5 Pandemic Poems Just For You

 Howdy, Campers and happy Poetry Friday! (the PF host link is below)

The topic this round, which Esther suggested in late June, was Writing (Or Teaching)-Related Activities We’re Getting Back To As Things Open Again.

So far, four TeachingAuthors have created terrific posts on this topic, and already the sands have shifted.Esther's (July 16th) is euphoric (including an empty frame in which she expected to post of photo of Carmela, Esther and me at a Chicago restaurant), Zeena's (July 23rd) is about her new committment as a teacher of 4- and 5-year-olds (it includes a video of Zeena book talking picture books);  Bobbi's (July 30th) is hope-filled--with a terrific resources list!), Mary Ann's (August 6th) is wonderfully written as always. But hope?...not so much. 

And me? I'm grumpy today.

Me, slaying the topic we'd hoped to write about

The last few months in our house have been overshadowed by STUFF. Towards the end of April, zombies from the apocalyspe stopped by to chomp on my foot. (The medical diagnosis was staph infection, but I know it was zombies.)

Which meant I couldn't hike. Or run. Or walk. Or go to a wedding in Chicago and have lunch in person with Esther and Carmela. My pup Eli was also casuality: he couldn't hike or run or walk without me. 

Our muscles melted.

After umpteen weeks of varying antibiotics, my doctors found one that worked and I got better...

...just in time to drive my very sick husband to the ER. He was admitted to the hospital; it was scary. Now he's home. We're lucky. He'll be okay. 

Whew. 

Okay, I just thought of something that's hopeful: Like so many wonderful writers in the Poetry Friday community, I never stop writing a poem a day. (Yesterday ~ even on a very grumpy day ~ I wrote my 4,141st poem in a row)

And so I offer you five pandemic poems and the inspiration behind each, for your entertainment:

1. March 27, 2020

TEXTING IN THESE STRANGE TIMES ~ a found poem 
by April Halprin Wayland

APRIL:
Hey, Tom! Are you up for a walk tomorrow?

If I met you at your house

and we drove separately

and stayed six feet apart?

And how about a third person,

Joyce? Would that be too much?

 (I would ask her to drive separately

and meet us at your house also.)

TOM:
Okay strange times.

Put this exchange in a time capsule.

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Inspiration: This is a word for word text conversation with my friend Tom. We ultimately didn't walk...times had changed by the time Tom read my text. (At least an hour had gone by.)
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2. April 4, 2020

LOVING MAMA-MADE MASK ~ a semi-found poem
by April Halprin Wayland

Waves of

hand marbled fabric:

 

three layers, mostly cotton—

reusable, washable,

 

to brighten your day.

Line dry.

 

The scare will pass.

And we'll all have masks.
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Inspiration: My friend Tom in the first poem has a wife named JoAnn who mailed us two beautiful masks with a note. I gleaned it for words around which to form a poem.  I did add words, though, so technically it's not a Found Poem.

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3. May 9, 2020

ZOOM ~ in four words 
by April Halprin Wayland

Drapes drawn

pearls on
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Inspiration: When I started Zooming, the only place in our house with appropriate lighting was a tiny corner of my office in front of a bookshelf, with the drapes drawn, a floor lamp on one side and the overhead light on. Also, of course pearls!
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4. May 21, 2020 

POEM-MAKING
(previously published in this post, its 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.
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Inspiration:

That day I wanted to write an In One Word Poem. I choose a word that had become tiresome: VIRTUAL.

Below are the 18 words I decided to play with from the 65 words offered by Wordmaker. I used the six of these:  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.
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5. July 19, 2021

TIP  
by April Halprin Wayland

Hey, little girl,

let the day unfurl

like a light-weight blanket.

At the close of day,

be sure

and thank it.
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Inspiration: I believe I heard the words "let the day unfurl" in a morning meditation on Insight Timer
====================
poems © 2021 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved

So. 

I've inadvertently ended on a note of hope. Oh, well. I tried to stay grumpy. You've gotta give me points for that.

One more thing: if you know anyone who's interested in taking my 10-week course, Picture Book 1 through the UCLA Extension Writers' Program, please tell them to sign up now...this class is limited to 15 students.

Thank you for stopping by today, Campers!

Many thanks to Christie for hosting this week's PF
at Wondering and Wandering

posted with a teeny tiny bit of hope and a bushel of love by April Halprin Wayland while Eli rests on top of his two favorite toys (the blue one is our kitty's)

Poem That Changes Everything

Howdy Campers, and Happy Poetry Friday! (The link to PF is below).

Today I'm sharing a recent post from author/poet Alison McGhee's glorious blog...a poem that will change everything for you. 

I promise.

I subscribe to Alison's blog; each poem she chooses floats into my inbox as Poem of the Week. The gift is not only Alison's choice of poems, but her short intros to each poem, which are as gorgeous as the poems she chooses:

Here's the link to the poem she sent May 29, 2021--do click on it...her brief intros are definitely worth reading. But here's the poem if you can't click:

IF THE MOON CAME OUT ONLY ONCE A MONTH
by Cathy Ross

If the moon came out only once a month
people would appreciate it more. They’d mark it
in their datebooks, take a walk by moonlight, notice
how their bedroom window framed its silver smile.
And if the moon came out just once a year,
it would be a holiday, with tinsel streamers
tied to lampposts, stores closing early
so no one has to work on lunar eve,
travelers rushing to get home by moon-night,
celebrations with champagne and cheese.
Folks would stay awake ’til dawn
to watch it turn transparent and slowly fade away.
And if the moon came out randomly,
the world would be on wide alert, never knowing
when it might appear, spotters scanning empty skies,
weathermen on TV giving odds—“a 10% chance
of moon tonight”—and when it suddenly began to rise,
everyone would cry “the moon is out,” crowds
would fill the streets, jostling and pointing,
night events would be canceled,
moon-closure signs posted on the doors.
And if the moon rose but once a century,
ascending luminous and lush on a long-awaited night,
all humans on the planet would gather
in huddled, whispering groups
to stare in awe, dazzled by its brilliance,
enchanted by its spell. Years later,
they would tell their children, “Yes, I saw it once.
Maybe you will live to see it too.”
But the moon is always with us,
an old familiar face, like the mantel clock,
so no one pays it much attention.
Tonight
why not go outside and gaze up in wonder,
as if you’d never seen it before,
as if it were a miracle,
as if you had been waiting
all your life.

For more information on Cathy Ross, check out her website.

I imitated this poem, choosing my own subject, playing it out, as Cathy Ross did. Amazing. Try it!

from pixabay

Carol's hosting today at Carol's Corner

Posted with love by April Halprin Wayland

3 Poems: Revise, Change, Break the Rules!

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Howdy, Campers, and Happy Poetry Friday! (see link at the end)

Before I forget, if you live near Los Angeles, author/illustrator Barney Saltzberg, author Alexis O'Neill and I are once again teaching our one day class at UCLA, Writing a Picture Book and Getting it Published on March 7, 2020.

This class is always a kick and a half.  I hope to see some of you there!

Today is TeachingAuthors final post on "Revisioning 20/20"...and, as usual, we're all looking at this through a different pair of glasses. Bobbi introduces the topic in a post called Unsinkable, Carmela's brings in author Shirin Shamsi for A Wednesday Writing Workout called Befriending the  Revision Monster,  Mary Ann's is Revision: Re-learning to See, Esther's is One Writer's Rx for Achieving 20/20 Vision in 2020!, Gwendolyn's is Revising My Writing Life, Carmela's is called Celebrating Post #1300 and Revision as Re-Seeing, and Esther brings us debut author Mary Sandford in A Wednesday Writing Workout called Seven Ways to Beat Writer's Block.

Today, for your listening pleasure, I will post three poems.

Please give a warm welcome to Poem #1, on REVISION (previously posted here in 2009):

A WRITER ON HALLOWEEN

by April Halprin Wayland

I push open

the heavy door.
I take out the cleaver, the machete,

the switchblade, the scalpel, the penknife,

the X-acto knife.

I plunge my arm into the oily black pile of drafts

and haul one out.

And though it screams a thousand deaths,

I stab it over and over and over with the cleaver,

hacking it in two.

Then I amputate.

I sever. I cut.

I carve.  I slice.

Finally,

I mince words.

I take a breath and step back to admire my bloody work.

Then…I drop it back into the oily depths,

pack away the knives,

wipe the black spots off my desk

and leave.

I close the heavy door.

I will come back.

Tomorrow.

To do it all

again.

Egad! That's a grim one. If my poems have been edited (that poem needs to be even shorter!), I've changed, too. Though it still scares the bejeebers out of me, I don't see revision as quite as grisly these days. My writing (my life) will never be perfect. 

And speaking of being scared, Poem #2, a poem about working with Play Doh, is about the fear of being edited. (For a nonfiction poem and my Play Doh related editing exercise, click here):

CHANGE

by April Halprin Wayland

I pinch a pink pig,

gash a green grape,

coil a coral curl,

roll a red rope,

bend a blue bow,

swerve a cyan swan,

then share what I make!

But...

hey, don't change that!

No pig wears a hat!

No swan puts rouge on!

Oh, wait—that's a squid.

I like

what you did.

In proposing this topic, Carmela brought a thread of tweets from Debbie Ridpath Ohi to our attention. One says: “I'm a big believer in stepping out of one's comfort zone on a regular basis to avoid complacency & getting into a rut. I may fail spectacularly (& have) but picking myself up & persevering makes me stronger. If I succeed, my comfort zone's a wee bit bigger.”

Well!  That sounds good!  To me, getting out of a rut means breaking the rules! This year I am becoming aware of all the rules I lock into my life...and I'm ditching some of them.

photo by stevesphar from pixabay

And so we come to our final poem, Poem #3:

GARDEN RULES

by April Halprin Wayland

She wants one of those adorable gardens

with straight mounds of earth labeled

carrots, radishes, peas.

She wishes her grandmother had made a video

explaining how, exactly, you're supposed to tamp down

all these leaves, sticks, clods, roots flat as a tabletop.

Who knows the garden rules?

What ifshe does it wrong?

drawings and poems © 2020 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved

Thank you, Linda of TeacherDance for hosting Poetry Friday!

posted with love and a little help from Eli (my dog), Penny and Gin (our son and soon-to-be-daughter-in-law's dogs), shown here:

3 Dogs in My Writing Room!

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Howdy, Campers, and Happy Poetry Friday!  (My poem and the link to PF is below.)

For a short and sunny summer read, we TeachingAuthors are posting the view from my / of my work space.  So far, Bobbi's shared summer windows and her animal editors , Mary Ann shared two rooms with a view...and coffee, Esther offered us picture book author Zakieh Mohammed's Wednesday Writing Workout, and then she shared a photo of the "one wonderous addition" from her summer windows.

If I turned around from my desk, I'd see Eli chewing on whatever toy he's chosen from his toy drawer...

...but usually I'm poeming, politicking and bouncing on the BOSU ball I stole from my husband years ago:

working at my desk, August 2013.
Photo by Jone MacCulloch
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This is Our Summer of Dogs. My son and his fiancee are overseas, so Eli's two "nieces," Penny (the smart, shy, territorial butterscotch and white 8-year-old) and Gin (the bouncy, licky black 9-month-old puppy whose sibling's name was Tonic), are staying with us. For six weeks.

Everyone has chosen a toy from Eli's toy drawer.

Since Jone took the photo of me on the Bosu ball above, I've turned my desk to face the wall. (I rescued the letters from a business that was changing its name.)

Three dogs has been an adjustment.

That's the understatement of the year. I know it's not the same as moving to another state, changing my name, or becoming an electrician. Still, it feels as if I'm working on a master's degree in walking three dogs and picking up more than one poop at a time.

THREE DOG WALK

by April Halprin Wayland

One dog is just one.

Him and me.

Hear me hum.

Two dogs are just fine.

Two dogs.

In two straight lines.

Three dogs?  My gosh—unstoppable!

Friends say they will strengthen me.                                                   (I say they are all adoptable!)

poem (c) 2019 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved.

Have a wonderful last whiff of summer or beginning of a new school year, Campers!

And thank you, Amy, for hosting Poetry Friday at The Poem Farm! 

This week, Amy's hosting a celebration of the life of Lee Bennett Hopkins; she invites everyone who wishes to share a poem inspired by or including a line from a LBH poem. Tag with #DearOneLBH.  

Stay tuned! TeachingAuthors will continue the appreciation
of Lee's poetry on September 20th.

posted by April Halprin Wayland, with the help of Eli, Penny and Gin, with love

MARJORY STONEMAN DOUGLAS ~an activist wow!

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Howdy, Campers and happy Poetry Friday!

The link to PF and my rough draft poems are below, along with a Poetry Challenge to you. I really want to read what you've written!

We TeachingAuthors are doing a round robin, of course, but first: Bobbi Miller has written a timely post about the power of students which you should not miss (it goes without saying, of course, that you shouldn't miss any of our delicious posts!)

Now it's time to leap into our Women's History Month extravaganza. First is Carmela's Women's History Month Sonnet (the first she's ever written!), then Esther offers an explosion of resources on women's history as well as a top ten books list about powerful, creative women.

What woman in history could I write a poem about? My subject was hiding in plain sight.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas was an environmentalist, author, journalist, feminist, civil rights defender for whom the now-famous Parkland, Florida high school was named.

(Note: all quotes are from this Wikipedia article, which is particularly well written.)

Born in 1890, Marjory changed the state of Florida. Her book "The Everglades: River of Grass was published in 1947 and sold out of its first printing in a month. The book's first line, 'There are no other Everglades in the world', has been called the 'most famous passage ever written about the Everglades'...It "galvanized people...[and] has been compared to Rachel Carson's 1962 exposé of the harmful effects of DDT, Silent Spring; both books are 'groundbreaking calls to action that made citizens and politicians take notice' [and]'remains the definitive reference on the plight of the Florida Everglades.'"

"Mrs. Douglas was half the size of her fellow speakers [5'2”, 100 lbs] and she wore huge dark glasses, which along with the huge floppy hat made her look like Scarlett O'Hara as played by Igor Stravinsky"

"At the age of 79...Douglas founded Friends of the Everglades to protest the construction of a jetport in the Big Cypress portion of the Everglades. She justified her involvement saying, 'It is a woman's business to be interested in the environment. It's an extended form of housekeeping.'"

What a tireless, funny, cunning, strong-willed woman!  Of course there should be a high school named after her! 

Here are rough drafts of two poems about her. The first I wrote before I had read very much about her. The second was written after I had read more and was zinging with excitement. But I was also overwhelmed; there was too much wrap my arms around!

I have new respect for those of you who unwrap layers of  history to make it concise, exciting, lyrical and accessible. How do you non-fiction writers DO it?!?! 

I don't have much distance from either poem...which works best for you?

MARJORY STONEMAN DOUGLAS
by April Halprin Wayland

This building

this hallway

we crouched there

in darkness

we fled it

in terror

this woman

before us

was gutsy

courageous

our candles

are lit by

her insight,

her fire.

MARJORY STONEMAN DOUGLAS ~ In Defense Of The Everglades

a found poem
by April Halprin Wayland

5 feet 2

huge dark glasses

huge floppy hat

quirky

independent

with a tongue like a switchblade 

she was not impressed

Can't you boo any louder?

everybody stopped slapping mosquitoes...

nobody can stop me

And

nobody did.

.............................................................................................
poems © 2018 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved

Marjory Stoneman Douglas

Don't you just know Marjory would be proud of the students who are stepping up and speaking out?

Here's my challenge to you, dear Readers: read the Wikipedia article (and/or other sources) and write your own poem about her...then share it in our comments. I really want to read what you come up with!

PS: Consider joining KidLit Marches for Kids on March 24th. Here's the Publishers Weekly article about this organization.

And thank you for hosting PF on TeacherDance, Linda!

Rekindling the Flame

  No one has followed our current blog series on starting a writing career or jump starting an old one with more interest than I.  In my case, the jump-start part.

  How appropriate, because this morning, I have a bad case of the Blogger Blahs.  Symptoms: feeling as if you have already said everything you had to say on a subject. Inability to focus on topic at hand.
Need for many. many cups of coffee. Sudden urge to clean office. (I never have an "urge" to clean, unless I am avoiding doing something else.)

 I've written my whole life. That's a long, long time. A long time to stay in love with a career that often doesn't love you back.

 I had about thrown in the towel with writing, when, at age 50, I sold my first book.  Suddenly the world was sunshine and roses. Every moment, every conversation, every observation was fraught with meaning. All of life was weaving itself into beautiful sentences and moments of serendipity...just so I, Mary Ann Rodman, could "use the moment" in a story.

Some ego, huh?

This fizzy, light-headed feeling reminded me of ...what? The desire to share every single last thought in writing was just like...oh yeah! It was just like falling in love!  I remember my first serious boyfriend, a guy who considered conversation a worthy way to spend an evening. (Fortunately, so did I.) We'd talk for hours, no story too insignificant, no detail to small to share, parse, consider. Seven hours talking could fly in an instant.

Winning the Zolotow Award for My Best Friend

That was exactly how I felt when I fell in love (again) with writing. With the validation of a book sale, this thing that I had done for decades now seemed sparkly fresh.  I had new-found confidence in my abilities. I could sit down at my desk and the next thing I knew it was six hours later. Not only six hours later, but with pages of new work to show for it.

And I sold books and sold books and sold books.

Such a lovely world.

But just as Real Life can follow a fairytale wedding, Real Life reared its dull, boring head in my post-publication life.  The best description of how I felt comes from one of my favorite books, Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh.

         ...it was hard for her to think. The thoughts came slowly, as though they had to squeeze through a tiny door to get to her..."

When you write on a regular basis (and not just the occasional weekend or vacation), sometimes those words won't come. And when they do come, you don't like them. They don't sparkle and shine the way they did when you were first in love. Perfectly good solid words...but the magic is gone.

The disappearance of "the magic" (or the giddiness of new love) does not mean you can no longer write, and more than noticing that your significant other leaves underwear on the floor means you are headed for divorce court.  It means the miracle has become mundane. Mundane can get on your nerves. Mundane can turn your technicolor world into shades of oatmeal.

Mundane, however, is not fatal.

Where has "the magic" gone? Not very far. It's up to you to re-discover it, relish it, allow it to amaze you again. Take time to re-kindle that love of words and turn of phrase that once sent you into Outer Orbit.

The re-kindling process is different for each one of us. Working with young writers in my summer camps always gets my motor running again. Speaking to them of writing in an enthusiastic way, forces me to act out an enthusiasm I may not feel first thing in the morning. By afternoon my creative cup always runneth over.

Changing up the same old same old also works.  I listen to different music, read different genres than I usually do.  I'll hang out in the International Section of the supermarket. I am not a cook, but finding unfamiliar foods and implements sends my brain down unfamiliar paths. (The path were I actually cook something is still unexplored.)

I also have a feeling that our latest Book Giveaway, The Magic Words by Cheryl Klein, might just be part of my own re-kindling process.  Click on link for details and deadlines, as well as the Rafflecopter entry link.

As for myself, I think I'll turn my car radio from On Broadway to All-Bluegrass-All-the-Time as I head over to the library to pick up a copy of Tess of the d'Urbevilles. Time to shake off that long time indifference to British literature and banjos. Maybe I'll find The Magic again.

Posted by Mary Ann Rodman