Yes in every way

You know an author visit has gone well when a week later, you're still smiling.

Each year, the Arlington Library's TAB (Teen Advisory Board) invites an author to speak to the middle school kids who participate in the program. This year, I was lucky enough to be that speaker. What's more, the entire county, under the banner of All Arlington Reads, is highlighting military themed books for the month of April and the library is hosting book discussions and exhibits and speakers and film screenings. (I'll be blogging more about one of those exhibits, the Combat Paper Project, later this week.)

Here are some quick shots of my visit.



I began with a story---what happened when my daughter received a folded note from her school counselor on the morning of Sept 11.  I wondered if the students, so young when the attacks happened, would connect, but boy did they. You could've heard a pin drop.

Talking about military families

Quoting Miss Loupe's rule about not passing out before we start the improv. :)

The audience enthusiastically counted out my "ten"!

Awesome crowd.  They really had fun improvising jody calls, and SO many of them spoke up when I asked about the good and bad things about being part of a military family.

I displayed other books about military families.

The kids LOVED the LGM pictures
 (taken by my fabulous agent, Tina Wexler)

Talking about ways to say yes and how to give back
 to veterans and military families.

The kids were so polite when they came up to get their books signed. Some shook my hand. So many said thank you. Some shared that their parents were military. Plus, it was fun to hear the variety of beautiful names from all cultures.

Book signing and posing for pictures afterwards.  My hand was non-stop for a full hour. And the kids---as you can see---were totally terrific. 


Afterwards, the librarians took me out to lunch---yummy mushroom soup and a grilled veggie sandwich---and it was one more chance to talk about books and writing and kids with people who Truly Get It.  


Thank you, Friends of the Arlington Public Library, for making this day happen. It was what every author hopes for---to connect with readers in a powerful way. 


One last story---and one of the reasons I'm still smiling this week. A student, as she came forward to have her book signed, told me her favorite chapter in Operation Yes was the one called "Do Something." 


I asked why. 


"Because that's my motto, too," she said. 


Yes. Perfect. :)

Poetry Friday: Are Poetry Slams a Nuisance?

 "Poets should read in a controlled and compelling voice, one that lets the listener glide softly and gracefully under the spell of his verbal music. I do not go to poetry readings to be hollered at, hectored, harassed, bullied or read to in a stentorian style more appropriate for the amusement park."

  ---  A.S. Maulucci, from a Norwich Bulletin article titled "Slams are a Nuisance, and of No Real Use to True Poets"  (Follow the link for the full rant. Be sure to read the thoughtful reply from another poet in the comments.)

To which I say:

This is National Poetry Month. There are poetry potlucks; haiku-a-day's; online poetry bookclubs, and yes, slams. I went to one at my local high school. It veered from slapstick (a poet slamming about being an athlete dropped his pants to reveal running shorts) to fem power (Seven Strong Women) to the most amazing controlled riff on being "black enough."  I assure you that true poetry was present that night. Complete with hooting and hollering and shushing and cheering and crying.

I searched high and low for a bootlegged YouTube video that might have brought you there with me. No luck. But that's the thing about slams. You gotta be there. It's about signing up. Showing up. Not throwing up. What do you think those kids are going to remember from high school? The commutative property of addition? Or the night one of them admitted to not being able to deal with his mother's lupus?

The article I quoted from also says: "The work that gets read, recited or performed at these events tends to be trite, self indulgent, boring, narcissistic, embarrassing, obscene, boorish, coarse, uncultured, unintelligent, uncouth, or all of the above."

Of course. Add in self-pitying and you've got most of us on any given Sunday---and that's when we're trying really hard to be good.

I agree that poetry can and should be polished and lovely and intelligent, but the raw material it comes from is . . . well, raw.  That's why slams work. Because we clearly see the rawness. And ourselves.

Which brings me to my poetry selection for today: Louder Than a Bomb, a documentary about the world's largest youth poetry slam. It releases on May 18.


Poetry Friday is hosted today at Madigan Reads.

Poetry Friday: Joining the Life Poetic

Be warned: this post is a commercial for the weekly online poetry book club run by Laura Purdie Salas and Susan Taylor Brown. It's not too late to be hooked. Each Wednesday, she and Susan are reading a short chapter from Sage Cohen's Writing the Life Poetic and inviting us to read along with them and write a draft of a poem to share with each other. It began here, with Laura's post about why we write and read poetry. This week, Susan hosts the conversation which flows from Wallace Stevens' 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (a poem I love, and yet poked at until it bled one Poetry Friday, see here. )

I haven't responded to this week's chapter yet because I was fiddling with last week's assignment, which was to observe someone you only know in passing. In my head, I called this assignment "Imagining a Life." And it lead me to what I'm sharing today, which is not a life imagined, but a poem that ran away with itself and became something else---perhaps a call for you to join us in writing poetry.


I used to know her name

She moved out;

her possessions---divans, taped rugs, 

lamps as long as lances---exiting

in stately procession from the maw

of her garage, whose walls thinned 

under the beat of the monster drum set

caged there when a family with a black-haired 

son moved in. His mates bumped up

in a van with scraped doors to whoop 

him out of bed at ten in the morning, 

sunny profanities pricking

holes in the bird song until he squared

his ass and backpack in the middle seat

for a gig twelve hours away.

Then, one morning, she's back,

parked boldly in the midline

of her driveway, renters gone, her dog arched 

over the front seat, paws on a lamp. 

Dark ovals shade her eyes as she emerges;

I lift my hand; Why, Burger, I could say 

to her dog, you've grown! But to her, 

who moved to Potomac Landing, 

I have nothing to shout; we fade;

I should've hopped in the battered 

van with the hooligans, tossed

my name out the busted window,

grafted it to the thigh of a song.

                     

                         ---Sara Lewis Holmes (all rights reserved)

Poetry Friday is hosted today by the always wonderful Mary Lee at A Year of Reading.