Writing and Ruminating

Downsizing 101: Making lists and plans

2013-05-21T18:49:42Z

First off, I should note that making lists is one of my favorite sorts of things to do. It feels like work, you see, even though you aren't truly accomplishing anything concrete besides taking ephemera that's clogging up your brain and putting it on paper for the world to see. Or, you know, anyone who wants to be bothered finding your notebook and deciphering your writing. But I digress.

There are several sorts of lists/plans that need to be made. Here's a list. (Yeah, a list of lists. Go me!)

1. You need to get or create a floor plan for the house/apartment/space you are moving into.

This assumes that you know what/where it is, or what sort of thing you'd like it to be, and really, if you don't know precisely, you have some idea. Maybe you're going to cut a bedroom, or get a place without a separate study/office. Usually you have some idea. And since I have read this tip in something like 100% of every article on moving/downsizing that I've read, I figure there must be something to it.

And it makes sense. I am moving from a 3 bedroom, 2-1/2 bathroom house to a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house. Doesn't sound like that big of a deal, right? Not until you figure that I have both a family room and a living room and a half-finished basement (all of which contain furniture, computer, and entertainment equipment) and there's only one living room at the new place. And I have a full dining room and eat-in kitchen (read two tables with chairs, plus several pieces of additional furniture including a bookcase, two dining room storage pieces and an antique tea cart), but the new house has a rather tight dining area that can't fit my dining room table, let alone any other pieces.

Oh. And the house I'm moving into is already fully furnished. Which brings me to the next list.

2. Once you've figured out exactly how big your target space is, you need to come up with a "must have" list.

This is a list of the things that you need in order for the space to function. (I got this suggestion from the e-book by Lisa Patriquin that I recommended in the last post.) This is limited to the items necessary for each space to function as you intend it to.

For instance, my sweetheart and I agree that the master bedroom needs the following items: 1) a bed; 2) side tables/nightstands; 3) lamps; 4) an alarm clock; 5) 2 sets of sheets (min.); 6) a blanket/bedspread; 7) pillows. It doesn't, strictly speaking, need dressers, since there's a massive closet, but it has one anyhow. It also doesn't need the TV that's in there, although we're likely keeping it there.

For bathrooms, you should list things like towels, trash cans, shower curtain, etc. For the kitchen, it gets really crazy (and I haven't yet tried it), but you need to create a list containing only the things you actually need to have a functional kitchen. Not your ideal kitchen. Not a fully-outfitted, wants-for-nothing kitchen. Just a functional one. How many place settings of dishes. How many sauce and frying pans (and what sizes), baking dishes, wooden spoons, dish towels, etc. I am positive that the answer is that I need a lot less than what I have, although a bit more than what my sweetheart has. I'm sure you can see why I haven't undertaken this one yet.

3. You need to come up with a list of what is going into your new space.

Once you know what's on your "must have" list (or, if you prefer, "need to have" list, but I don't prefer that terminology, because it's too easy to say "But I need three sets of every day dishes so they can match my every mood", for instance), you have to "shop" for the items that will fill that list. Shopping can involve actual shopping, of course - maybe you want to start new, or you are getting rid of one sized bed and replacing it with another (moving up or down, either for yourself or another bedroom), for instance. But shopping can also involve "shopping" from the available items that you already own (in our case, that's stuff in two houses).

In the case of the aforementioned master bedroom, not all that much is going to change. We will likely swap alarm clocks, since I really like my iHome and my sweetheart doesn't really care what sort of clock we have as long as it works (and he can read it without his glasses on). I may swap one of my pillows for one of his, too, but that's pretty much it from the "must have" list.

4. You need to come up with a list of projects that need to be done.

In my case, this includes things at both houses, and I suspect that's the case for many people. A friend of mine is moving soon, and needs new floors and some interior painting done at her new place, as well as clearing out and fixing up at her current one.

This includes a list of things to be cleaned, painted, repaired, replaced, or disposed of, as well as things to be given away, sold, or purchased.

5. When it comes to purging/clearing activities, it pays to have a plan.

Figure out what areas you plan on starting with first. Calculate how many rooms/areas you have to deal with, and how much time you have in which to work, and map out a specific plan to allow you to move through those spaces in an orderly (and, if possible, not too rushed of a) fashion.

In the case of my house, we've decided to tackle my basement first.* It's a mess, yo. And because it holds a daybed and trundle, it is sometimes called into use as a guest room, which seems likely in June when Maggie graduates and the house fills up with family.

What I've done is to think of it in four sections: 1) the walk-in storage closet; 2) the main room (where the daybed is); 3) the craft area (which never really got set up properly, exactly, and is full of stored items); and 4) the laundry area. For each area, there's a list of tasks of the items and areas to be addressed. (Each of the sections ends with "sweep and mop the floor".) The plan was to complete the closet last week, then move to the main room this week, the craft area next week, and the laundry area the week after that. It involves clearing out a lot of unused stuff, figuring out what to keep and what to get rid of (and then how to get rid of it), some organization, some packing, and a lot of cleaning.

So far, we're on target - in fact, we moved to the main room a good two days ahead of schedule. The goal is to spend 20-30 minutes each day on the project, which is a good goal. Practically speaking, it usually turns out to be more like 30-60 minutes, but the commitment is only for 20, so it's doable on a daily basis. Because, as I stated last time, momentum is your friend, so getting a bit done every day is a Very Good Thing. I'll keep you posted on how it's going. And on some of the things I'm figuring out/learning along the way.

*I have to consult with my sweetheart and figure out what the rest of the plan is - whether we go to the attic or garage next, or start tackling rooms and closets and cupboards inside the house. But for now, getting the basement all the way done before Maggie's high school graduation next month will be enough. The rest will still be there afterwards.

See you next Tuesday with another downsizing post. Meanwhile, the blog will still be here, doing its usual thing.

Reading at Belmar tomorrow after all

2013-05-21T17:17:14Z

Earlier today, it appeared that the schedule was in such disarray and everything was on such a hurry-up basis in Belmar that there may not be time for me to read AT THE BOARDWALK to the kids during the reopening of the boardwalk, but it turns out that there IS time after all. To wit, from 12 to 12:20 tomorrow afternoon, plus or minus start and finish and such.

I am very much looking forward to it.

Finishing the Shakespeare poems

2013-05-20T22:13:59Z

And no, I'm not talking about the many poems written by William Shakespeare. I'm talking about my own YA poetry collection, which I am now calling The Lady Doth Protest, and which has taken a few years to get right. Turns out, though, that it's not quite done, and that the poem I had to close the collection has to go. Which means I have to write (yet) another poem for Miranda, from The Tempest.

All the other poems are written in formal poetry, but I think I'm going to embrace Miranda's sentiment about it being a "brave new world" and break ranks for this one.

Quoth Miranda in The Tempest, Act V, scene 1:

O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in 't!

(And yes, that is where Aldous Huxley ganked the title for one of his most famous works.)

Here's hoping this will be the ending that lets this collection spread its wings and fly. (There's a bit more detail about it in my "next big thing" blog post from a couple months back, if you're interested.)

Upcoming reading in Belmar, NJ

2013-05-18T17:14:23Z

On Wednesday, Belmar, New Jersey, is opening its brand-new, rebuilt-after-Sandy boardwalk.

The Belmar Public Library invited me to attend so I could read my book to school kids as part of the event. Of course, I said "yes".

Turns out that there's going to be a BIG to-do on Wednesday, including the schools closing early (or at least running field trips) so that the kids can all be there for the grand (re)opening, and a visit from New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. And sometime after he's done speaking, I'm supposed to read AT THE BOARDWALK to some subset of the school kids.

I am going with "Chris Christie is my opening act." Also, I am wishing I had someone to tag along with me to take photos during the event. My sweetheart is teaching classes, and can't make it, and Maggie has a full school day. Anyone? . . . Bueller?

Sonnet 5 by William Shakespeare

2013-05-15T20:43:05Z

Today's selection is from the portion of Shakespeare's sonnets known as the Fair Youth sequence. Like most of the first 17 sonnets, this one focuses on the notion that the youth ought to procreate in order to leave the world with a tangible reminder of himself. Most of the poems praise the young man's good looks, and several of them remain appearance-focused, with a take-home message that boils down to "don't deprive the world of your beauty; have a kid, who will likely be beautiful as well, so your beauty (and in some cases, memory) can live on."

Sonnet 5 is a wee bit subtler than some of the other poems because of the seasonal metaphor on which it relies.

Sonnet 5
by William Shakespeare

Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel;
For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter, and confounds him there,
Sap checked with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'er-snowed and bareness every where.
Then were not summer's distillation left
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was.
But flowers distilled, though they with winter meet,
Leese* but their show; their substance still lives sweet.

*leese: lose (for Shakespeare buffs, it's worth noting that this is the one and only time he uses this word in the writings that have been preserved)

Discussion: The poem is a Shakespearean sonnet, written using iambic pentameter and using the rhyme scheme ABABCDCDEFEFGG.

He opens with mention of the passage of time – in hours. The first quatrain states the case that time has made the youth attractive, but it will continue its advance, and eventually make him "unfair" (meaning unattractive). In the next quatrain, he moves from talking of time in hours to time in seasons, where summer is related to the young man's current beauty, and winter to his eventual white hair and baldness (o'er-snowed and bareness) as well as his haggardness (sap checked with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone).

In the third quatrain, Shakespeare moves to talk about preserving summer by bottling perfume distilled from its flowers. Otherwise, he says, you'd forget about the beauty of summer, and have nothing to remember it by. The take-home message of this particular metaphor is that the young man had better reproduce, or else he'll die and leave nothing to his memory.

The closing couplet translates to something along the lines of "Flowers distilled into perfume lose their appearance, but their substance lives on." In the same way, I suppose, Shakespeare means that children would keep the memory and "substance" of the young man alive.

What's remarkable to me is how Shakespeare shifts his metaphor in the closing couplet. Throughout the first three quatrains, he's using summer and winter to refer to the youth and his appearance and vitality; in the closing couplet, he shifts from the season (in which perfume is made), to focus on the flowers themselves (from which perfume is made) as being a metaphor for the youth.

If you're so inclined, compare and contrast this poem – you need to reproduce so that you live on – with, say, Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"), which I blogged about one April as part of my "Building a Poetry Collection" series for National Poetry Month, which concludes with these lovely lines:

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

From Sonnet 18 on, the talk is no longer of children; it's the poet's tribute to the Fair Youth that will keep him alive in future generations.

Downsizing 101: Where to start

2013-05-14T17:41:52Z

If you are anything like me, ~~I pity you~~ you begin nearly any new venture by researching your topic and reading up on it. Which is largely what I did last week, and I am still in the process of synthesizing what I've read and formulating my own plan, which I will undoubtedly ~~foist upon~~ share with you down the road.

About Downsizing

But first, a bit of explanation: As most of you know, I have a most wonderful sweetheart, with whom I am almost sickeningly in love. And we have decided, as many grown-ups do, to move in together in the not-too-distant-but-not-that-soon future (probably 1-2 years from now). After much consideration, we've decided that I will sell my house (same time frame) and move into his. (The third option, finding a new place all our own, was also considered, but discarded for a variety of factors.)

My current house is about 2100 square feet, with three bedrooms, two and a half baths, a living room, dining room, family room, eat-in kitchen, and partially finished basement. It is fully furnished in every area, plus there's an attic, basement, and garage full of "stuff". My sweetheart's house is about 1400 square feet, with three bedrooms, two baths, a living room, dining area, kitchen, and laundry room. It is fully furnished, too, although more sparsely than my house.

It's obvious that what's here (at my house) cannot all fit there (at his), and that some of what's there will be staying there. And some of what's here holds sentimental meaning, in addition to being attractive or otherwise useful. So I spent a while (several months, really) feeling overwhelmed because I had no idea where to start or what to do. I also felt kind of badly that I was feeling sad about the prospect of moving and getting rid of some of my stuff when the move is SUCH a good thing and for SUCH good reasons (relationship, financial, and otherwise).

What I learned from reading

I still don't have final answers, but I have figured out that starting by reading up on the subject was a Really Good Idea.

1. I learned that grief is a normal part of the process, which at least got rid of my guilt at feeling a bit sad about parts of this endeavor.

2. I learned that there are actual steps you can take to plan ahead and make your decisions easier. More on those in future posts.

3. Since there are literally hundreds of decisions to be made, making too many at one go is inadvisable - it's extremely draining, and can feel demoralizing. As a result, you need to allow yourself sufficient time to move through the process.

4. Time and constant progress are your friends: if you have at least a year, it's easier to work your way through your house; if you keep working at it in small segments on a regular basis, the momentum and progress will keep you going.

And I have found a site in particular that I found helpful, and that I thought you might like, too, if you are (a) considering a move or (b) wanting to reduce what you have in your own place, but aren't certain how to start. The site is called Being Organized 101, and it's run by Lisa Patriquin, Director and Founder of Being Organized 101. She is a Trained Professional Organizer and Mindset Release Coach (who knew there was such a thing?), and she approaches her tasks with care. Her motto is "Love your life, not your stuff." And she is kind enough to post a blog with useful tips and, moreover, to offer a free download of an extremely helpful e-book that she's written called I'm Downsizing, Now What?. (You just have to give her your email address in order to get the e-book, and believe me, it was worth it.)

I'm thinking of making these posts a regular Tuesday feature for a bit. Meanwhile, tomorrow it's back to blog business as usual - including a post about Shakespeare, since I do like my "Wednesdays with the Bard".

Over at Guys Lit Wire

2013-05-14T12:59:26Z

For those of you who don't already know, Guys Lit Wire is a group blog designed to recommend a wide variety of books with appeal to teenage boys. The blog came into existence after a group of book bloggers, myself included, recognized that "whether or not boys want to read more, finding books for boys is not so easy." To quote from the "About" page a bit more:

Guys Lit Wire exists solely to bring literary news and reviews to the attention of teenage boys and the people who care about them. We are more than happy to welcome female readers - but our main goal is to bring the attention of good books to guys who might have missed them. The titles will be new or old and on every subject imaginable.

I've been blogging there the second Tuesday of the month since the blog started, usually talking about poetry, but with other books mentioned as well.

Today's selection is an "other book."

It's my review of Around the World by Matt Phelan, a graphic novel recounting of three people who circumnavigated the globe by themselves in the late 1800s. I love how Matt captured not only the details of their journeys, but also managed to convey a bit of why they undertook the trip, and demonstrated what it took for them to keep motivated and keep going.

I purchased my copy at Children's Book World last week, and was lucky to bump into Matt, who signed it for me. Here we are, posing for a photo (during an event featuring other authors, no less):

Happy Monday, everyone!

2013-05-13T15:50:12Z

Can it be otherwise, when it is sunny and mild outside, the dogwood and azalea are in bloom, and there's banana chocolate chip bread in the oven? I think not.

I have started my day with meditation, as part of my goal to be more mindful. I cannot say with certainty that I am doing it right, but I do feel some benefit from the meditation thing, so I am planning on sticking with it. I have also been listening to far more music, both because I enjoy it and because it is supposed to be helpful in reducing pain levels. Win-win, say I.

Speaking of music, on Saturday night, my sweetheart and I went to see Straight No Chaser in concert. Talk about a really great performance! Such a great mix of music, all of it done a cappella, each of the singers doing their part as either lead singer, backup singer, or "instrumentals" as the case may be. And they all have pretty great stage presence, too, plus they had good staging and lights (which the folks next to us said were new since they last saw them in concert). We really had a wonderful time!

Today, I'm going to tackle my to-do list, which includes some of the things (meditation, banana bread) I've already mentioned, as well as others that require me to sort through things I own to put them in the following sorts of piles: keep, throw away, give away/donate. This is the beginning of a many month project that will culminate in me downsizing, and I'm getting a head start on it before my nest is actually empty. But it's bound to keep me occupied for a long time, and will eventually have its own series of posts.

Meanwhile, I have to move the two-year old who has fallen asleep in my lap so I can get moving. (No, not a two-year old child. Kismet the kitty turned two yesterday, according to my vet's estimation. You may recall when I found her in July of 2011.) Here she is a few weeks ago, sleeping on an afghan on my bed:

Tuesday evening

2013-05-10T22:42:24Z

And yes, I realize it is now Friday evening. Perhaps I have been dilatory, but I prefer to think that's just how I roll.

Back to the topic: Tuesday evening, my sweetheart and I drove to my "local" independent children's book store, the marvelous Children's Book World in Haverford, PA, to see Linda Urban along with Joe Schreiber and Jacqueline Davies, who were there to discuss their new middle-grade books.

Joe, Linda and Jackie - Linda's answering a kid on the floor, by the way

I was really happy to run into Matt Phelan while I was there. Long-time blog readers may remember when I interviewed him here back in 2009, when The Storm in the Barn was first coming out. Here we are with his more recent graphic novel, Around the World, though we mostly discussed his next graphic novel, Bluffton, which comes out this summer (and which is largely about Buster Keaton). I was really happy to score an autograph in my new copy of Around the World, which I'd been meaning to get for ages (no, really!), and Matt bought a copy of At the Boardwalk, which I signed for his two children. Awww.

I have to say that I was really impressed by how well all three of the featured authors interacted with the people who'd come to see them - a mix of kid readers and their parents, plus a couple of adults who are on the path to writing for kids, as best as I can tell. They were all witty and interesting and very keen on connecting with the audience, which probably explains why they sold so many books while they were in the store. Of course, thanks to Linda, the store sold a copy of At the Boardwalk to one of the children present, who asked me to sign it for them, and pose for a photo. (Matt and I also signed autographs for a little girl who is collecting author signatures. Again, awww!)

Here I am with Jackie and Linda. Note the (probably correct) placement of the KLUTZ sign above my head. (Thanks, honey!)

Coming this weekend: a bit more about what I've been up to. Take it as a promise or a threat, whichever you prefer.

Under the Greenwood Tree by William Shakespeare

2013-05-08T17:57:14Z

There's a lovely song In Act II, scene 5 of As You Like It. Once upon a time, I used to sing a vocal setting of this by Douglas Moore, which has a lovely soaring line on "Here shall he see no enemy, but winter and rough weather." I've posted a recital version by Abigail Zieger below, so you can hear it, if'n you're interested in vocal settings, as I am. There are settings by Ralph Vaughn Williams, Thomas Arne, and others, as well as one by Patrick Doyle for the 2006 movie version.

Under the Greenwood Tree
by William Shakespeare

Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And tune his merry note
Unto the sweet bird's throat—
Come hither, come hither, come hither!
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.

Who doth ambition shun
And loves to live i' the sun,
Seeking the food he eats
And pleased with what he gets—
Come hither, come hither, come hither!
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.

After the conclusion of Amiens's song, Jaques provides a more cynical verse set to the same tune, and some conversation ensues. Here is the exchange:

Jaques
I'll give you a verse to this note that I made
yesterday in despite of my invention.

Amiens
And I'll sing it.

Jaques
Thus it goes:
If it do come to pass
That any man turn ass,
Leaving his wealth and ease,
A stubborn will to please,
Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame:
Here shall he see
Gross fools as he,
An if he will come to me.

Amiens
What's that 'ducdame'?

Jaques
'Tis a Greek* invocation, to call fools into a circle.

*Greek here is used in the manner of "it's all Greek to me" - it's not actually a Greek word at all. The word "ducdame" was probably pronounced a three-syllable word. Perhaps it is meant to be nonsense, or perhaps it's derived from Latin "duc ad me", which means "bring him to me".

Notes from the NESCBWI Conference - Saturday stuff

2013-05-06T21:54:43Z

Saturday morning, the day started with a keynote speech from Sharon Creech, "The Words We Choose to Say," which was uplifting and inspiring, just as you'd expect. And poetry-related, too, since she referenced both Robert Frost's "The Pasture" and Walter Dean Myers's "Love That Boy" as inspiration for her marvelous Love That Dog. She noted that if a word or a poem or a phrase resonates for you, then it means that something in your head or your heart or your soul responds to it - specifically, she was speaking about how sometimes one of those things pops into her head and sticks with her, and she has learned not to ignore them. Good advice, I think.

I next attended a two-hour intensive. "Real Revision" with my friend Kate Messner really got me kick-started in thinking about revising a chapter book I've drafted that needs a bit more work. Specifically, it needs to resonate just a bit more, and I believe I've figured out what it needs, even if I haven't undertaken a(nother) round of revisions just yet. Imagine my surprise when my name was on two of Kate's slides - turns out one of her favorite writing prompts to jump-start revision comes from a poetry workshop I gave at NESCBWI a few years back, which Kate wrote down as "write a metaphor-poem describing one of your characters, in another character's voice." Sweet!

Lunch was delicious, though I left before dessert turned up in order to rest (as mentioned in my earlier post). I was happy to see my friend Jo Knowles get her Crystal Kite Award for Pearl before I ducked out, though. SO well-deserved. Here's a photo of Jo and me at dinner on Saturday:

In the afternoon, I went to my friend Linda Urban's session on "The Power of Point of View", which owes its title to a book by Alicia Rasley. Linda noted that her primary motivating factor for deciding what point of view to use is who the main character is, and what the theme is. It was a very thoughtful workshop, and raised great points to consider in future work.

Notes from the NESCBWI Conference - Friday and thoughts on balance

2013-05-06T18:15:29Z

As some of you know, I've been going to the New England Society for Children's Writers and Illustrators conference for years now, sometimes as an attendeed, sometimes as faculty. This year I was in the former status, since my workshops didn't get picked up. While I love being on faculty there and hope to be included again, I have to say that I also really enjoy attending and going to various workshops.

This year, I'm learning about balance. Not just because of the mindfulness meditation that I've been working on in everyday life, but also in other ways.

For instance, on Friday, I started with Meditations for Writers & Illustrators by Laurie Calkhoven. It was almost 2 hours in length, and included a number of short meditation sessions followed by writing prompts. The notion of incorporating meditation as part of the writing process was new to me, but makes total sense. Laurie credits it with adding depth to her stories, not just the characters but also the descriptions of setting and the like. It's something I intend to try out in the near future. (It was also a really restful way to start the conference.)

My second Friday session was "Managing Your Writing: Managing Your Life" with Janet Doucette and Pegi Deitz Shea. It was a stress management session (or, as Janet called it, "stress resiliency"), with lots of helpful tips and pointers. Again, it's related to finding balance - here, balance among various aspects of life, from creative life to the business aspect related to create lift to work life (if you have another job as well) to personal life. A key point from the presentation is one I've already been learning: "Multi-tasking is NOT in your best interest!" I found the entire session to be useful, though the presenters had to rush to fit their time-slot, which made it slightly stressful (in a way). Still, great points and great notes. Plus this reminder: "You are the only thing holding you back when it comes to taking a risk." Word.

The third way that this weekend's conference helped me with balance is by forcefully reminding me (via pain and other triggers) that I really, truly can't do it all. And in this case, "all" meant going to all the sessions I would have liked to attend. Part of it is that the days were tightly scheduled - there were only 5 minutes between workshops, lectures, etc., which meant you had to rush to get from one to the other. But part of it is that when my health is not optimal (and let's face it, mine hasn't been optimal for a while now), fatigue is a real factor. And there was just no way to soldier through without causing a full-on flare. As it is, my hip has been shrieking at me since Saturday night, and I was welcomed home by a migraine.

It could, however, have been so much worse. I could have pushed through instead of skipping out of part of Grace Lin's speech (I hear she was fabulous, and I believe it - she's such a rock star!) and missing the first workshop of the afternoon (again, I hear Emma Dryden was fabulous, and I was sorry not to be able to attend); instead, I went back to my room and took a nap. Also, I was smart to invite my sweetheart to come along with me, because (a) he really helps keep me balanced, (b) we had a great time, and (c) he was there to drive all the way home yesterday, which would have been grueling for me, since it's my right leg (or the one attached to my "driving foot") that has the hip issue, and being in the car when it's yelling is bad, but driving with it is horrendous.

Later, my thoughts and notes about Saturday at the conference, which was awesome, despite my whining just now.

What I'm up to

2013-05-02T15:51:29Z

I feel a list coming on.

1. Today? Errands, cleaning, and packing for the weekend. My sweetheart and I leave in time to see dawn's crack tomorrow to head to Massachusetts for the NESCBWI conference in Springfield. We will probably visit UMass in the a.m., since we'll be hella early, but it's necessary in order to beat it around NYC before rush hour snarls start in earnest.

2. Earlier this week, I updated a bunch of content on my website. I really need to swap out the photos over there and add covers for AT THE BOARDWALK and such, but still - it now reflects reality. Which includes a link on the "Writing for Children" section to a new page about the editorial consulting I do for picture books and poems. Boo-yah!

3. This weekend: It's NESCBWI time! I won't be presenting this year (they didn't accept any of my proposals, woe), but I am very much looking forward to the sessions I'm going to attend on Friday and Saturday, and to seeing the many, many folks I know and love up there. Also, as mentioned earlier, I am bringing my sweetheart along. Because I can. And because I'd rather be with him than without him. I believe he may spend some time playing tai chi in a local park, perhaps with a wooden staff, even, but most of you going who know me will meet him.

4. Later this month, on May 22nd, I am going to be in Belmar, New Jersey for the reopening of the boardwalk there. The kind folks at the Belmar Public Library have invited me, and I am supposed to read AT THE BOARDWALK to the kids during the reopening event. (In case you aren't aware, Belmar's boardwalk was demolished during Hurricane Sandy, so this reopening event in advance of Memorial Day is a Big Deal.) For those of you who've seen the end pages that Mónica Armiño did for the book, doesn't the Belmar logo look a lot like it?

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley - a National Poetry Month post

2013-04-29T23:00:15Z

Just the other day, a friend over on Facebook posted a link to an article from January of 2010, when archaeologists found a broken statue of Pharaoh Taharqa in Sudan - the furthest south in Africa that a Pharaoh's statue has ever been found. He seems like a handsome fellow, off on the right, doesn't he? Anyhow, the photo in the article showed most of a torso lying front-down in the sand. I was immediately reminded of one of my favorite poems, "Ozymandias", by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

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 shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd 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.

Discussion: The poem is a sonnet, but it does not fit the Shakespearean or Petrarchan form. It is, instead a "nonce" form, in which Shelley muddies the waters between the opening octave and closing sestet. Written in iambic pentameter, the rhyme scheme is ABAB'ACDCEDE'FE'F. The little "prime" marks are to indicate where Shelley opted for slant rhyme rather than exact rhyme. The shifting and gradual replacement of rhymes within the poem is similar to the shifting of desert sands over time as they erased most of the "works" of which Ozymandias was so proud. This poem is actually atypical for Shelley both because of its unusual form and because of its subject matter, yet it may be the most widely anthologized of his works.

As in the other poems I've selected thus far, this one has a memorable line coupled with memorable imagery. For me, it's the line "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!", juxtaposed with the empty, level sands stretching to the horizon as far as the eye can see.

Shelley wrote this poem in December of 1817 as part of a writing contest with his friend, Horace Smith. Having read an account of the discovery of a fractured statue of Ozymandias (another name for Rameses II), with an inscription that translates as "King of Kings am I, Ozymandias. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works", both men wrote sonnets on the topic; both men addressed the idea of hubris. For those of you interested, you can read Smith's poem and compare the two. (It's interesting to see how two poets writing literally simultaneously on the same subject and with the same theme can end up with different results, and I think it also demonstrates that Shelley was the superior poet.)

Of course, long-time readers may already know this, but I can't think of "Ozymandias" without thinking of Sting's song, "Mad About You", which has always been inextricably linked for me (since first hearing, actually) with the Shelley poem because of this verse:

They say a city in the desert lies
The vanity of an ancient king
But the city lies in broken pieces
Where the wind howls and the vultures sing
These are the works of man
This is the sum of our ambition . . .

In his book, Lyrics, which I reviewed when it came out, Sting doesn't reference "Ozymandias" at all, but discloses that his source for the song was the second book of Samuel, chapter 11, and the story of King David's lust for Bathsheba. Still, although I'm willing to buy that the song is from David's point of view, his discussion of the city in the desert calls to mind Ozymandias for me. To watch Sting performing the song in concert, you can watch this video at YouTube.

i thank You God for most this amazing by E.E. Cummings - a National Poetry Month post

2013-04-28T16:17:41Z

Today, a sonnet by E.E. Cummings (I use caps for his name because (most often) he did, too, though he was definitely not into caps inside many of his works). More to the point, it's a Shakespearean sonnet, as so many of his poems are. Only he didn't feel constrained to use iambic pentameter or exact rhymes or to keep the whole poem in one 14-paragraph block. However, if you take a gander, you'll see that the poem is indeed fourteen lines, and is roughly ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, using slant rhymes along the way. While he mostly eschewed capital letters (in part because of something to do with his tyepwriter, if memory serves), you will note that he capitalizes "God" and the second-person pronoun "You" when referring to God. So it's not like he couldn't capitalize, when he thought it important.

i thank You GOD for most this amazing
by E.E. Cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginably You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Discussion: The actual rhyme scheme is ABAB' CDCD EFEF' GG, though for some regional accents, the final couplet might be GG'. (The little apostrophe is supposed to indicate a near-rhyme/slant rhyme for the original word, in case you were wondering.) The poem is full of the word play, playful syntax and grammar, and punctuation (or lack thereof) for which Cummings is famous.

The poem itself is a poem of praise. I have stumbled across a recording of Cummings reading it, and pass it along to you, so you can hear him in his own words and way:

Mezzo Cammin by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - a National Poetry Month post

2013-04-26T23:54:54Z

Today, a fine sonnet by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He wrote it while on an extended trip to Germany. And while it contemplates the passage of time and his eventual death, it implies that he still has a ways to go to reach death "far thundering from the heights", thereby giving him time to create the amazing body of poetry he planned on in his youth.

The title is drawn from the work of Dante Allighieri; specifically, from the first sentence (first line, even) of Inferno, which reads Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita/ mi ritrovai per una selva oscura/ che la diritta via era smarrita. ("In the middle of the journey of our life, I found myself in a dark wood with the right road lost."). I know lots of us have been there, in a very specific version of a mid-life crisis where we question whether we've followed the right path, or strayed off course in our lives.

Here's Longfellow's marvelous poem:

Mezzo Cammin
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Half of my life is gone, and I have let
The years slip from me and have not fulfilled
The aspiration of my youth, to build
Some tower of song with lofty parapet.
Not indolence, nor pleasure, nor the fret
Of restless passions that would not be stilled,
But sorrow, and a care that almost killed,
Kept me from what I may accomplish yet;
Though, half-way up the hill, I see the Past
Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights,—
A city in the twilight dim and vast,
With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights,—
And hear above me on the autumnal blast
The cataract of Death far thundering from the heights.

Discussion: As you can tell from Longfellow's indented lines, which separate the poem into four sections - two with four lines and two with six - this is an Italianate or Petrarchan sonnet, which uses the rhyme scheme ABBAABBACDCDCD - the same scheme followed in yesterday's selection, Sonnet 28 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Thanks to the use of a trochee in the front of the first line (DUM-ta), it's not immediately apparent that the poem is written in the traditional iambic pentameter (five iambs per line, ta-DUM ta-DUM ta-DUM ta-DUM ta-DUM), but it is.

You should know that Longfellow returned to the U.S. after writing this poem, where he became a professor at Harvard and starting publishing his poems to great acclaim (and fortune). He also translated works of Dante Alighieri and Michelangelo. Clearly, his tower was built a bit later than anticipated, but it was built nevertheless.

Today's Poetry Friday roundup can be found at Laura Purdie Salas's blog, which you can reach by clicking the Poetry Friday box, below:

Sonnet 28 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

2013-04-25T16:16:27Z

I have posted two of Barrett Browning's better-known selections from Sonnets from the Portuguese in the past: Sonnet 43 (How do I love thee? Let me count the ways) and Sonnet 14 (If thou must love me, let it be for nought).

Elizabeth Barrett Browning is one of the best-known Victorian poets, who was, in fact, better known and appreciated during her lifetime than was her extraordinarily talented husband, Robert Browning. She was so popular, in fact, that when Wordsworth died in 1850, she was considered as a possible successort to the poet laureate position he'd occupied.

Elizabeth Barrett was born in 1806, and began writing poetry as early as age six. She contracted a lung complaint as a teen, and was sickly for the rest of her life. Her first poem was published when she was just fourteen, and from then on she continued to write poetry and essays for publication. In 1845, at the age of 38, Barrett met Robert Browning, who admired some of her published poetry. They courted in secret, because her father wished for none of his children to marry. She was married in a private ceremony and immediately ran off to Italy with Robert Browning, where her health improved; she even had a child.

I recently learned that Emily Dickinson admired Mrs. Browning and her work so much that she kept a framed portrait of Elizabeth Barrett Browning in her bedroom. It makes sense - Barrett Browning wrote for publication, and she frequently wrote about issues that she was interested in, including abolition of the slave trade, child labor, and more. Plus she managed to live a balanced life at the same time she was writing, to say nothing of living out her own real-life love story.

In 1850, Elizabeth Barrett Browning published Sonnets from the Portuguese, a series of 44 love poems written for her husband. Today's choice is just past midway through the collection, which is actually a sonnet sequence (the first in the English language in a couple hundred years, since the last known one was by Edmund Spenser) - it's Sonnet 28 (My Letters! all dead paper, mute and white!), in which she is going through the pile of letters she's received from Robert Browning, and apparently had sewn them together on a thread to keep them in order, only now she's undone them and is spilling them into her skirts as she goes through them, commenting on what this or that one says. And that last one that she gets to must be scandalous indeed, because she won't tell us what it says at all!

Sonnet 28
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!
And yet they seem alive and quivering
Against my tremulous hands which loose the string
And let them drop down on my knee tonight.
This said—he wished to have me in his sight
Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring
To come and touch my hand. . . a simple thing,
Yes I wept for it—this . . . the paper's light. . .
Said, Dear, I love thee; and I sank and quailed
As if God's future thundered on my past.
This said, I am thine—and so its ink has paled
With lying at my heart that beat too fast.
And this . . . O Love, thy words have ill availed
If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!

Discussion: It's a Petrarchan or Italianate sonnet, written in iambic pentameter, and using the rhyme scheme ABBAABBACDCDCD. Reading this one, with its em-dashes and its ellipses and such, makes me wonder a bit whether Emily Dickinson took inspiration from her in some of her punctuation choices, or at least took heart that her dashes would be acceptable in the world of poesy.

Sonnet 98 by William Shakespeare - a National Poetry month post

2013-04-24T15:42:59Z

Yesterday was Shakespeare's death day, which is also considered his birthday based on baptismal records, although it is, of course, possible that he was born before the 23rd and not baptised until then. (Just sayin'.) And today is a Wednesday, and I used to do a "Wednesdays with the Bard" thing regularly. So it seemed like a good day to post another of Shakespeare's sonnets for National Poetry Month.

Shakespeare wrote a particular form of sonnet using three cross-rhymed quatrains (ABAB CDCD EFEF) plus a rhymed couplet (GG). He used iambic pentameter (taDUM taDUM taDUM taDUM taDUM). He was not the first or only poet to employ this particular sonnet form, which was all the rage during the Elizabethan era, but because he wrote so many, and wrote them well, and (perhaps more importantly) because they have survived, the sonnets in the form he used are known as "Shakespearean sonnets."

Today, here's his Sonnet 98, which seems seasonally appropriate to me:

From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them while they grew;
Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
These were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.

Discussion: As mentioned up front, it's a Shakespearean sonnet. Let's break it down for a moment, shall we? In the first quatrain (4 lines), the poet says "It's April, and spring is busting out all over, and I've been away from you." In the next two quatrains, he says "Neither the birds nor flowers put me in mind of summer, and I haven't been swept up in wild admiration of them, because while they were pretty, they were to me just weak imitations of you." The third quatrain is a bit of a turn from the first and second in that it discusses how he was too occupied missing the absent beloved to celebrate the beauty of nature. And the final couplet brings it all home, and gives us the poet's bottom line: "Even though I can see spring around me, it's still winter for me because you are away."

How swoonily romantic is that? Oh so very, in my opinion. Would that we all had someone writing us love poems like this!

School visits

2013-04-22T18:57:01Z

I do them.

Last week, I spent a couple of hours a day as "poet in residence" at Horace Mann Elementary School in Cherry Hill, NJ, which is where my daughters both went to elementary school. You'd be surprised how many teachers remember my kids, and how many of them would like to see/talk with them again, despite the passage of six years' time for Maggie and eight for Sara. They both had the same teacher for third grade, who is going to text Sara in hopes of visiting her in Charleston this summer. That's the kind of great people the school has on staff.

So it was no surprise that my visits went very well. First off, I've always found that kids love poetry. (I have been told that is, in part, due to my enormous enthusiasm for the topic, which seems like a possibility.) Specifically, I've found that the kids with ADHD and those on the autistic spectrum tend to respond fairly well to it, and that was borne out yet again last week (to the surprise of the librarian and some of the aides who sat in on sessions with the individual classes).

And the fact that the kids loved the poetry - and, more specifically, At the Boardwalk, is supported by the (sad) fact that they had all read the text of At the Boardwalk, but hadn't seen the book before my visit. (The librarian shared the printed text, but didn't have a copy of the book on hand.) One fifth-grade class came in with papers from an assignment they'd done on the book, most of which I didn't see, but one boy named Jaden K. shared this illustration he'd done based solely on reading the text:

"I wanted to show some diversity," Jaden said. The attached essay said he doesn't usually picture stuff well when reading, but this poem made him picture things clearly. We compared his picture to some of the ones inside the book, which features a wonderfully diverse group of people, and I told him I thought he'd nailed it. Over on Facebook, Mónica Armiño agreed, "Wow, nice picture! That boy has great talent and imagination." I made sure that got back to Jared, who was thrilled to hear it.

Another student, Erin, came in with a poem she'd written to show the less pleasant side of going to the boardwalk. She told me that her eleven-year old brother, who's in 6th grade and therefore at middle school, helped her out. But the poem was all her own idea - not an assignment.

At the Boardwalk
by Erin F

At the boardwalk
On the beach
I try to tan
But my skin stays peach

It has not been a fun time
I am not in a good mood
So I take out my lunch
And a seagull steals my food

When I thought my luck
Had taken a different route
I decide to go fishing
But I catch a boot

It is time to go home
It was not a good day
I wash off my feet
And my flip flop floats away

Don't you love it?

A Leaf Can Be . . . by Laura Purdie Salas, illus. by Violeta Dabija

2013-04-21T16:11:23Z

As I was waking up this morning, I could see the treetops outside the bedroom window, yellow-green against the pale blue sky. And I started reciting "Nothing Gold Can Stay", Frost's spring-time poem that usually comes to mind for me in the autumn, when the leaves blaze orange and gold. The poem starts:

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.

You can read the rest of the poem, and more about the poem in my post from April 2009.

All that early morning thinking about leaves reminded me that I've been meaning to review A Leaf Can Be . . . , the marvelous picture book by my friend Laura Purdie Salas, illustrated by Violeta Dabija. It's one of those books that works on a lot of levels, and that fulfills a lot of different roles: it's a poem, it's a picture book, it's nonfiction . . . apparently, a leaf can be all those things.

The poem is told in two acts: the first one is a list (in rhyming couplets) of the various roles leaves play in spring and summer; the second is another list (again in rhyming couplets) of the roles leaves play in autumn and winter. Here is a spread from the warm weather list:

And here is the one that starts the cold weather list, which includes one of the three "framing" poems inside the book:

These two lists are framed by three short stanzas: one to introduce spring/summer, one to introduce autumn/winter, and a closing one that urges readers to go find out more about leaves:

A leaf is a leaf--
a bit of a tree.
Now go and discover
what else it can be!

At the end of the book are four pages of additional facts about leaves, providing additional information about the list of things a leaf can be. For example, for "lake glider" (seen in the fall/winter spread, above) it says "Some leaves skim across the surface of the lake like tiny sailboats." After the four pages of facts comes a glossary, defining words like "chlorophyll" and "welts", which are used in the poem or in the fact pages.

A terrific example of simple rhyme, of a list poem, and of a book that manages to make music with its words. It's paired with wonderful illustrations, and is just the sort of thing to set kids' imaginations flying.

Perhaps, as Frost said, "nothing gold can stay," but this book is a keeper.

Leda and the Swan by W.B. Yeats - a National Poetry Month post

2013-04-21T01:15:21Z

I really wanted to share a sonnet by W.B. Yeats, since I'm such a fan of his work in general. Lo and behold, the only one I could readily find was "Leda and the Swan," which is actually a fairly disturbing poem about the seduction (some say rape) of Leda by Zeus, who made things even creepier by taking on the form of a swan, so you get the bestiality bump, too. (The resulting child was a demi-goddess named Helen of Troy and her twin, Polydeuces. The Greeks made it worse by saddling Leda with quads, and having her carry Castor and Clytemnestra, the children of Leda's mortal husband, AT THE SAME TIME.)

I distinctly recall my English professor in college saying that Leda fit into Yeats's theory of history as springing into a new cycle roughly every two thousand years, each spiraling cycle (gyre) beginning with an interaction between the divine and the human. (I.e., Leda and the swan, the birth of Jesus.) To all of which, I say whatever these days.

Despite its vague creepiness, it's still a wonderful poem. So here goes today's sonnet:

Leda and the Swan
by William Butler Yeats

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

Form: A modern sonnet, using the following rhyme scheme: ABABCDCDEFGEFG. Note the split line, which makes it look like it might not be a sonnet, but really "And Agamemnon dead. Being so caught up" is a single line. He writes it in iambic pentameter, with a couple of cheats. Not in the lines ending in "power" and "tower" - that's quite traditionally allowed, and is called a "feminine" ending, as I discussed in my post about "Only Human" by Anna M. Evans. No, I'm talking about the "And Agamemnon dead" line, where he expects you to count the word "being" as a single syllable, and about the closing line, where he expects you to say "Before th'indiff'rent beak", basically eliding in two different places at the start of the line.

The Oven Bird by Robert Frost - a National Poetry Month post

2013-04-19T00:09:22Z

Longtime readers have seen this poem here before, but I trust they won't mind seeing it repeated, since it's such a terrific poem.

The poem was first published in his collection Mountain Interval in 1916. This poem comes to mind more often than you might think for me, sometimes it's "But that he knows in singing not to sing", although more often, it's the closing two lines, "The question that he frames in all but words/Is what to make of a diminished thing."

The Oven Bird
by Robert Frost

There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.

Form: It's got ten syllables to each line (Frost treated "showers" and "flowers" as single-syllable words here), and it ends decidedly iambic, although it starts a bit shifty, if you must know. It has its own peculiar rhyme scheme (AABCBDCDEEA'FA'F), which makes it a "nonce" form -- a nonce form is a poetic scheme invented for a particular poem. This one has fourteen lines, so it's kind of like a sonnet, but it doesn't fall into a recognized rhyme scheme, not even as a Pushkin, or Eugene Onegin, stanza. Still, I think it likely started as a sonnet, and that Frost decided deliberately to depart from the usual sonnet rules to create something new -- a lovely bit of form meeting function, I believe, if you believe, as I and some others do, that Frost was announcing a new kind of poetry for a changing world.

Further, although I haven't yet gotten my hands on a copy, the book On the Sonnets of Robert Frost: A Critical Examination of the 37 Poems by H.A. Maxson includes "The Oven Bird" as one of Frost's sonnets, and apparently supports this conclusion by including references to Frost's own prose writings where he discusses his own poem as a sonnet. Also, as has been noted in multiple sources, Frost was pretty forthright about his playing around within the sonnet form. "The sonnet is the strictest form I have behaved in, and that mainly by pretending it wasn't a sonnet, " Frost once wrote to Louis Untermeyer. I'd argue that he pretended it wasn't a sonnet by using shifty rhyme schemes (and, occasionally, shifty metre as well).

Dicussion and analysis: If you'd like, you can read this as a simple nature poem -- an observation on the call of the oven bird (a loud "Teacher, Teacher", if you didn't know). The oven bird is loud at a time of year when many other birds are not, and Frost tries to decipher what his call means. And if that's how you read the poem, it is an excellent poem.

But.

The poem also works on a deeper level. The oven bird becomes not just the "teacher" implicated in his call, but is a symbol representing the poet. This poem was, in some respects, a war poem.* It was written in 1916, and reflects the sense that it is the world that has diminished, with "dust . . . over all". And the poet is left to ask what is to be done. Can art go on? Can poetry continue in the face of such ruination? (This is not unlike the question implied in Edgar Allen Poe's poem, "Sonnet: To Science", in which Poe explores the effect of science on creativity and myth.) In the early twentieth centuries, with the horrors it brought along with it in the form of trench warfare, mustard gas, and mechanized warfare, and in its greed and vanity (think about the robber barons we studied once upon a time, and the practice of child labor, and the inhuman working conditions faced by so many people), how can one respond to such indignities and horrors?

Another reading of the poem focuses closely on the line "he knows in singing not to sing." Some commentators believe this line is the answer to a question posed in an earlier poem by a Victorian poet named Mildred Howells, "And No Birds Sing", a Keatsian poem in which Miss Howell asks how the bird can sing with winter approaching.

There comes a season when the bird is still
Save for a broken note, so sad and strange,
Its plaintive cadence makes the woodlands thrill
With sense of coming change.

Stirred into ecstasy by spring's new birth,
In throbbing rhapsodies of hope and love,
He shared his transports with the listening earth
And stormed the heavens above.

But now how should he sing—forlorn, alone—
Of hopes that withered with the waning year,
An empty nest with mate and fledgelings flown,
And winter drawing near?

Frost's line, "he knows in singing not to sing," is seen as meaning that silence itself is part of the song. And/or that the oven bird, here representing the poet, is rejecting the old school of thinking and finding a new way to express himself. And this particular bird finds a way to express himself -- loudly, as it turns out.

Finally, others have seen Frost's poem as a criticism of encroaching development -- an environmental poem with a Thoreau-like sensibility, based on the line "the highway dust is over all."

*Perhaps my favorite of the war poems, and one of the best-known, is Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est", which I believe will be a topic for another day. The title comes from a line in the poem Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (It is sweet and seemly to die for one's country).

Bright Star by John Keats - a National Poetry Month post

2013-04-18T00:46:49Z

Today, you get Keats's Shakespearean sonnet - a love poem that is entirely swoon-worthy.

Bright Star
by John Keats

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite*,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No— yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever— or else swoon to death.

*Eremite: a hermit, particularly a religious recluse who lives alone in the wilderness

Discussion:

In this single-sentence sonnet, Keats fixes his attention on a star in the sky, wishing that he had the ability to be as steadfast and watchful of the woman he loved (almost certainly Fanny Brawn at this point in his life). Keats is such a drama queen that he wants to lie with her forever, "pillowed on her breast" or else swoon to death. The poem, which is written using the Shakespearean sonnet form, uses iambic pentameter and the ABABCDCDEFEFGG rhyme scheme. The volta or "turn" in the poem comes at the start of line 9, when Keats turns his attention from the star up in the sky to describing how he wishes to be able to have that star's immortal constancy in order to stay with his beloved.

Note how Keats begins the poem by addressing the star in the sky, but when he reaches the volta, he pretty much ceases to address the star, and talks to himself. Were this a performance on the stage, the actor might start his recitation by looking up to the star and gesturing, but he would almost undoubtedly turn his attention from the star to a more inward performance by the start of the 9th line, or else he might have a conveniently placed woman on a chaise lying about with whom to conclude the recitation.

I should note that this poem is sometimes referred to as "the last sonnet", because it was for quite a long time believed to be the final sonnet Keats wrote before his death. Some dispute as to whether that is correct exists, but it does appear to be one of the last poems he completed before his death, even if it was drafted earlier than first believed.

Emma, Volume III, Chapter XIX (Chapter 55)

2013-04-17T21:31:14Z

Can Harriet really have switched her affections back to Robert Martin so quickly? Well . . . yes. And it turns out that Harriet's father was a merchant, well-off enough to pay for her upkeep and respectable enough to want to keep her illegitimacy quiet for himself (and probably his wife). But he was neither noble nor rich, and Emma finds herself shocked at her presumption that Harriet might have deserved any of the gentlemen in town. (Mr Knightley apparently refrains from saying "I told you so".)

[Emma] had no doubt of Harriet's happiness with any good-tempered man; but with him, and in the home he offered, there would be the hope of more, of security, stability, and improvement. She would be placed in the midst of those who loved her, and who had better sense than herself; retired enough for safety, and occupied enough for cheerfulness. She would be never led into temptation, nor left for it to find her out. She would be respectable and happy; and Emma admitted her to be the luckiest creature in the world, to have created so steady and persevering an affection in such a man;--or, if not quite the luckiest, to yield only to herself.

Harriet, necessarily drawn away by her engagements with the Martins, was less and less at Hartfield; which was not to be regretted.--The intimacy between her and Emma must sink; their friendship must change into a calmer sort of goodwill; and, fortunately, what ought to be, and must be, seemed already beginning, and in the most gradual, natural manner.

Harriet is married before the end of September, and Jane Fairfax is set to be married in November, as soon as Frank Churchill is out of "deep mourning" (the first three months of mourning) for his aunt. Emma and Mr Knightley have chosen October as the month for their own marriage, but they have to convince Mr Woodhouse, who is only willing to admit it might happen someday.

Turns out that what makes up Mr Woodhouse's mind for him is a burglary; specifically, somebody steals all of Mrs Weston's turkeys, and other poultry houses in the area are hit as well. Such perfidy makes Mr Woodhouse very uneasy, and his son-in-law, Mr John Knightley, and his future son-in-law Mr (George) Knightley, convince him that he'll be better off with Mr Knightley being there full-time.

And somehow, Mrs Elton gets (almost) the last word:

The result of this distress was, that, with a much more voluntary, cheerful consent than his daughter had ever presumed to hope for at the moment, she was able to fix her wedding-day--and Mr Elton was called on, within a month from the marriage of Mr and Mrs Robert Martin, to join the hands of Mr Knightley and Miss Woodhouse.

The wedding was very much like other weddings, where the parties have no taste for finery or parade; and Mrs Elton, from the particulars detailed by her husband, thought it all extremely shabby, and very inferior to her own.--"Very little white satin, very few lace veils; a most pitiful business!--Selina would stare when she heard of it."--But, in spite of these deficiencies, the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union.

HA! Mrs Elton is all sour grapes about it not being posh enough for her taste. I prefer, however, to imagine how sour Mr Elton must have felt, first in performing a ceremony for Harriet Smith and Robert Martin, and now for Emma and Mr Knightley. And yet, he's the parish priest, so of course he's stuck doing it.

After the end of the book

Austen family tradition says that Austen often discussed the afterlives of her characters with family members. According to that tradition, Mr Woodhouse lived for another two years or so after Emma's marriage to Mr Knightley; thereafter, they moved to Donwell Abbey. The tiles that Frank had placed in front of Jane Fairfax while at Donwell Abbey, and that she had swept away, would have spelled PARDON. And, I am sorry to say, Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax did not live happily ever after - or at least not for long. Jane Churchill's weak health wasn't entirely a charade - she lived only nine years after their marriage, leaving Frank a widow (as his father had been before him).

Is Love a Fancy or a Feeling by Hartley Coleridge - a National Poetry Month post

2013-04-17T02:33:54Z

Today, a sonnet from Hartley Coleridge, eldest son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which I found a bit comforting today after the turmoil and sorrow of yesterday as a result of the senseless bombing in Boston. I first posted this poem a few years ago, when I was working on writing some poems of my own. Not that I knew it was Hartley Coleridge's poem, at the time, but I thought of the line "Is love a fancy, or a feeling?", which comes from the 1995 production of Sense & Sensibility starring Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet. Winslet's Marianne voices the question to Elinor, saying "Is love a fancy, or a feeling, or a Ferrars?" (Too bad the poem was written 22 years after the novel, but it was a nice addition anyhow, Ms Thompson.)

Here's the poem:

Is Love a Fancy or a Feeling?
by Hartley Coleridge

Is love a fancy, or a feeling? No,
It is immortal as immaculate Truth.
'Tis not a blossom, shed as soon as youth
Drops from the stem of life— for it will grow,
In barren regions, where no waters flow
Nor ray of promise cheats the pensive gloom.
A darkling fire, faint hovering o'er a tomb,
That but itself and darkness nought doth shew*,
Is my love's being,— yet it cannot die,
Nor will it change, though all be changed beside;
Tho' fairest beauty be no longer fair,
Tho' vows be false, and faith itself deny,
Tho' sharp enjoyment be a suicide,
And hope a spectre in a ruin bare.

*shew: means and is pronounced "show" (just as "strew" is pronounced "strow")

Form: It's an Italianate sonnet, written in iambic pentameter (five iambs per line: taDUM taDUM taDUM taDUM taDUM), and using the following rhyme scheme: ABBAACCADEFDEF.

Discussion: According to Coleridge, Love is a constant, "immortal as immaculate Truth". If you'd like a Shakespeare analogy, this is similar to the Bard's Sonnet 116. Or, if you prefer a biblical analogy, it's similar to I Corinthians 13:7-8: "Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends."

I hope you liked today's poem selection, and that maybe it brings you a bit of comfort, as it did for me.