A New Poetry Form ~ IN ONE WORD

Howdy, Campers ~ Happy Poetry Friday! (my poems and the link to today's host are below)

But first: May 29th is the last day to enter to win an author-and-illustrator-autographed copy of Amy Alznauer's book, THE BOY WHO DREAMED OF INFINITY, which has gotten starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus and Publishers Weekly! Go to Esther's post and scroll to the end for directions on how to enter.

We TeachingAuthors generally post Writing Workouts on Wednesdays, but we figure you're blurry-eyed and zoomhausted. Some of you may be desperately looking for a ready-to-go writing exercise for yourself, your kids or your classroom.

Or, you've had two cups of strong coffee, read the whole newspaper including the real estate ads, weeded your entire yard, vacuumed, run 10 miles, made two loaves of sourdough, finished the 1000-piece puzzle and are now looking for something fun to do.

Either way, this round we're offering you GRAB 'N GO WRITING EXERCISES

And today, we're going to learn a new poetry form.

drawing (c) 2020 April Halprin Wayland all rights reserved

Or maybe it's a form I hadn't heard of before...so if you're familiar with it, I'm all ears!

First I'll show you my poem, using this form, then I'll tell you its backstory.

The poem:

IN ONE WORD

by April Halprin Wayland
."I feel we've been duped,"

he began, "our world's been upended,

you crept

into our lives so deep

we must prune

you, denude

you. And though we've been reduced,

we have also endured.

But I can no longer pretend.

This is unprecedented."

poem © 2020 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved

==========================

The backstory:

The word UNPRECEDENTED is in almost every sentence of every answer, every op-ed, every comment, every excuse right now. And frankly, I'm freaking tired of it.

And in the poem above, every word at the end of each line can be found in the word unprecedented.

The site Wordmaker finds all the words hidden within a longer word. It found 321 words in Unprecedented. 321! Of those, I choose 31 one to play with. And of the 31, I used 10 in the final poem.

How to write an IN ONE WORD poem:

1) Think of a word. Any word--one you've always loved, one that enrages you, that peaks your interest, or speaks to you.

2) Look it up in Wordmaker (to make it more challenging, don't look it up...find the words yourself)

3) Choose some words on that list...then use or toss them, one by one.

4) Write the poem as prose--in one paragraph.

5) Break the paragraph up into a poem so that each line ends with one of the words from your list.
6) NOTE: in 2021 I began to break rule #5 in one of two ways:

a) These days, the lines of my IN ONE WORD poems do NOT end with the words from my list. I bury the words within the poem so it makes more sense and reads better.

b) OR: I simply scoop up a bucket of words from those within my word. Not more than 20, usually less. I let myself play with those words any way I want to, in any order. SO MUCH FUN!

========================================

Okay, here's one more...it's today's very rough draft:
.

POEM-MAKING (title is from the book of the same name by Myra Cohn Livingston)

by April Halprin Wayland
.

It's a kind of art—

lit by air

and light. Kept in a vault,

it can only chase it's own tail.

So blow on it, gently—this is vital.

It's yours; invent your own ritual.

poem © 2020 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved==========================

The backstory:

For this poem, I choose another word that's used so often it's driving me bonkers: VIRTUAL.

Below are the 18 words I decided to play with from the 65 words offered by Wordmaker.
I used the six that I've crossed out: 

it, lit, air, art, rut, rail, tail, liar, vial, vail, rival, trial, vault, viral, vital, trail, ultra, ritual

One of the wonders of this form is that I can take a word that makes me sick and come up with a poem that's kind or glowing. 

I think I've invented a new poetry form! An IN ONE WORD poem.  What do you think?

update: Mary Lee, from the A Year of Reading blog, wrote a wonderful IN ONE WORD poem to "do the internal work of anti-racism"...and here it is...WOW! 

drawing (c) 2020 April Halprin Wayland all rights reserved

It sure is fun to play with. Try it!  And if you're feeling brave, share it with us!

Thank you, Carol, for hosting Poetry Friday today at Beyond Literary!

posted by April Halprin Wayland with a hug she wishes weren't virtual or unprecedented

drawing (c) 2020 April Halprin Wayland all rights reserved

Hot Summer History Reads

morguefile.com

It's summer time! Yahoo! And what better way to celebrate summer than to indulge in some summer time reading.  It’s my favorite genre to write and read. Historical fiction is the coming together of two opposing elements: fact and fiction. But as the great Katherine Patterson once said, “…historical fiction [is] a bastard child of letters, respectable neither as history nor as fiction.”  I’ve written before, how defining historical fiction shares similar idiosyncrasies as Doctor Who.

When Patterson wrote historical fiction, she was often taken to task for writing stories that were considered not true to contemporary readers. But, said Patterson, “…In many instances, historical fiction is much more realistic than a lot of today’s realism…Nothing becomes dated more quickly than contemporary fiction.” In the best of historical fiction, as with any story, a child becomes a hero who gains power over her situation, a theme that contemporary readers appreciate.

And summer time is the best time for savoring my favorite historical reads.

 

I read this book in one sitting. An exciting read from Avi is City of Orphans (2011). The book follows young Maks Geless, a newsie scraping a living on the mean streets of New York City in 1893. Maks’ sister Emma has been arrested and he has only four days to prove her innocence.

Paul Fleischman’s award-winning Bull Run (1993) brings together sixteen distinct viewpoints in the

gripping retelling of the first great battle of the Civil War. This can be either an easy afternoon read or a fun summer performance for readers’ theater. An amazing study in perspective!

I revisited these books this summer, following the discussions on diversity in literature. Laurie Halse Anderson’s Seeds of America Trilogy begins with Chains (2010). As the Revolutionary War starts, young Isabel wages her own fight for freedom. The story continues in its sequel, Forge (2012) with Curzon as an escaped slave serving with the Continental Army. A particularly moving and heart-stomping depiction of the struggles that the enslaved and the freemen endured during the country’s fight for its own freedom.

Westerns are my absolute favorite. Laurie J. Edwards, under the pen name Erin Johnson, introduced Grace Milton in her Western for young adults, Grace and the Guiltless (2014), Book One of the Wanted Series. When her family is murdered by the Guiltless Gang, Grace struggles to survive the wilderness and her grief. Her story continues in the sequel, Her Cold Revenge (August, 2015), as Grace becomes a bounty hunter and hunts the gang that killed her family.

 As one reviewer offered, this may just be the story that hooks a new generation of readers on the Western genre. For a summer treat, you can read the first chapters of Her Cold Revenge here!

Another series that I have particularly enjoyed this summer is Iain Lawrence’ High Seas Trilogy. The Wreckers (1998) and its companion The Smugglers (1999) follows young John Spencer in a high-sea adventure complete with swashbuckling characters, salty dialogue and a spine-tingling cliffhangers. The story continues with The Buccaneers (2001). This series reminds me of another favorite, Robert Lewis Stevenson’s Kidnapped.



Let the adventure begin! 

Bobbi Miller