Poetry Friday

A poem about courage seems appropriate this morning, as I get ready my manuscripts to head to the Big Sur writing workshop. I think I'll print it out and mull over it while I'm there.

I Would Like to Describe
by Zbigniew Herbert
Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott


I would like to describe the simplest emotion
joy or sadness
but not as others do
reaching for shafts of rain or sun

Read the rest of the poem here.

Poetry for Children is hosting the Roundup today.

Weekends

Last weekend was filled with kid-related activities: parent-teacher conferences, a Tae Kwon Do tournament, a solo with the church children's choir. Each event brought about observations and thoughts that can fill a week's worth of blog entries, if not more.

But this weekend, I am leaving the kids with Super Dad. I'm off to a writing retreat, my first ever, at a Chautauqua site. It's the Big Sur Writing Workshop headed by Uberagent Andrea Brown. I look forward to learning from the faculty assembled as well as the attendees. I just hope my mind is focus and open enough and my skin thick enough to get the most out of the weekend.

Wish me courage!

I voted

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: The End

I finished the book a few days ago and have been moping since. The night after I finished reading, I couldn't bring myself to start another book. I watched the news instead: nothing like an overdose of rhetoric and posturing to get my mind off Edgar's world. I don't know if it will become a classic, as Oprah's magazine says, but it's one book that I won't forget.

The ending is tender and moving. The one aspect that I absolutely needed was there--thank goodness or I'll be moping even more--but it's still tragic.

The reader in me is utterly satisfied with the book. The writer in me is still trying to figure out what makes it work. As I mentioned in earlier reports on the book, it goes against quite a few of the writerly advice that is bantered about in writerly circles. Yet it made big, and deservedly so.

The only conclusion I come to is this: break all the rules you want, but you must be able to hold on to your readers. If your writing is good enough, than none of the rules matter.

It really is all about the writing.

If you're interested in my other reports on The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, here they are:

1. This one is from when I started reading it.
   
2. Here is the first update, with some favorite quotes.
3. A day later, I read the part that made me go WHOA!
4. In this one, I rant a bit.

Book Review: The Willoughbys

The Willoughbys
by
Lois Lowry

My first Lois Lowry book is The Giver. Based on the book, I constructed an image of the author: serious, contemplative, deep. Recently I picked up her newest book, The Willoughbys, which, according to the cover, was "Nefariously Written & Ignominiously Illustrated by the Author." Hmmm. Is this the same Lois Lowry? The backcover assures me it is. I turn once again to the front cover. If illustrations can wink and nudge, then this one is nudging and winking like a 8-year old boy trying to conceal his prank. The old-fashioned black and white drawing gives the impression of being perfectly symmetrical, and therefore very proper, but it isn't. The illustrator is obviously having fun and waiting with a gotcha!

Which preconception should I trust: the one from reading The Giver, or the one from the cover?

Turns out you can judge a book by its cover.

Lois Lowry wrote this book with her tongue firmly planted in her cheek.(That image, combined with the author-blurb on the jacket flap: "...reclusive old woman who sits hunched over her desk thinking obsessively about the placement of commas" makes a striking figure, doesn't it? )She must have had great fun writing the ridiculous: four characters named Barnaby, people pretending to be furniture, and quasi-German "Mein muesli ist dischgusting. It makesch me vant to womit." Fun! Fun! Fun!

But the book is also filled with macabre details. Children as orphans is a time-honored theme in children's books, from Anne of Green Gables to the Boxcar Children to the might-as-well-be-orphans Penderwicks and Cassons in Hilary McKay's series. But seldom are there parents who want to rid themselves of children by leaving and selling the house while the children still live in it, or a mother who forgets her children's names and would rather knit for the cat, or another mother who sends her young son off to a solitary journey. Wouldn't children be scared? Wouldn't they feel insecure? Shouldn't we include this book as Halloween book for its scare factor?

Lowry masterfully balances the gruesome with a breezy style of writing that says, "Don't worry, it's all for laughs. Nothing bad will happen to these children, at least not for long." Besides, these dark possibilities are so over the top, only the most literal and timid child would not see past them to the humor behind.

Speaking of mastery, something else Lowry does makes this a delightful read. She sets up expectations that makes you think you know exactly how they will be fulfilled and then wheem! (Wham! implies a loud impact, a big whack on the side of the head. Wheem! does the same thing except softer, and the head doesn't hurt quite as much) she comes up with a totally unexpected answer. For example, when Jane, one of the Willoughby siblings, says there is a bad word here:

"You old fart...Good riddance to you both."

We all think we know which word. But then she continues, "Riddance is a very bad word and I won't ever say it again."

Here is another example. When Commander Melanoff decides to name his new candy after his little girl, Ruth, we are sure we recognize where it's going. Many pages later, we find out he's named the candy bar Little Ruthie.

And that is what parody does. It takes something familiar to both author and reader (or stand-up comic and audience) and skews it in a way that makes it funny and thought-provoking. The fine line between what works brilliantly and what simply annoys is not only hard to define but is different from one person to the next and even the best of 'em can miss the mark. Lowry doesn't in this book. She pokes fun at story-book conventions, and maybe even a little life conventions, and succeeds. It is a book that my children and I both enjoyed immensely.

Poetry Friday

I didn't set out to look for poems with big words. I was searching for one that talks about attitudes, and how they can shape our experiences. And there it was, pusillanimous hanging out with the other words so comfortably as though it were just another word like "ready " and "bread."

Cheerfulness Taught By Reason
by
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I think we are too ready with complaint
In this fair world of God's. Had we no hope
Indeed beyond the zenith and the slope
Of yon gray blank of sky, we might grow faint
To muse upon eternity's constraint
Round our aspirant souls; but since the scope
Must widen early, is it well to droop,
For a few days consumed in loss and taint ?
O pusillanimous Heart, be comforted
And, like a cheerful traveller, take the road
Singing beside the hedge. What if the bread
Be bitter in thine inn, and thou unshod
To meet the flints ? At least it may be said
'Because the way is short, I thank thee, God.'

Big A little a is hosting Poetry Friday Roundup this week.

Promoting your book

Nathan Bransford's blog is one that I read frequently. Recently, guest blogger Michelle Moran, acclaimed and bestselling author of NEFERTITI, and THE HERETIC QUEEN, wrote two posts on ways to promote a book.

After reading her posts, I want to go out and do some of her suggestions: I'll produce a book trailer! I'll write music to go with the book! I'll check out AuthorBuzz! But wait, I don't have a book published yet.

Guess it's time to go back to writing and editing and pulling teeth and checking in with my imagination and shushing / pleading for help from my inner editor and rejoicing and puzzling and wondering...

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: yet another update

This post is for people who've already read the book because I can't avoid giving away pertinent plot points.

Spoiler alert

When Edgar ran away I almost couldn't read on. Even when I was very little, four or five, I never understood how any kid would consider running away. Where would they sleep, how would they bathe, what would they eat? And that picture I always conjured up: a little boy wearing overalls and a straw hat, carrying a stick with a small bundle wrapped in some handkerchief, always struck me being ridiculous and impractical. Reading about how Edgar and the three dogs trying to survive on their own made me worry. A sign of good fiction, I suppose, when a reader start worrying the survival of a fictitious character.

Here is a small complaint about the book. When Edgar finally realizes Almondine is his other and he misses her more than he misses his mom, I expected Edgar to turn around. But without explanation, he continues on in his journey. Nothing more is said about it. That bugs me a little.

But the thing that bugs me the most is when Edgar finally comes home and the author doesn't let boy and dog re-unite. Bad, bad David Wroblewski! That chapter in Almondine's viewpoint: how poignant, and how different from the first chapter in her POV. That's the only time I've cried in this book.

And evil Claude. If I had hackles, they were definitely raised when I read that chapter in which he so smoothly manipulates Glen, who is grieving his father's death and so very gullible. Claude has to pay, and pay good.