15 Best Poetry Books of 2014...Pick 1!

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Howdy Campers!

Yippee!--it's Poetry Friday!  (the link's at the end of this post ~)

Confession regarding the title of this post: I lied. Although there were many wonderful poetry books this year, I'm going to talk about just one.

You may already have read it...or read about it on Laura Purdie Salas' TeachingAuthors post in May.

You may already know that it's gotten starred reviews in Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus, Booklist and School Library Journal.

You may have heard that it's one of Publisher's Weekly's Best Picture Books of 2014, it's a School Library Journal Best Nonfiction Book of the Year, it's in the American Booksellers Association Best Books for Children Catalog, and it's on lists predicting the 2015 Caldecott for illustrator Melissa Sweet.

Of course I'm talking about

Firefly July ~ A Year of Very Short Poems

selected by Paul B. Janeczko, illustrated by Melissa Sweet

Candlewick Press

In this beautiful collection, master anthologist Paul B. Janeczko has organized 36 very short gems around the four seasons, illuminated by Melissa Sweet's both sophisticated and whimsical illustrations.  Wow.

My father was a farmer and an artist. When he sketched my mother playing piano, his goal was to use as few lines as possible to tell that moment of my mother, the light from the window, that sonata.  

In the same way, these poems show moments...and so much more in a few short lines.

Here's one of my favorites from this sterling anthology:

FIREFLY JULY

When I was ten, one summer night,

The baby stars that leapt

Among the trees like dimes of light,

I cupped, and capped, and kept.

~ J. Patrick Lewis

Another of my favorites is the always amazing Joyce Sidman’s “A Happy Meeting,” which describes what happens when rain meets dirt (first, “soft, cinnamon kisses,” then, “marriage: mud”). 

And...surprise! I am honored that one of my poems is included in this collection:

SANDPIPERS

Sandpipers run with

their needle beaks digging--they're

hemming the ocean.

~ April Halprin Wayland

and look who just popped in to wave hello...

poet and anthologist Paul B. Janeczko and illustrator Melissa Sweet!

Thank you, Anastasia at Booktalking #kidlit 

for hosting Poetry Friday today!

posted with affection by April Halprin Wayland in honor of

my mother, who loved both words and music ~

Be Honest: Do You Like This Post? Gut Level Truth In Poetry...and in Life

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Howdy, Campers!

Note the four exciting announcements at the bottom of this post (including this: today's the last day to enter our current book giveaway.)

Thank you, Elizabeth Steinglass, for hosting Poetry Friday today!

I had a wonderful poetry teacher, Tony Lee, who taught us about voice.

Describing something, as a journalist does, Tony said, is the reporting voice.  That voice comes from the lips, the mouth, the throat.

from morguefile.com

Writing about feelings comes from the gut, a lower, truer, sometimes scarier place, he said.  

from morguefile.com

This is the deep voice.  The deep voice attracts readers.  It connects them to your story.  Be brave, he told us. Find the feelings. Go there.

So why do some blog and FaceBook posts get nine kazillion comments (not mine!) and some get zip?

from FaceBook

12,341,889 likes ~ 58,962 talking about this

Putting aside JoAnn's terrific post about social media and the perfect lengths for poems, posts, headings, etc. in various online media...

it seems to me that getting your work read (or, more to the point, getting your work read and passed on) is about superficial vs. deep.

Just like a book in which the author rips off her shirt and shows us her scars (as Anne Lamott does), FaceBook and blog posts that come from the gut are the ones that resonate.

I was at a meeting the other day; each of us had three minutes to talk about anything we wanted.  The first two minutes and 30 seconds I talked about some success I had had.  In the last 30 seconds, my mouth opened and an embarrassing truth popped out.  I said that Robyn Hood Black had very kindly gifted me homemade granola.  It was especially touching because Robyn knows I can't eat sugar, so she made it with sugar-free maple syrup.  I could actually have it.  Delighted, I sat down for lunch, thinking I'd taste just a spoonful, just to see what it was like.

Good granola is dense, so you don't need much.  And you and I know that you're supposed to eat two cups of granola over a period of several days--with fresh blueberries and your pinky finger raised, right?

Not me... immediately my mouth opened, a vacuum turned on, my brain turned off, and nearly two cups of absolutely delicious granola were gone.  Gone!

This isn't Robyn's granola.
Hers had yummy bits of coconut in it.
But...um...I didn't have time to take a picture of hers.
So this is from morguefile.com

As we went around the room sharing, do you think others in the group commented on the nicely packaged pithy wisdom in my first two minutes and thirty seconds?  Nope.  Nearly ALL of them talked about my granola adventure.  It hit a familiar nerve. We've all been there.

It was no longer mine...it was all of ours.  

During Poetry Month this year, I had what I called a metaphoraffair--I practiced finding metaphors, posting one each day, both on my website (where, it turned out, the comment mechanism was broken) and on FaceBook and Twitter.

The metaphor which drew the most interest was my final post for Poetry Month 2014, written with and about my mother, who is 91 and not doing great.  It was hard for me to post; it was true. It was from my gut.

I drew this in November, 2010, after Mom and I walked around a park in Malibu…suddenly I was the parent

The point is, be brave, cut deep beneath the skin, share from the gut, share your humaness. That's all we have.
                                                                             *   *   *   *
LAST CALL! If you haven't entered our current giveaway, it ends today!  To enter, go to Jill Esbaum's post to win your very own autographed copy of Jill's Angry Birds Playground: Rain Forest (National Geographic Books)!

Will you be in New York on May 18th? I'll be speaking on the Children's Books Panel of the Seminar on Jewish Story in New York City on Sunday, May 18th.  Here's my interview the seminar organizer, Barbara Krasner published on her blog.

For an example of a beautifully written post which hits a nerve, read Jama Rattigan's gorgeous and heartfelt Mother's Day post.

And, last but not least, happy Children's Book Week!  Be brave. Go forth and share the very thing that hard to share.

posted with love by April Halprin Wayland...but you knew that, right?

A Perfect Day to Kidnap Mom--a different kind of Thanksgiving poem for Poetry Friday

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Happy After-Thanksgiving!   

Before running out the door to buy-buy-buy, sit back and watch The Story of Stuff.  At least watch the first seven minutes.  Really. 

But...if you really want something--how 'bout a book?  You may still have time to participate in our book giveaway!  To qualify, your entry must be posted by 11 p.m. Friday, November 26, 2010 (Central Standard Time).  Here's JoAnn's interview with the author, Ann Angel.  Before entering our contest, please read our Book Giveaway Guidelines.

You may be in the middle of NaNoWriMo.  Carmela has commented on this and how she's modified NaNoWriMo to fit her life.  If you're writing--however that looks in your life--my hat's off to you!  Participating in this year's Poem A Day Challenge absolutely changed my life. It changed so much, in fact, that I've been writing a poem a day for 236 days...or seven months and 22 days (and sending each one to my friend Bruce as he sails around the world).

So here's a poem I wrote this week.  Not a kid's poem. Just a poem from me--to you. I hope your
Thanksgiving was warm and wonderful.

A PERFECT DAY TO KIDNAP MOM

by April Halprin Wayland

 This morning I woke with a huge burlap sack of guilt

 about not being in town

 with my 88-year-old mother

 for Thanksgiving.

 Today was a perfect day to kidnap her.

 I poked around the internet, found an easy hike—

 terrific, except it was in Thousand Oaks,

 which always feels terribly far, like Romania, to Mom.

 I phoned her:

 “Pretend I’m Alan Alda

 and I’m inviting you somewhere, okay?”

 Okay, she said—except for the Thousand Oaks part.

 She would have gone to Thousand Oaks for Alan Alda.

 “I’ll ring you back,” I said.

 I hunted more.  I found

 Malibu Creek State Park.

 We drove north on Pacific Coast Highway

 on this after-rain day—

 everything green and blue and glisten-y,

 Mom oohing and ahhing as we cruised past the grey-blue Pacific.

Crushing layers of oak leaves,

we saw a huge blue heron, still as a tree.

Then it lifted,
its wings spread wide as awnings.

 We saw a rabbit, which, yes, had a white tail.

 We saw ground squirrels

 popping out of holes like an arcade game,

 and crowds of crows.

 “Crows remember a human that’s mistreated them,” I told her.

 “And one crow will describe him so other crows keep their distance—though they’ve never seen him before,” I said.

 “How do you say ‘a big nose and receding hairline’ in crow?” she asked.

 We saw three deer.

 The first, reddish, made its way down the slope towards a dry creek bed.

 The others, grey, stately; turned to stare.

 Later, they bounded across a field and up a hill—as beautiful as the flight of the heron.

 It was a short walk.

 Mom and I, hand-in-hand.

 She: bending over more than I remember,

 grateful to be healthy,

happy to be outside, surprised by this day.

Me: breathing rain-dampened oak,

surprised, too

by a different kind of thanksgiving.

poem & drawing (c) 2010 April Halprin Wayland

Children's Book Week, May 11-17

Posted by Carmela Martino

In case you haven't heard, Children's Book Week begins tomorrow, May 11. Here's a bit of history from the official Children's Book Week website:

"Since 1919, Children's Book Week has been celebrated nationally in schools, libraries, bookstores, clubs, private homes--any place where there are children and books. Educators, librarians, booksellers, and families have celebrated children's books and the love of reading with storytelling, parties, author and illustrator appearances, and other book related events."

The Children's Book Week website includes specific suggestions for celebrating reading. I encourage you to give some of them a try.

In honor of Children's Book Week, our next series of posts here at TeachingAuthors will be about the importance of reading and how it influences, inspires, and informs us as writers and teachers. Our posts (which will span two weeks, not just one!) will also include several associated Writing Workouts. We hope you'll join us.

And for any book lovers who need an excuse to read: MotherReader has announced that the Fourth Annual 48-Hour Book Challenge will be held June 5-7, 2009. As the blog explains, this contest allows you to "read and blog guilt-free for as long as you can stand it!" And there will be prizes, too! So head on over to MotherReader for guidelines and to sign up.

Finally, to all the moms out there: