Poetry Friday Writing Exercise

Blood

(Recommended for Advanced Middle School and Up) The epic poem Beowulf is full of blood. People have different reactions to gore, whether it’s in a movie, a graphic novel, or an ancient poem. Today’s vampire novels andTV make blood seem exotic, but it’s something all animals have in common. How do you feel about blood? Does the sight of it make you feel faint? Or are you surprisingly calm? Maybe you have your own gory tale to tell…

Recommended Reading: Gareth Hinds graphic novel Beowulf has enough gore to satisfy horror fans (Beowulf tears off Grendel's mother's head -- it's not exactly a clean cut). Check out http://www.garethhinds.com/beowulf.php

Amok in Poetry II

Hooray for Poetry Friday! I am hosting Poetry Friday next week, 9/19. Check back on Thursday for a preview and late Friday for the round up. It’s countdown to the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in New Jersey next weekend. You’ll find this year’s lineup at the festival website http://www.dodgepoetry.org/. In 2004, a performance artist shared the stage with the festival poets. Over the four-day festival, Benjamin Bagby sang all of Beowulf. In Old English. If you’re contemplating a yawn (or if you were put off by the Angelina Jolie movie), you must visit http://www.bagbybeowulf.com/video/orensanz_center.html We sat in a dark, cool tent on a late September night. The yellow lights on the stage were glowing. Bagby played the Anglo Saxon Harp and sang Beowulf’s story, with modern English on a screen nearby. Listening to the sounds was almost like gathering around a campfire to hear Beowulf’s adventures. I forgot about the words on the screen and tuned into the music of the language. That performance transported me. I went on to read poet Seamus Heaney’s translation of the epic poem. And picked up one of the many current Beowulf graphic (as in no shortage of blood) novels. This is what I love about Dodge. There is always a surprise, a poet you’d never heard whose words you connect to, a performer who shakes you out of assumptions like “Beowulf is boring.” Hope to see you at the festival next week!

Immerse yourself in Poetry Friday poems at Biblio File, hosting today at http://tushuguan.blogspot.com/2008/09/poetry-friday-is-here.html

Writing Exercise: Literary Allusions (Upper Elementary through Adult)

Name Dropping Is a Good Thing What was your favorite book when you were a kid? Mine was “Jacob Have I Loved,” by Katherine Paterson (http://www.terabithia.com/books/jacob.html). The story deals with an elder twin who resents her spirited & favored sister. Fill in “two wild brothers” for the sister and you’ll get why the novel spoke to me. (Okay, I was feeling sorry for myself. You would too if you had to share a bathroom with the “Mohawk Men.”) Kids are passionate about their favorite books. My son owns every book in the Warriors series (http://www.warriorcats.com/). A good friend’s sister loved the Anne of Green Gables novels so much, she wouldn’t watch the PBS adaptations in case they ruined her vision of Anne. Books & the characters in them are such an important and revealing part of kids’ lives. Why don’t we see more cross-referencing in kids’ lit? I’m guessing writers are afraid of intellectual rights, copyright infringement. But a few kid lit authors do it. Jeanne Birdsall (http://www.jeannebirdsall.com/) in her Penderwicks books has literary Jane mention beloved characters and books constantly. Hilary McKay’s Indigo Casson (http://www.hilarymckay.co.uk/) is always reading Le Morte D’Arthur. J.K. Rowling dropped the name of an imaginary book in the Harry Potter series. How smart was that? HP may be complete, but “The Tales of Beedle the Bard” sent Harry fans back to the bookstore. Your writing exercise: throw caution to the wind! Do some name-dropping. Fiction Writers -- What is your kid/teen/YA character reading? Be a daredevil and mention the book by name. If your character has a favorite novel, you probably know what it is and why your character loves it. (You can read about one of my childhood favorites – Jane Eyre -- at my website: http://www.laurashovan.com/bioforkids.htm) Poets – try a poem about a book you loved as a child. Let’s go sensory here – what did the book look, feel and smell like? What images did you see as you were reading it?

Amok in Literary Allusions

Samwise McBark-Bark, who thinks he is the Sir Lancelot of our household.

Writers & teachers read a lot. It's a job perk (or hazard, according to Mr. Amok).

With all those storylines, characters, settings, crises floating around in our consciousness, we're prone to making literary allusions.

We named the new pup (who came from Schnauzer Rescue http://www.schnauzerrescue.net/) Samwise, hoping he'd be a true and noble friend like Frodo's Sam in LOTR.

I've been reading Kevin Crossley-Holland's wonderful Arthur trilogy -- it begins with "The Seeing Stone" -- and have noticed that Sam answers to his name, but has a secret identity (not unlike T.S. Eliot's cats http://www.dentonbach.com/poems/7.htm). He thinks he is Sir Lancelot. Protector of the weak, e.g. anyone who's come in the house and gotten his okay. Barker at invaders, e.g. anyone walking within 50 feet of our house.

He's our first literary dog. He came to us as Sammy -- we added the allusion. I've known a MacDuff (dog), Atticus Finch (cat), for goodness sake, Demi Moore has a daughter name Scout.

Are you addicted to allusions? Do you find allusion-dropping funny, cute, clever, or literarily obnoxious?

Look for a post about my family outing article at Baltimore's Child magazine this month (it should be up soon at http://www.baltimoreschild.com/). My kids immediately dubbed the marshes at Calvert Cliffs State Park in Lusby, MD: The Marshes of Morda. They couldn't help it. We'd just finished reading the entire Chronicles of Prydain.

Whoops, I did it again.