Hi Katie,
I love your work. Both your poems and illustrations–I also love your many bios Was wondering if you had time to look over my poems and ills on my poetry for kids site. There is roughly 30 poems, so you’re looking at a half hour total … I’ve been cartooning, writing and illustrating for a few years now and am just now getting my poetry “out there”. I would love your feedback if you have the time.
Thanks so much for the kind words! I really don’t have time, but even if I did, the only time I critique work is when I’m on faculty at a writing conference, like the Highlights Foundation Founders Workshops or SCBWI. There are, however, many who do critiques. I don’t know what the going rate is these days, but I suggest you click on some of the links under Editors over there to the right. There are also people like my dear friend, the talented Esther Hershenhorn whom you should definitely check out.
Today’s guest poetry poster is Irene Latham, an award-winning author of two volumes of poetry and two novels. She also serves as poetry editor for Birmingham Arts Journal and contributes poems to Scholastic’s Storyworks and Scope magazines.
Those who don’t write poetry often wonder why anyone would spend time on a market so unpopular and little read. It’s not for the fame-hounds or money-hungry, that’s for sure. Even when you are lucky enough to have a book of poems.
Consider these quotes:
“There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either.” – Robert Graves
“Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.” – Don Marquis
Yet, to me, poetry is absolutely essential. Here’s a few reasons why:
1. It’s short.
You can write an entire poem in a day – or at least several drafts of a poem. This makes it perfect for the time-challenged, young mothers, over-extended. Unlike a novel which takes hours upon hours, you can crank out a first draft of a poem in minutes. You can hand your lines to a reader and experience immediate gratification.
2. Word play is fun.
When every syllable matters, things get intense. But that’s where the joy is. That’s where assonance and meter and rhyme come in. Writing poetry is about playing with language. You can even make words up, if you want to. And oh, the satisfaction when you find Just The Right Word — is there a better feeling in the world?
3. It makes you a life-long student of the world.
When you write poetry, you approach life with curiosity and wonder. Leaves don’t ever merely fall to the ground. Some dive, some twist, some jet, some dawdle. Poets are keen observers. We are constantly on the lookout for analogies, patterns and oddities in nature and in relationships. We see things, hear things others don’t. Because those are the things we want to put into our poems.
4. It gives you permission to explore all emotional terrain in a safe way.
Poetry is compressed emotion. The whole point is to create an emotional experience for yourself and for readers. If you have fears about death, you can put them in a poem. Anger, sadness, joy, despair… poetry is the place for the most sustaining and destructive emotions. Your job to be passionate. This passion is the vehicle that will take you toward your own emotional truths.
5. Different is good.
Unlike many other areas of life, when you write poetry you are expected to be a little odd. You might even be celebrated for this oddness. You can embrace all that is eccentric about yourself — and even cultivate new eccentricities. You can do this on the page or in real life, and no one blinks. Because you’re a Poet. And poetry is not bound by a strict set of rules. (The only rule is there are no rules.) It’s quite liberating, actually. And allows you to invest more fully in the best poem of all: You, Your Life.
I “met” Greg Pincus, today’s guest poetry poster, when I came across his Fib poems and loved them. After years, I finally actually met him last summer. In person. For real.
I’m not much of a poetry formalist, I admit. In fact, I normally write funny, rhyming verses of no set form. Writing villanelles makes me cry. Sonnets cause sobbing. Yet, from time to time, I do love playing around with form, and I always love trying new ideas. That’s how I started telling Fibs.
In this case, Fibs are not lies, small or large. Instead, they’re six line, 20 syllable poems based on the Fibonacci sequence. Oh, I know. I know. No one told you there would be math today. But trust me. It won’t hurt.
The Fibonacci sequence, named for the 12th century mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci, is a series of numbers where each one is the sum of the two before it. The classic sequence starts with 0 and 1 and builds from there: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 and on and on and on. I decided to make zero a moment of silence then stop writing after the 8 syllable line. Here’s the first Fib I wrote:
One
Small,
Precise,
Poetic,
Spiraling mixture:
Math plus poetry yields the Fib.
While I am far, far, far from the first to write based on Fibonacci – people have long written books, poems, and songs among other things – I might’ve been the first to call these short poems based on it Fibs. I started off writing them as kind of a warm up exercise, and I still write them today. This form, at least for me, is sticky.
Somewhat to my surprise, I have found that kids love playing with Fibs, even when I add in my one “rule” – the one syllable lines can’t have an article or conjunction, meaning “the” “and” and other place fillers aren’t allowed. Frequently, we start off with one of my animal Fibs as an example…
CAT
Purr.
Purr.
I’m Cat.
Stretch and groom.
Sleep deep… and then zooooom,
Chasing something only I know.
… then the kids race off and create.
Personally, I think you should follow their example – start telling Fibs. They’re good for you. Honest!
I am so happy Douglas Florian could join us as a guest poetry poster! He is an amazing artist, and an hysterically funny poet. Just read on, and you’ll see!
Writing poetry’s not hard.
Grow a poetree in your yard.
Feed it rhythm.
Feed it rhyme.
Feed it love most all the time.
When the poems are bright and fun
Then you’ll know your job is done.
Poetry writing tips:
1. Study your subject. If you’re writing about bears go to The American Museum of Natural History, a national park, a zoo, or maybe interview some bears in your backyard.
2. Vary your poems. Try different rhyme schemes (ABAB is one of my favorites, where the first line rhymes with the third, and the second line rhymes with the fourth.
3. Use alliteration, where two or more words start with the same sound like lovely little llamas.
4. Use bad spelling or grammar if it’s funny: llovely llittle llamas. That’s poetic license.
5. If a rhyme doesn’t come switch the words around a bit. Use a rhyming dictionary for big rhyming words.
6. Don’t be afraid to make up words. Your a poet, so show it! For example, A big tree is Treemendous! Get imagi-notions.
7. Have fun.
Poetry is important because it’s a terrific use of language and sound and usually meant to be recited.
My favorite childhood poem was written by Ogden Nash:
Kitten
The trouble with a kitten is that
Eventually it becomes a cat.
I hope you guys enjoy my latest books:
Poem Runs: Baseball Poems (Harcourt)
and
UnBEElievables: Honeybee Poems and Paintings (Beach Lane Books)
Today’s guest poetry poster (despite the title) is my talented friend April Pulley Sayre. When I got to the part about what her teacher did to her, I gasped.
Here is what April sent me:
I don’t think of myself as a poet. The moniker “poet” kind of scares me. Like I’d have to act more dignified, or serious, or something if I say I’m one. I only went to my first poetry reading last year. That might be a crime if you’re a poet. Not sure.
Admittedly, thirteen of 32 my picture books and out and under contract have regular rhythm and rhyme and, if typed out, look like poems. (Hear some kids read my chant poems here.) But I don’t know the words for different kinds of meters or why something works or does not. I can scan for meter but I make up my own markings and have no idea how anyone else does it. It just feels right or it doesn’t feel right. That is my measure.
I love lyrical language and just plunking, revising, and playing around with language. When I started doing school visits, an elementary school teacher informed me that my books are full of alliteration, onomatopoeia, and internal rhyme, I was amazed. Really? I’d forgotten what you actually call these devices because they are organic to how I work. I just call it playing with words.
My first instinct is almost always to write in rhyme but for the first ten years of my career, on purpose, I broke that rhyme and wrote in prose because I didn’t think I could “get away with rhyme.” Then I gave up, went ahead and rhymed, and sold three rhymed picture books in a row. Well, why couldn’t I have done that all along?
Okay, so maybe I write poetry. Does that make one a poet? I don’t have cool reading glasses yet. But I wrote lots of poetry when I was a little girl in the back of the car as the dog shed all over me and my parents drove me up into the snowy mountains to ski. That was before I guess I realized “poet” wasn’t something you just were.
I once thought I won a county art museum’s contest because of my poetry. It turned out that I won the category for essay, instead. From then on, I thought, I’m not a “poet” but an “essayist.” Then, I was labeled “science journalist” then “nonfiction writer.”
Perhaps I first abandoned my “poet” moniker in high school. My high school A.P. English teacher disliked me because I thought a lot of her interpretations of poetry were a crock. Maybe that’s why, when my poems were published in the state poetry magazine, she never told me or took me with the others on the award trip. It was fine; we would have driven each other crazy in the car. Thankfully, another of my high school English teachers gave me Japanese poetry to read and many other teachers were supportive along the way. Thank you, Mrs. Kobelt, Mrs. Joye!
Still, I wasn’t a poet. No, not when I ducked out of my journalism job at National Wildlife Federation and secretly left a moose poem on a wildlife biologist’s door, just for fun.
No, surely not when I wrote political (or, you might say non-political poetry) for my sister’s graduation from graduate school.
Okay, so maybe I published poetry, work for hire, to go with some science curricula for Delta Education. But that was just a little detour from prose nonfiction. Does that apply? I’m not sure exactly what the requirements are, but I’m pretty sure you have to be extremely cool to be a poet. I’m still working on that. I’m looking for a better hat. (I aspire to Anita Silvey’s hats.) Perhaps I’ll start with an excellent scarf, because you need that, too, right? I’ll let you know when I find them and I’m ready to be a poet. In the meantime, I’ve got to polish up a chant.
Was wondering if you had time to look over my poems and ills on my poetry for kids site. There is roughly 30 poems, so you’re looking at a half hour total … I’ve been cartooning, writing and illustrating for a few years now and am just now getting my poetry “out there”. I would love your feedback if you have the time.
