin Gustafson


Our palms grew pale as paws in northern climes
as water soaked right through our outer skin.
In summers past, how brightly water shines,

its surface sparked by countless solar mimes,
an aurora only fragmented by limb.
Our palms grew pale as paws in northern climes

as we played hide and seek with sunken dimes,
diving beneath the waves of echoed din;
in summers past, how brightly water shines.

Read the rest here

Poetry Friday is hosted today by its founder, Kelly Herold, at Big A, Little a

National Day on Writing Galleries and Jody Call Winners

Happy National Day on Writing! Everyone should be . . .uh....writing. That's what I'm going to do after I post this.  First, some links to celebrations of writing across the 'net.

At A Year of Reading, a video montage of bloggers and writers, sharing their take on the phrase "a lifetime of reading."  Also, an invitation to view A Year of Reading's gallery of writing, in which Franki and Mary Lee asked kidlitosphere members to submit a post about their reading lives.  (Pssst . . . want to see a really cute picture of Mary Lee?)

At Kate Messner's LiveJournal, a gallery illuminating the revision process, featuring the marked-up, tagged, scribbled-on, and tear-splotched pages of several children's writers (including me.)  I admire Kate's blog, because she always has such practical ideas to share with other teachers, students and writers, and this revision showcase is definitely one of them.  (By the way, the teeny omission of the word "to" in the note accompanying my pages is all my doing, not Kate's. We're working on getting that . . . wait for it. . . . revised.)

At Mitali Perkins' blog, "thank you love notes" written by 8th graders. Not edited. Not revised. From the heart. Priceless.

Finally, I want to celebrate ALL the writers who braved their inner drill sergeants and posted a jody call in my contest to win a copy of Operation Yes. You can see all the jody calls here (along with pictures of little green army men taken by my agent, Tina Wexler.)  Hey! That could be my National Day on Writing Gallery!  I'll bet I'm the only jody call post they get.

Alas, only three can win, although all were awesome. In the end, the military judge ruled in favor of these three:  Amber Lough, Marjorie Light, and Maribeth.   Congratulations and please email me your address so I can get your signed copies to you. (Unless you'd like several weeks of boot camp and chow hall food instead.)  Email to: email@saralewisholmes.com and please specify if you'd like the book inscribed to a particular person.

"I hear it's National Day on Writing.

Think someone will write about us?"

The Conversation Continues: Kidlit Bloggers Conference 2009 #kidlitcon

This is where I played all weekend:

The Author Panel: "It's Not All About Your Book"

Kidlit Blogger Conference, DC, 2009

Wendie Old, Sara Lewis Holmes, Caroline Hickey, and Laurel Snyder

I had a wonderful time at the conference, and if you're thinking about going next year, you should definitely do it.  I also know that I should blog every last detail, but between the revisions underway on the WIP and the Operation Yes promotional stuff, it isn't going to happen. Even these pictures I had to beg from the generous Jama at Alphabet Soup. EDITED TO ADD:  And she has a full report on everything discussed, along with more pictures. Seriously, her post is jam-packed, honest and thorough. Get yourself there to read it!)

Me with Jama's cutie-pie bear, Cornelius

But . . . I do want the conversation that was started around the Author Panel to have a place to continue. You have unanswered questions; you have thoughts that didn't hit you until later; you were inspired; or you were uninspired and still want to be; you now know what to blog about and you want to tell us----whatever it is, please use the comments section here on this post to talk to each other about it.

And since there were two specific questions that were left in an earlier post about blog audience, I did want to answer those directly.

The questions were:

madelyn said...

I will be going to the conference so I suppose I could ask this there, but just to get the discussion started I will ask a multi-layered question (because I love frosting): Who do you think of as your audience when you're blogging? Your readers or other writers? I realize they are often one in the same, but one of my worries about kidlit blogs (oh, worries isn't the right word, and I'm waiting to be set straight on this point anyway) is that it seems as if the audience is often other bloggers and writers, as opposed to that illusive child reader or the equally illusive parent of child reader. Some blogs I follow seem to be kid oriented; others seem to be writer oriented. How do you strike a balance? Who do you think about when you're blogging?

10/14/09 12:02 AM 

lgburns said...

My question is very similar to Madelyn's, and I hope that if this issue is discussed at the conference that one of you will blog about it!

I see my blog as a place for my readers (kids and adults) to go and see what I am up to. I write a bit about my work, and a whole lot about things that interest me, mostly books and science and the natural world. I think I do an okay job of staying on task and I think that my blog archive is a great place to go and learn a little bit about who I am and what makes me tick. That said, almost all of my subscribers, readers, and commenters are other writers. I did not anticipate this at all when I started the blog. And while I adore those few readers I have, and appreciate their readership, comments, and encouragement, I don't quite know what to do with the unease I feel over the fact that I don't blog with them in mind!

And my answer would be two-fold:

1) You may target an audience, but you can't control who reads your blog.  Your content will bring you the readers who most need that content.  Don't try to be all things; instead, showcase what you do or love best, be that scientific research, punctuation lore, or the particular slant with which you view your reading/writing life. In short, be authentic, and be aware that your readers may extend beyond what you planned for.

2) I don't think it's a failing that kids don't read most of our blogs. Kids don't read blogs in general, as Greg Pincus of GottaBook pointed out in his fabulously detailed social media talk.  I personally believe that kids are more likely to find your web site, as part of a class project. So keep that "static" site up-to-date, perhaps archiving some of your more relevant, kid-friendly posts there as articles.  (See Laura Purdie Salas's Poetic Pursuits on her site for a perfect example.) Anyone else want to weigh in on this?

Okay, that's enough talking from me. Your turn!

Poetry Friday: Jody Calls and LGM on the Move

(all images courtesy of my multi-talented agent, Tina Wexler)

Today's the last day to enter a jody call in the comments here or here in order to win a signed copy of Operation Yes. What the heck---you can even enter on this post (but read the rules first.)  And remember, this is for fun---people sweat to jody calls, not dress up in tuxedos and read them with a sonorous voice at Carnegie Hall.  So take a chance, let go of your "indoor voice," and see what happens when you tap your inner drill sergeant.

To inspire you, I present the current butt-kicking fabulous entries (including one from my mom who felt bad that there weren't more entries.... way to go, MOM!)

I DON'T KNOW BUT I'VE BEEN TOLD

CHILDREN'S BOOKS ARE GOOD AS GOLD

AUTHORS POUND OUT PLOT AND THEME

LETS THOSE CHILDREN LEARN AND DREAM

SOUND OFF!

CHILD-REN'S

SOUND OFF!

WRI-TERS

CHILDREN'S WRITERS!

SOUND OFF!

I DON'T KNOW BUT I'VE BEEN TOLD

READING BOOKS WILL HELP YOU GROW

C'MON KIDS AND DREAM WITH ME

EXPLORE YOUR POSSIBILITIES!

SOUND OFF!

DREAM BIG

SOUND OFF!

LET'S READ!

DREAM BIG - LET'S READ!

SOUND OFF!

--- MARJORIELIGHT

I DON’T KNOW BUT IT’S BEEN SAID

TO BE REAL SMART, BE WELL READ.

IMAGINE WHY I SCRATCHED MY HEAD

WHEN MY SON ASKED WHY AUTHORS WERE DEAD?!

L’ENGLE, TOLKIEN, AND BURNETT.

C.S. LEWIS? WE HAVE THE SET.

A QUICK SEARCH AND HE FELT BETTER

@BEVERLYCLEARY IS NOW ON TWITTER.

LIBRARIES, INDIES, AND COFFEE SHOPS

ARE WRITERS’ FAVORITE PIT STOPS.

BUT THANKS TO THOSE WHO BLOG AND TWEET

THEIR READERS RECEIVE A GENUINE TREAT!

----KRISTIN

I DON'T KNOW, BUT IT'S BEEN SAID
CHILDREN'S BOOKS ARE READ IN BED,
ON THE COUCH WITH JAM AND BREAD,
ANYWHERE FROM A TO ZED.

I DO KNOW, IT'S SAFE TO SAY
SARA'S BOOKS ARE A-OK,
POS-I-TIVE-LY MAKE MY DAY,
NEW ONE'S COMING-SHOUT HOORAY!

---Mary Lewis

Reading Rocks!

I don’t know, but I’ve been told

a good book’s worth more than gold.

At the book store you can find

stories--almost any kind.

Special books can take you far,

check out Where the Wild Things Are.

Charlotte’s Web or Dr. Seuss, 

Nate the Great or Mother Goose

Harry Potter, Junie B.,

Goodnight Moon, The Giving Tree

Books can take you any place--

countries, worlds, or outer space.

---Donna V. 

They say that when you're reading

The real world disappears

So I'm grabbing Judy Blume

Cause I've got dishes out my ears

And if I read some L'Engle

There's no dust upon my shelves

And if I read some Rowling

I'll get help from three house elves

The laundry's getting moldy

The vacuum might be broke

But Octavian's escaping

Wimpy Kid just told a joke

My own kid's done with school

Let the wild rumpus start

We'll order out for dinner

Pumpkin juice and treacle tart

Oh Lord, I want to read

My house has gone to seed

Please, Lord, I want to read 

nowwwwwww.

---Madelyn

HOW MANY BOOKS CAN A CHILD READ?

         MANY, MANY, MANY  IF YOU PLANT A SEED

     HOW DO YOU PLANT THE SEED YOU ASK?

         READ TO YOUR CHILD IT'S NOT A TASK

     WHAT TYPE OF BOOKS WILL THEY ADORE?

         DEPENDS ON THE CHILD THERE'S BOOKS GALORE

     WHAT EXACTLY WILL MY CHILD GAIN?

         LOVE, EXPLORATION, AN IMPROVED BRAIN

     WHAT IF MY CHILD DOESN'T LIKE TO READ?

         FIND A WAY TO MAKE IT FUN. PLANT THE SEED.

     THANKS FOR THE ADVICE-I'LL FOLLOW THROUGH

         I'LL READ TO MY CHILD THAT'S WHAT I'LL DO.

---MARIBETH

I DON’T KNOW BUT I’VE BEEN TOLD

GREEN EGGS AND HAM ALL SMELL LIKE MOLD

I DO NOT LIKE THEM SO I SAY

NOW LET ME BE AND RUN AWAY!

I DO NOT LIKE THEM HERE OR THERE

I DO NOT LIKE THEM, SO BEWARE

GREEN EGGS AND HAM ARE STRANGE TO ME

THE COLOR’S OFF AND THEY’RE SLIMY!

GREEN EGGS (AND HAM!)

GREEN EGGS (AND HAM!)

DON’T MAKE ME EAT THEM

UNCLE SAM!

GREEN EGGS (AND HAM!)

GREEN EGGS (AND HAM!)

DON’T MAKE ME EAT THEM

UNCLE SAM!

YOU SERVE THEM IN THE DINING HALL

TO EAT, BE STRONG, AND GROW REAL TALL

OK, ONE TASTE--JUST GO AWAY

DON’T COME AGAIN ANOTHER DAY

SAY! (HEY!) SAY! (HEY!)

GREEN EGGS AND HAM ARE ON MY TRAY

AND IN MY MOUTH AND DOWN THE HATCH

THESE EGGS AND HAM ARE QUITE A CATCH!

YUM! (YUM!) YUM (YUM!) GREEN EGGS AND HAM

PLEASE GIVE ME MORE, CHEF UNCLE SAM!

---AMBER LOUGH

Poetry Friday is hosted today by the quick-marching Laura Purdie Salas, who is so organized she could lead her own poetry platoon. 

Got questions?

KidLitCon is this weekend!  Along with Caroline Hickey, Laurel Snyder, and Wendie Old, I'm part of an author panel called "It’s Not About Your Book: Writing Ideas for Blogging Authors."

We'll each be talking about why we blog, and why we read other authors' blogs, and how we find a balance between our blogging/promotional lives and our more secluded writing lives. Then we'll take questions.  Which is where YOU come in. Even if you can't make the conference, we'd like some input from you, and we'll post our replies back to our blogs so everyone can be part of the conversation.

What would you like to know about blogging as an author? Do you have questions about how we decide what to blog about/how we got started/why we continue/what benefits we see/what the pitfalls are?  Or any other question?

Let's have 'em!

Also, don't forget:  This Friday is the deadline to enter a jody call in the comments here or here to win a signed copy of Operation Yes.  Right now, I have two brave souls who are stomping all over the rest of you who haven't entered yet. Let's MOVE IT, people!!!  :)

Poetry Friday: Rilke's Autumn Day

Today's Poetry Friday post is courtesy of my agent, Tina Wexler. Not only does she do all the Super Agent stuff, like sell my books, read my drivel and suggest ways to make it not drivel, make me laugh, and ask after my family, she also has an MFA in Poetry. It's one of the reasons I chose her to represent me. Not to sell my poetry, but to have someone with a poetry-loving ear close by.

Yesterday, she sent me a notice from Shelf Awareness about a new North Point Press book of Rilke poems, a bilingual collection titled simply The Poetry of Rilke.  This was the accompanying poem, from the book:

Autumn Day
by Rainer Maria Rilke,
translated by Edward Snow

Lord: it is time. Your summer was superb.
Lay your shadows on the sundials,
and in the meadows let the winds go free.

Command the last fruits to be full;
give them only two more southern days,
urge them on to completion and chase
the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house will never build one now.
Whoever is alone now will long remain so,
will stay awake, read books, write long letters
and wander restless back and forth
along the tree-lined streets, as the leaves drift down.

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Anastasia Suen at Picture Book of the Day.

Dance Party at 7-Imps!

I'm showing off my dance moves at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast today.

P.S.  If you're not interested in that, go anyway to hear about Tanita's love of the Houston airport. Or to hear Adrienne admit a fear of power tools. Or Jules reveal her favorite librarian swear.

P.P.S. Yes, all of these links lead to the same interview. What are you still doing here?

Hope is like a road in the country . . .

@TAPS4America: Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence. -Lin Yutang

I think that's my new favorite quote. And it reminded me that I wanted to tell you about Paul McCollom. Or rather, to let Paul tell you about himself. To tell you why he and many, many others are walking/running/striving to make one particular road come into existence: the road to recovery for wounded warriors and their families.

As he says: "I will be 61 this year but on October 25th I will be in Washington DC again running (mostly) 26.2 miles in the Marine Corps Marathon for Fisher House and military families. I am driven by the young men and women serving today; they are my brothers and sisters and my sons and daughters and I have an obligation to support them as long as I can put one foot in front of the other."

I supported Paul last year in his quest, and blogged about it in this post: Paychecks and Great Battles. I'm doing it again this year. He's the real deal.

Here's more about Paul and Fisher Houses:

I’m a Vietnam Vet, Army Medic, 1969-'70. My daughter is a Naval Academy Grad and US Marine Captain who has deployed to Iraq twice and her husband, also a Marine Captain, has deployed 4 times. She returned safely from her last deployment and she and her husband are serving at Quantico Marine Base in Virginia and should not be deployable until 2011.

Because our wounded are rarely treated at a facility near their home, a Fisher House provides a sanctuary where they can have their family with them during treatment. Along with other military families in similar circumstances, they stay free of charge to provide support and encouragement to each other. Here are just a couple of examples of how important Fisher Houses have been for families:

· The Mother of a badly wounded Marine could not afford a hotel so she slept in the back of her car in the hospital parking lot until someone found out and sent her to the local Fisher House.

· The family of a badly burned soldier was able to be with their son through much of his treatment and the many surgeries that took place. Not only did they stay at Fisher Houses but the Fisher Foundation paid for the airfare that they could not afford.

· A Marine Reservist who participated in the invasion of Iraq watched a year later as his Marine son deployed and was wounded in the Battle of Fallujah. For the next six months he and his wife literally passed each other in the air as one flew to the Naval Hospital in San Diego as the other was returning home to Michigan.

43 Fisher Houses have now been constructed across the country and more than 120,000 families have been guests, saving them more than $120 million in housing expenses. Currently Fisher Houses can care for about 12,000 families a year but the need continues to grow and 7 more houses are under construction with 11 more under planning for 2010 and beyond.

I know things are tough this year but if you are able to make a donation please go to this site: http://www.active.com/donate/FisherHouse2009MCM/McCollom

Making the Emotional Argument

"When faced with potential cuts [in arts programs], the response is often rational: Quoting studies and statistics, for example. But this recent post by Steven Tennen on the ARTSblog made me think that there’s a better approach. Maybe a connection on an emotional level would have more impact." --- from What do you remember?, a post at the Theaterfolk Weblog.

After I read the Theaterfolk post, I read the one by Steven on the ARTSblog, too. And I agree: we need to make the emotional argument.  So here are a few of my memories, cued by my editor's questions in preparation for our Twitter Chat last week:

• Cheryl: Ideas about theatre and improv are very important to OPERATION YES. What's your theatrical background? Favorite production you participated in?

Sara: I discovered drama much later than the sixth-graders do in OPERATION YES---I was already in high school. Some of my favorite roles were:

Alice in You Can't Take It With You---as one of the few "normal" characters in the play, it was challenging to hold my own against the wild antics of the other actors. And I kissed a boy on stage.

Rosalind in a scene with Orlando from As You Like It. We took that to state drama competition, and I believe it was the first time high schoolers had taken Shakespeare to a state-level competition in Tennessee. What I remember most was the sheer delight of saying Shakespeare's witty and intricate words---and the fact that I had to learn to do a cartwheel to enter the scene.   (And now I have a necklace with words "Why then, can one desire too much of a good thing?" I wore it to the National Book Festival.) More in my post here.

Queen Elizabeth I: One of my favorite moments was being in a reader's theater production about the queens of England. I got to give a knock-em dead speech by the Queen to her troops, and as I said in my earlier post about it, "Every time I delivered it, I found my heart exploding."

• Cheryl: Did you have a teacher who changed your life as Ms. Loupe did?

Sara: My mother was a first grade teacher and she taught me to read, so that was life-changing!

Also, my high school drama teacher, Ms. Linda Lyle. She let me try anything---Shakespeare, a one-woman Emily Dickinson show, portraying Queen Elizabeth, directing other students, stage managing...

I remember her taking me for a private session with a professional actor at a stage company in Knoxville, too. The actor's name was Lucien Douglas, and yes, it was as amazing as it sounds. I could hardly breathe.

Also, I remember very distinctly that in her "space"--she didn't tape it like Ms. Loupe in OPERATION YES does, but she definitely owned her space---everyone in the school was welcome and no one was allowed to be cliquish or put in a certain box like jock or nerd. We were ALL theater people.

Theater taught me to take risks, and that creating trust among members of a group is at least as much fun and hard work as creating the play itself. But most importantly for me as a writer, theater taught me to reach for a deep, emotional connection with other people---and that words, even when delivered by a lone character on a bare stage, can change the world. 


Don't our kids today also deserve to have a deep connection to the arts and to each other? 

• For one last memory, that of my introduction to improvisation, I'm directing you to this post at the Operation Yes site:  They Called Me Pricklebutt 

Poetry Friday: From the Poetry Pavilion at the National Book Festival

Before I jump into my Poetry Friday post,  a reminder of the Jody Call Contest to win a signed copy of Operation Yes. (Jody calls are poetry, too!)  I already have my first entry, and promises (dares, teases, hopes) from several others who say you're trying it.  Boo-yah!

Also, don't forget to nominate your favorite book in the Poetry category for the Cybils. (I'm a second round judge and I can't wait to see what entries are going to knock me down with their brilliance this year.)

Okay, on to my notes from the Poetry and Prose Pavilion at the National Book Festival, which I deferred from my main Book Festival post on Sunday.

I scrambled into my seat late for Edward Hirsch, who was reading from his own work before taking questions about poetry in general.  I'm a huge fan of his book, How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry, so it was the Q&A that most rocked my world.

First off, Hirsch is hilarious.  If a questioner asked: "How can you use line lengths to convey meaning in poetry?"  Hirsch would repeat the question at his microphone, garbling it to a put-down of his own poems: "The kind gentleman asked: How come the line lengths in your poetry make no sense?"

After the laughter, he would give a beautifully reasoned answer.  For the line length question, he explained that the norm for spoken English is the five beat length of iambic pentameter---that's what sounds natural to our ears.  So, if a poet uses lines longer than that----Walt Whitman, for example---we hear it as something beyond the everyday, entering into the visionary or prophetic realm.  If a poet uses shorter lines---William Carlos Williams in The Red Wheelbarrow---we hear a focus on the concrete, physical world, perhaps with a sense of loss.

He also said these wise things, which I tweeted (that sounds blasphemous, somehow):

"A poem must have something at stake."

and in response to a question about religion in his poems:

"Poetry is unauthorized testimony."

Wow. I could write all day on those answers.

I have more from the Poetry Pavilion, but that's all I have time to write up today.

Here's an Edward Hirsch poem for you, and if you follow the link, there's a recording of him reading it, so you can pretend you're in the pavilion, listening:

Wild Gratitude
by Edward Hirsch

Tonight when I knelt down next to our cat, Zooey,
And put my fingers into her clean cat's mouth,
And rubbed her swollen belly that will never know kittens,
And watched her wriggle onto her side, pawing the air,
And listened to her solemn little squeals of delight,
I was thinking about the poet, Christopher Smart,
Who wanted to kneel down and pray without ceasing
In every one of the splintered London streets,

Read the rest here.

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Kelly at Crossover.

Conversations: Spine and Form

• Truth is an eternal conversation about things that matter, conducted with passion and discipline." ---Parker Palmer

Twitter conversations, on the other hand, are a confounding cacophony about things that matter, conducted with passion and almost no discipline! Yesterday's chat with my editor, Cheryl Klein, was like that, and yes, I enjoyed it tremendously (when my head wasn't spinning.) 


I did try to impose some order for you by posting a transcript here.  I would also like to share two of the questions Cheryl prepared for me in advance (most of which we never got close to getting to) and my answers.


Part of the reason I'm sharing this today is that Linda Urban (CROOKED KIND OF PERFECT, MOUSE WAS MAD) and I are having a nifty conversation about spine and form over on her blog. Linda initiated the back-and-forth, but I had also been thinking about some of the same stuff because of these two questions Cheryl asked me:

• Cheryl: OPERATION YES has a unique structure that alternates two primary points of view through all of the first section (Plan A), then integrates them in Plan B, then spirals out through the world from there. Was this structure pre-planned? If not, how did it evolve? 

Sara:  I think I knew early on that this story was going to be carried by more than one character. After all, how can you write about the power of community through just one POV?

But in the book's beginning, Bo and Gari are focused on themselves, their own POV; it's only when they are jolted into thinking about the bigger picture that that spiraling out happens. And by the very, very end, even the reader of the book is invited to be part of the largest circle.

• Cheryl: You use multiple points of view in certain sections throughout. This is generally regarded as a writing no-no. Why did it feel right or important for you to break the rule here? Did you set any new rules or guidelines for yourself in using this technique? 

Sara: I don't think it's a no-no if you have a reason and a plan. I used the technique to build tension---see the food fight scene!---and to show the falling apart and then the widening of the circle of community, as each character turns from their own private battles to uniting in one mission together as a class.

Also, since the book's about the stage, the dramatic or cinematic viewpoint seemed like a natural fit.

I realize it was a risk to attempt this, but I trusted you as my editor to show me where it was working and where it wasn't. That's the only rule I had: does it serve the story?

• More leftover questions will be posted next week!