Poetry Friday: "I could steal a friend"

With 50+ inches of snow on the ground, no school, and dangerous roads, this has been a great week to stay in and revise.

What are you working on? My main project for the last 18 months has been a middle grade yearbook-in-verse, THE COUGAR CHRONICLE. It combines persona and occasional poems in the voices of one fifth grade class. (Read past posts about the book here and here.)

The poems are inspired by/draw from Edgar Lee Masters 1915 book, Spoon River Anthology. Imagine you are standing in a graveyard outside Chicago, and as you pass each headstone, the person buried there speaks about who he was, what her dreams were, disappointments, secret loves.

Some of my persona poems relate directly to those in Masters book. Here's a Masters poem, followed by one from THE COUGAR CHRONICLE.

ROBERT DAVIDSON
by Edgar Lee Masters

I grew spiritually fat living off the souls of men.
If I saw a soul that was strong
I wounded its pride and devoured its strength.
The shelters of friendship knew my cunning,
For where I could steal a friend I did so.
And wherever I could enlarge my power
By undermining ambition, I did so,
Thus to make smooth my own.
And to triumph over other souls,
Just to assert and prove my superior strength,
Was with me a delight,
The keen exhilaration of soul gymnastics.
Devouring souls, I should have lived forever.
But their undigested remains bred in me a deadly
   nephritis,
With fear, restlessness, sinking spirits,
Hatred, suspicion, vision disturbed.
I collapsed at last with a shriek.
Remember the acorn;
It does not devour other acorns.

Ashlie's Awesome Acrostic
by Laura Shovan

As President of the
Student Council, T.J. Furst thinks he runs this school.
He's into Democracy. Monarchy is more my style.
Leave ruling the school to me.
I am Queen of Columbia Elementary.
Every kid here knows my name,

So I'm as much a leader as
T.J. Furst.
Even better. I got to the top without one speech.
Politics? I have other ways to keep control.
Half the fifth grade is already
Afraid of me. The other half? Who
Needs those
Idiots and geeks?
Even kids who say they

Hate me wish they could be my friends.
As if. You think you're
Unique? Better watch your back, because I will
Knock you down.

Since it's almost Valentine's Day, I'm sending a heart full of gratitude to some people who have cheered on this project. Children's author Deborah Da Costa gave me an A+ on some early poems. Agent Michael Stearns and author Ellen Hopkins' critiques helped me expand the original idea and focus the narrative.

But super-love to my friend, writer Marjory Bancroft, who has given me both high praise and tough love constructive criticism because she believes THE COUGAR CHRONICLE has something important to say...that kids in fifth grade are "individuals yearning to be seen and desperate to be recognized for who they are."

Thanks to Lee Wind for hosting Poetry Friday today. Share more love and poetry at Lee's site, "I'm Here. I'm Queer. What the Hell Do I Read?"

Amok in Revision

When I'm teaching poetry revision to elementary schoolers, I write on the board: Re/vision.

We parse the word. "Re"  means to do again. For "vision," I draw a pair of goofy glasses on the board. Revision doesn't mean editing or proofreading. It literally means to see again, with fresh eyes.

Often, those fresh eyes see something I don't want to look at. Like an entire scene or poem from a book that's not working. Ouch. But my revision glasses work like the glasses I put on every morning. They help me see better. If I tried to drive the story without them, I'd be all over the road.

Today, I'm revising my middle grade yearbook-in-verse, THE COUGAR CHRONICLE.

Here is a persona poem in the voice of a girl from my fictional fifth grade class. My writer friend Marjory Bancroft said, "I got nothing in this poem -- no sense of story, rhythm, character, personality."

Ode to My Twin
By Sydney Costley

I love the whooshing sound
when the glass doors open
and kids rush out for recess.
Basketball, four square, tag,

Double Dutch, monkey bars,
laughing, yelling, running.
But then Ashlie had to start
teaching all the girls cheers.
If Mary Rose wants to
prance around copying
stuck up Ashlie Hauk
I got no time for her.
I told her so.
And she said, "Fine."
I went behind the school to hide.
My sister Sonya followed me.
She said, "Cheerleading's dumb.
I'd rather make a jump shot
than jump for joy when some boy scores."
We played hoops one on one
for the rest of recess, me and my
number one BFF,
sister Sonya.

I sat on Marjory's comments for months, hoping I could rescue the poem. I liked how it described recess, touched on problems Sydney was having with her friend (a thread that shows up later in the story), and developed the relationship between Sydney and her twin.

But the revision glasses told me it was time to chuck the poem and start over.

I used one of my favorite tricks and tried a different form, keeping in mind the story and character elements I liked in the original. So...let's see if an ekphrastic poem will work better for Sydney. She's a hands-on learner, likes phys ed, recess and Art. I took out a Van Gogh portrait that I use with elementary schoolers when we write self-portrait poems. Here is Sydney's new poem.


Self Portrait
by Sydney Costley

Miss Hill said we could make a portrait
just like in art class, except instead of colors
we could use words to make the picture.
And I remembered that portrait
Ms. Musay showed us in Art
where Vincent Van Gogh painted his face green!
Blue green swirls all around him,
vines of blue crawling on his jacket.
It looked like his clothes wanted to move.
I know how that feels.
My name is Sydney.
My color is green.
My words say there is green grass behind me,
under my feet on the soccer field,
under my head when I look up at the sky.
My face has blue lines curving down
when Mary Rose spends recess learning cheers
from Ashlie Hauk instead of shooting hoops with me.
When I'm running, I like the way
the sun shines on my dark blue windbreaker
like waves sliding across the ocean.
I wish I could jump into my portrait poem,
forget about school and dive into that ocean.
I'd swim away.

What do you think? Did the revision glasses do their job?

(Sydney is thinking about playing with the shape of her poem, to give it a swirly feeling like Van Gogh's painting. -- Still revising!)

Amok in Writing Prompts

There are three feet of snow on the ground here in Central Maryland. We're expecting two more feet overnight. Since we're stuck at home anyway, let's get writing.

Check out 365 Pictures/Prompts for a daily photo to get your creative writing juices flowing. The site has photos paired with a question, "short paragraph to encourage inner exploration," or a story starter.

I made my own photo prompt to share with you today.

 

I was walking through the New Hampshire woods with my friend Jennie Steinhauser, when something caught my eye. A flash of blue in a moss-covered tree stump. A closer look -- it's a baby doll tucked into a hole in the stump.

Your writing prompt for the day...tell a story (or write a poem) about who put the doll in the tree stump and why. Faeries returning an enchanted child? A kid who's too old for toys, but can't bear to throw the doll away? Or tell the doll's story. What has it observed from its tree stump?

Enjoy and happy writing.