Poetry Friday: A Frozen Parody for Poets

Hello, Writerly Friends.

Are you a fan of Frozen, or are you ready to Let It Go?

This is how one classroom teacher
coped (or didn't) with Frozen-crazy students. 

I just received the second round of editorial notes for my middle grade novel in verse. Thanks to all of you who have been following the looooong journey that THE LAST FIFTH GRADE OF EMERSON ELEMENTARY has taken to publication. I promise ... this is connected to the movie Frozen.

But first...

Happy Host Day
to talented super-poet
Irene Latham!
All of the Poetry Friday links
are up Irene's blog,
Live Your Poem.

With suggestions from my editor, I wrote a lot of new material for my novel this fall. I tend to overwrite when I'm drafting. Testing out new poems helps me feel my way through the characters and plot. Then I put the draft aside for awhile and see which poems have staying power. Some will need revision. Others will be cut.

Before I head back into the revision cave -- my deadline's not In Summer, after all -- I'd like to share one of the new poems for Poetry Friday. This parody of "Do You Want to Build a Snowman" won't make it into the published novel, but I think your writing students will like it. Especially when they're feeling frustrated.

I Don’t Want to Write a Sonnet

I don’t want to write a sonnet.

Sometimes I’ve got nothing to say.

I can never think of words that rhyme.

It takes too much time

writing every day.

Counting syllables is awkward,

too much like math,

It makes me want to cry.

I don’t want to write a sonnet.

Does it have to be a sonnet?

Tell me why.

I don’t want to write a sonnet,

a limerick, or triolet.

A writing break sounds really great.

Why don’t we pick a date?

How about today?

It gets a little tiring

sticking to rhyme schemes

when my thoughts would rather fly.

You say I have it in me

and it’s only fourteen lines.

You say this is a sloppy draft

and I’ll have time to craft

when we all revise.

We only have ten minutes

of writing time.

What am I going to do?

I don’t want to write a sonnet.

Here is a great cover of the original song from Frozen.

Why cut this piece? Not because I have a Frozen Heart. I think I wrote it for myself, rather than for one of my characters. The speaker feels a little too generic for THE LAST FIFTH GRADE, which is told in the 18 voices of one fifth grade class. I had a great time writing this parody, though. I was totally venting some revision frustration.

Speaking of writing, February is coming up. That means the annual Author Amok Poetry Project is almost here. Thanks so much for all of you who suggested sounds we can use for writing prompts. When I need a break from novel revisions, I'm going to get our list of 28 sounds together. For the First Time in Forever, I can't wait to start writing!

And remember, it doesn't have to be a sonnet.

Poetry Postcard 22

It's time for a happy dance, because we are halfway through the 44 Postcard poetry project.

Yesterday, author Charles Rammelkamp visited to talk about the postcard tradition he shares with his twin brother.

Today, I've got postcard and poem #22. If you've been following the project, you know that I hit a creative wall with the last five or six poems.

A lot of the most recent poems were light verse. Some were clever. Some were ridiculous. I wasn't totally satisfied with them, but I  had gotten them done and moved ahead.

That ended with postcard #22. It is a painting, "Memories of the Bitter Past," by Betty LaDuke. 

UPDATE: Betty LaDuke was kind enough to give me permission to post her painting!

Memories of the Bitter Past, Betty LaDuke,
posted with permission of the artist.

The card came to me as part of the 30 Contemporary Women Artists book published by Pomegranate.

Attempt 1:

I had an idea, triggered by the word "bitter." What if the heart functioned like a tongue, with different tastes or sections devoted to the emotional flavors: sweet, sour, salty (tears), bitter? The poem was coming as a direct address:

My love, what if

the heart was like a tongue

its quadrants mapped

each with its own

proclivities...

This (white paper) is from my bedside notebook.

Attempt 2:

I came downstairs, grabbed a yellow pad, got a little rhyme action going.

In school I learned

how tastes divide

the tongue, a continent

of countries, sour

sweet. The quadrants

of the heart need

such a map, I want

to know each chamber

and its beat.

It's obvious from all the crossing out that I could not sustain this line of thinking/rhyme/rhythm. I tried doing some research about the structure of the heart.

Draft 3 with teeny diagram of
the blood flowing through the heart.

And, as you can see from the second "stanza" (actually a reboot), I suddenly realized that what I had on my hands was a wannabe sonnet.

In school, I learned how tastes divide the tongue,

a continent of flavors, sour and sweet.

The content of the heart need such a map.

I want to know each chamber and its beat.

Hooray! I know where the poem is heading. Now, I can get to work.

Attempt 3:

Sonnet is not working. I try short lines again.

Or not. I will spare you the: complaining to my husband, tearing out of hair, stomping around the kitchen, eating crunchy things very loudly.

I decided to start over. I opened The Essential Rumi and read a few poems. I began again.

Attempt 4 (Revised):

Every Flavor

After Rumi

A bitterness for what is past

travels through two chambers of the heart

and then your lungs.

You unlock the door, expecting the heart

to shrink like a mealy apple

when it learns who is visiting.

Dishes for every taste are served at this inn,

every flavor: salty, sweet, sour and bitter.
Your ventricle welcomes each guest,

sweeps him back out again,
saying, “Come again, come again” or

“That one won’t be back.”

Your atrium is the hearth

blazing and crumbling,

blazing and crumbling.

If it were always embers

or always a roaring fire,

the memory-guests would stay

they would talk all night,

drinking and eating delicacies,

you would be consumed.

by Laura Shovan

Postcard Information:

30 Contemporary Women Artists
Betty LaDuke (American, b. 1933)

Memories of the Bitter Past, 1979. Acrylic, 68 x 54 in.

© 1979 Betty LaDuke

Pomegranate ● Box 808022 ● Petaluma, CA 94975

This is the second time I've written a poem mimicking Rumi's style. The first is "The Parable of the Piano Bench," which will appear in this spring's edition of Seminary Ridge Review.

I hesitate to call this a breakthrough poem, but I do feel as thought I worked past that creative block. Magical realism sometimes appears in my poems. I'm still learning how to listen -- how to entertain and develop a wild idea when one walks through the wall.

Poetry Postcard 9

I have to admit, I am struggling with this poem. It has already gone out to a friend and fellow writer. She is working on a fantasy set in Ancient Egypt. (Sound familiar, readers?)

I am struggling so much that I have revised the poem multiple times since sending it.

Postcard 9 features this image.
Here it decorates a perfume bottle, 1890.
www.museudelperfum.net

There were other directions I could have gone with this label -- on my card, it's a soap wrapper. But when I looked up the brand name, "Isiris," I learned this was another name for Osiris, that grand Egyptian god. There had to be a poem in the juxtaposition between over the top Victorian decoration and the God of Death.

The god Osiris often appears with green skin.

Isiris and Osiris are both Ancient Greek mispronunciations of the god's proper Egyptian name. I also found out that the trademark conical crown Osiris wears  is called the Atef. All of this information made its way into the poem, and then, as I revised, out of the poem.

My major problem is, I'm not sure this poem stands alone. Without the illustration, it's nothing.

But I have to let that go. As I told my husband, I had goals with this poetry project, and one of them was to stop listening to my inner perfectionist -- that critic many of us have stomping around in our heads.

By writing 44 poems in quick succession, I wanted to rap this mantra on the knuckles of my soul: I SHALL NOT EXPECT EVERY POEM I WRITE TO BE PERFECT.

To which my husband said, "Then you wouldn't be you." (Did I detect a note of sarcasm?)

Victorian Soap Label

The brand is Isiris,

another name for Egypt’s

god of death, his

pharaoh’s crown traded

for a head of golden curls
and cherub’s wing,

frothy as the filigree

decorating this label.
In its rosy center, the god

kicks up his baby heels,

he knows I will

unwrap his soap, inhale

its perfume and

lather my mortal skin

while he waits, discarded,

among tonics and

moisture-preserving lotions.

by Laura Shovan

Postcard information: “©2003 B B K Paris, From Soap Labels: 40 Collectible Postcards, published by Chronicle Books.”

You can find the book on the Chronicle website.

I still like the idea of Osiris masquerading as a frolicking putto, wrapped around fragrant soap. I like the idea that we use cosmetics to make believe we are delaying our date with aging and death.

What do you think? Does the poem work without the illustration?

30 Habits of Highly Effective Poets #30: Amy Ludwig Vanderwater on Revision

Today is the final day of National Poetry Month 2012. It's been a whirlwind. All this month, we have looked at writing habits of poets.

Children's poet and educator Amy Ludwig Vanderwater (of The Poem Farm) gets the last word. Appropriately, Amy's post is about the joys of revising drafts. She is also sharing a poem from one of her poem-a-day marathons.

Here is Amy:

A long time ago, I thought I loved writing.  But really, I loved the idea of writing more than I loved the work of writing.  I loved carrying a notebook, and I loved looking at my infrequent entries in that notebook.  I did not love revision.

Now, revision is my best friend, and I love her.  Revision means I have something to work with, words to tune, meters to tap, magic to find.  Today, each poem I send out or share goes through these few revision checks:

1.     LITTLE WORD CHECK – Cross out extra little words, words like and or the. Often, eliminating these will help a poem breathe. (Thank you, LBH!)

2.     SYLLABLE CHECK – Count and number the syllables in each line. Decide if the poem is or should be written in a regular meter.  Tap the table with my fingertips.

3.     VERB CHECK – If any verbs feel like weak handshakes, substitute beefier relatives.

4.     CLICHÉ  & METAPHOR CHECK – If a phrase sounds too familiar, Google it to see if it’s a cliché, a well-known metaphor, or just too-good-to-be-original.

5.     ALLITERATION CHECK – Change words where possible to give the poem more of a repetitive sound.

6.     ENDING CHECK – Reread the ending, and decide if it will leave a reader hungry or confused.  If so, write a few different endings and pick one of those instead.

7.     OTHER PERSON CHECK – Ask someone (preferably a child) to read the poem aloud without commenting.  Rework any lines which trip up this reader.

8.     MAGIC CHECK – If the technical qualities are strong, reread the poem looking for a flash of enchantment.  If there’s a hint of magic, grin.  If not, decide whether it will be allowed to go out into the world or if it needs to age a wee bit more!

You can ready Amy's accompanying post here.

Amy's National Poetry Month blog project was a dictionary hike, covering the 26 letters of the alphabet. If you visit Amy's blog today, all of the dictionary hike poems will be up.

And here is the recap of the poets and topics we covered in the "30 Habits of Highly Effective Poets" series.

April 1: Laura Shovan on Drinking Tea (and Laura's April Fool's Post)

April 2: Laura Purdie Salas on Relaxation

April 3: Allan Roy Andrews on Dreaming

April 4: Justine Rowden on Paying Attention

April 5: Liz Moser on Anchoring

April 6: Diane Mayr on Tubular Vision

April 7: William Wordsworth on Involving Your Pets

April 8: Nicole Schultheis on Food

April 9: Lisa Vihos on Practicing

April 10: Melanie Hope Greenberg on Inspiration + Drive

April 11: Jacqueline Jules on Finding Writing Time

April 12: Dennis Kirschbaum on Writer's Block

April 13: Robyn Hood Black on Haiku Mind

April 14: Kay Ryan on Reading

April 15: Leslie Rzeznik on Recording Yourself

April 16: Michael Tims on the Scientific Method

April 17: Charles Waters on a Training Regimen

April 18: Betsy Franco on "Bed Head"

April 19: Irene Latham on the 1:1 Ratio

April 20: Tabatha Yeatts Lonske on Seeing Patterns

April 21: William Stafford on Being the Early Bard

April 22: Laura Shovan on Reiki vs. Rekey

April 23: Kathy Figueroa on Chores

April 24: Barbara Westwood Diehl on Googling

April 25: Antonio Blunda on Music

April 26: On Fun

April 27: Jeannine Atkins on Multi-tasking

April 28: Nikki Giovanni on Personifying Poems

April 29: Honey Novick on Ars Poetica

April 30: Amy Ludwig Vanderwater on Revision

Beginning tomorrow, I'll be posting poems from my two recent elementary school residencies. Look for some great third grade Fibs.

30 Habits of Highly Effective Poets #22: Laura Shovan on Rekeying

Reiki ("ray-key") is an ancient Eastern healing technique where the practitioner shifts the patient's energy, moving blockages or noticing areas of the body that need attention.

Rekey ("re-key") is a revision technique that will have your writer friends calling your sanity into question. Why retype an entire manuscript? The whole point of word processing programs is to avoid rekeying a document. Edits are easy! Embrace technology!

Fellow poets, I say to you that reiki and rekey are not so different. Place the draft of your poem or manuscript gently on the table before you. Lay your hands on the keyboard. You will feel the energy in your work as you retype each and every letter, paying attention to its health and well-being in the context of the larger body of work.

Will you shift energy? By taking the time to rekey, you may spot pacing problems that you have glanced over.

Moving blockages? If you're going to go through the mind-numbing task of retyping a long manuscript, areas that aren't working will have a sleepy, yawn-inducing energy. If you start to ask "Why Am I Doing This?" chances are, you've hit a stanza or paragraph that needs some work.

Today, I started rekeying the middle-grade novel in verse that I've been working on since summer 2008. My husband did, indeed, think I had lost my mind. However, I like the process of asking myself -- once again -- if each word is earning its keep, if each line break makes sense.

Not so long ago, rekeying a manuscript was a necessity.

Less than ten pages into the exercise, I started feeling bored. Uh oh.

Recently, I finished a major revision. After that, I re-ordered all 150+ poems in the book. And I placed a series of several poems introducing characters right at the opening, with nary a plot line to keep you turning pages. If I hadn't been retyping the MS, I don't know that I would have  I started to feel bored and asked myself why.

Retyping helps me see the poem or the book almost like a reader. It's as close to reading the pieces for the first time as I can get.

Below is a poem from the book, before and after I rekeyed it. The novel (anthology? it's kind of a hybrid) is called I ALMOST DIDN'T GO TO SCHOOL TODAY: A YEAR IN FIFTH GRADE. This poem is in the voice of one of the students. It is one of the poems I moved up today, in order to place a narrative thread near the start of the novel.

Before rekeying (with some notes):

My Favorite Picture

In my favorite picture, I am a baby.

I am sitting on a couch. I am laughing.

It looks like I am clapping my hands. I was so cute!

My dad is leaning forward, smiling at me.

He is pinching my toes.

Before my mom moved away, she used to tell me

my dad was the first person who could get me to smile.

And the first time I laughed was because

he was making silly faces. “Dad” was my first word. [insert "goofy"]

He taught me how to play piano and sing.

Once a year, he takes me to New York City

and we see a matinee on Broadway.

Afterwards, we always go to the Stage Door deli.

Dad says he won’t eat a bialy from anyplace else.

I order a corned beef sandwich, too huge to finish.

A picture of my family now would be

me and Dad at the Stage Door deli,

a plate of pickles and a Playbill on the table between us.

He’d be leaning forward to tell me a joke,

and I’d look like the happiest kid in the world.

Melodie's favorite, pastrami & rye from the Stage Door Deli.

After rekeying:

My Favorite Picture

In my favorite picture, I am a baby.

I am sitting on a couch. I am laughing.

It looks like I am clapping my hands.

I was cute!

My dad is pinching my toes and smiling.

Before my mom moved away, she used to tell me

my dad was the first person who made me smile.

And the first time I laughed was because

he was making goofy faces.

“Da” was my first word.

My dad taught me how to play piano and sing.

Once a year, he takes me to New York City

and we see a matinee on Broadway.

Afterwards, we always go to the Stage Door deli.

I order a corned beef sandwich, too huge to finish.

A perfect picture of my family now would be

me and Dad at the Stage Door deli,

a plate of pickles and a Playbill

on the table between us.

Just me and my dad.

I think the line breaks are working better now, but boy are my fingers tired.