Mindful Swimming

The Mindful Writer is Dinty Moore’s elegant new guide to writing, based in part on his explorations of Buddhism’s core teachings, as well as on his experience as a writer whose work has appeared in such magazines as Harper’s, the New York Times Magazine, Utne Reader, the Gettysburg Review, and Arts & Letters.

In the afterword, Moore, director of creative writing at Ohio University, shares a story that he heard about the way Andre Dubus finished his daily writing sessions.

When Dubus reached the end of the session, Moore tells the reader, it’s said that Dubus noted the number of words that he wrote that day, and, following the number, he wrote two more words: “thank you.”

It’s the kind of story that echos the reader’s gratitude to Moore throughout this book because of the wealth of wisdom about the writing process that he offers on each page. 

“The message,” as Moore writes, “is simple enough:”

First, don’t grasp too hard or you will choke off any creativity.

Second, be open to the moment, the surprise, the gift of grace, or enlightenment. 

If you are not mindful, not attentive, you will fall victim to the first and fail to recognize the second. So be alert. Be deliberate. Take care.

Indeed, the entire book is a reminder to writers of the need to be mindful, not just on the page but in our daily lives.

“In the context of our writing," Moore suggests, "mindfulness means that at those moments when you are focusing on an elusive line of poetry or a stubborn plot obstacle in a story, you are able to remain attentive to the task at hand, seeing the words that are before you, hearing the possibilities in your mind, not succumbing to the thousands of other willing and ready distractions.

“More than that, mindfulness means being aware of why you want to write, who you are writing for, and how to balance your desires for recognition with the demands of clear-headedness and honesty.

“Finally, mindfulness includes a conscientious and thorough consideration of who you are as a writer, where you are in your life, what you are feeling, and what is inside of you that wants (or needs) to be written.”

Moore includes inspiring and thought-provoking quotes as writing prompts for his own meditations on various aspects of writing. You can turn to any page at random and discover a nugget of wisdom, either Moore's own insights or those of another writer, such as:

"Writing is hard, yes. There are days, in fact, when it will seem too difficult to continue, when language and words and ideas will seem to have formed into a sort of cement just moments away from becoming solid, impenetrable. There is no way you can work with that inflexible substance. And yet you do." (p. 30)

“In the stories we tell ourselves, we tell ourselves.” - Michael Martone (p. 42)

“As a teacher, I am often instructing my students to let go of the tight grasp they have on their work, to release the iron-grip of control. The poem wants to go where the poem wants to go, not where you want to take it, I tell them.” (p. 75)

“How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” E.M. Forster (p. 103)

Moore, whose books include The Accidental Buddhist: Mindfulness, Enlightenment, and Sitting Still, has written a guide that will inspire writers to keep writing as we struggle to find words and stories.

And my guess is that The Mindful Writer will remind us to offer a note of gratitude each time we reach the end of our writing sessions, having discovered words on the page that we never saw before.

(Word count: 540) Thank you.

For more information about Dinty Moore and The Mindful Writer, as well as his other work, visit:
http://dintywmoore.com/2011/books/the-mindful-writer/

Weaving Magic

Have you noticed how the voices of Southern writers weave a kind of magic spell over readers?

You can feel that magic throughout the pages of Augusta Scattergood's first novel, Glory Be, as she weaves her spell with the sweet sounds of a Southern dialect, an unerring eye for details, and heartfelt compassion for her main character, Gloriana June Hemphill, who is struggling to learn how to be true to herself in a world that seems to be changing so fast that the truth is sometimes difficult to discern.

The story is set in Hanging Moss, Mississippi during the summer of 1964. Every year Glory celebrates her birthday on July 4th with a party at the public pool, but this summer the pool has been shut down to avoid integration.

Not only does her friend Frankie betray her, but her older sister, Jesslyn, is no longer her best friend now that she’s discovered boys, and Glory's new friendship with a girl from Ohio places Glory under suspicion that she’s helping the troublemakers from up north.

These are just some of the challenges that propel the plot as Glory tries to figure out a way to re-open the pool so she can celebrate her birthday as she always has in the past. But the present, she realizes, is changing, and she has to decide how she feels about the changes as her birthday approaches and the story unfolds.

Here’s an example of Scattergood's magical voice from the book's opening page:

Franklin Cletus Smith has been my best friend since we hunted doodlebugs together in my backyard. Some people call him Frankfurter ‘cause he’s got hair the color of a hot dog. I call him Frankie. I squinted down the sidewalk, and finally here he came, dragging his towel with his bathing suit hiked way up.

"It’s a million degrees out here. I’ve been waiting forever."

“Well, hey to you, too, Glory,” he said.

There’s an assurance to this voice, a deep knowing which this voice conveys to the reader. It's a voice that belongs to a tradition of Southern voices, and you can sense the assurance and confidence of this voice right from the start of the story.

Part of what gives this voice its Southern charm and magic, I think, are words like “doodlebugs” and “hair the color of a hot dog,” and the way Glory describes the day (“It’s a million degrees out here. I’ve been waiting forever.”) and the way Frankie responds (“Well, hey to you, too, Glory.”). The phrasing, the way Glory shares her life with the reader, is what sets the reader firmly inside Glory's world and heart.

Here's another sample:

After supper, Laura and me sat on the back steps listening to the crickets start up. You could about catch a lightning bug by holding your hand out. Before we knew it, we were slapping mosquitoes and I had to turn on the stoop light to see real good.

And one more:

I took a deep breath, smelling the chlorine and the coconut suntan lotion, trying to remember hot dogs frying on the snack bar grill, and the lifeguards' whistles. I stood between Jesslyn and Laura with the warm sunshine beating down on my neck.

"You remember last July Fourth?" I asked Jesslyn. "The watermelon race? Me and you and Frankie and our cousins at my birthday party? And that cake you and Emma made me, shaped like a cat? Remember?" They weren't really questions I was asking Jesslyn. I just needed us to remember.

"I'm sorry, Glory," Laura said.

"I don't think the Pool Committee's worried about your birthday" was all Jesslyn said.

Here I was, sure that one little part of this town had changed. That maybe people like Frankie's daddy finally got together to decide opening the pool up for everybody, just in time for a Fourth of July celebration, was the kind of thing you should do on our country's birthday. But I was wrong. My thinking was all mixed up.

In the Author’s Note that you'll find at the end of the story, Scattergood writes:

There’s a saying that “Mississippi grows storytellers.” I was raised with stories told around the Sunday dinner table. Most nights, my grandmother dreamed up new bedtime tales for us. English teachers and librarians introduced me to the very high bar set by my state’s great literary heritage. Since I was old enough to listen, I’ve been hearing Mississippi in my head. This is one story I needed to share.

Thanks to Scattergood’s gift, we can hear Mississippi in our head, too.

For more information about Glory Be, visit: http://www.augustascattergood.com/books/bk_glory.html

And for more info on Augusta Scattergood, visit her website: http://www.augustascattergood.com/

and her blog: http://ascattergood.blogspot.com/

.

Swimming Through Heartache

The poems that appear in Eloise Greenfield’s The Great Migration: Journey to the North (illustrated by Jay Spivey Gilchrist) strike the chords of heartache and dislocation, exploring the lives of African-Americans as they struggle to make the journey from the South into the unknown Up North.

Greenfield writes about the thousands who risked their lives to make a better life for themselves and their families. They boarded trains or drove beaten-up old cars or walked, leaving the only homes they knew, and took the long journey northward, their bags filled with their belongings, their hearts filled with their hopes and dreams.

Here's how Greenfield describes a man preparing to leave home:

Saying goodbye to the land
puts a pain on my heart.
I stand here looking at the green
growing all around me,
and I am sad.
But I keep hearing about this
better life waiting for me,
hundreds of miles away,
and I know I’ve got to go.
Hope my old car can make it
that far.

The words are simple but the emotions that they convey to the reader are profound, inviting the reader into the emotional landscape of this man’s life.

What’s striking is how this man’s hopes, dreams, and fears carry the echoes of the hopes, dreams, and fears that my grandparents held as they left Poland and Russia for America, and that someone’s mother might have held as she left Ireland or France or any other country for America ... or which someone's father might feel leaving a country today torn by war (or persecution or discrimination) for a haven free from strife and heartache.

Greenfield describes a woman about to depart:

I can’t wait to get away.
I never want to see this town
again. Goodbye, town. Goodbye,
work all day for almost no pay,
enemy cotton fields, trying
to break my back, my spirit.
Goodbye, crazy signs, telling me
where I can go, what I can do.
I hear that train whistling
my name. Don’t worry, train,
I’m ready. When you pull
into the station, my bags and I
will be there.

In this description, Greenfield offers the reader another perspective, one with determination, fierce pride, and a stubborn will to leave behind the South and the suffering of the past, while using the language of every day, so striking in its ordinariness, to create an elegant poem of heartbreak and loss, hope and love.

Greenfield captures the rhythms of these journeys, the acts of bidding farewell to the familiar, the long train ride north, the doubts and questions that arise in the night as the train keeps moving (Will I make a good life/for my family,/ for myself?/ The wheels are singing,/ “Yes, you will,/ you will, you will!”), and the excitement of the arrival Up North.

It all adds up to a book of poems (with illustrations by Jan Spivey Gilchrist as profound as the poems they illustrate) that children and adults will treasure not only for the history it shares but for the soul music that Greenfield draws out of the words on every page.

For more information about the Greenfield and Gilchrist, visit:
http://www.harpercollins.com/authors/12162/Eloise_Greenfield/index.aspx
http://www.harpercollins.com/authors/12132/Jan_Spivey_Gilchrist/index.aspx

And to read more about the book, visit:
http://www.amazon.com/Great-Migration-Journey-North/dp/0061259217

Skating on Thin Ice

In Pat Hughes' YA novel, Open Ice, star hockey player Nick Taglio takes a hard hit from behind during one of his high school games and struggles to come to terms with what a grade-three concussion may mean for his future on the ice.

It isn’t Nick's first severe injury. He’s had concussions before. But each one, his doctor explains, takes a little more time and rest to recover from, and this time Dr. Blakeman warns Nick that he may not be able to return to the ice:

“With each successive head injury, the brain takes it a little more personally. It’s as if the brain is saying, ‘Listen, pal, I can’t take much more of this.’ Not only are you slower to recover, but each concussion puts you at greater risk of yet another concussion. You took a big hit Saturday–but a smaller hit might have produced the same results. Remember what happened with the November concussion? It was only rated a grade-two, but you had post-concussive symptoms weeks later. Each time, it takes less and less to compromise the patient’s neurologic function. And that’s why--”

Notice how Hughes uses dialogue here to convey information. But even though it's a mouthful, the doctor's words move the story forward in a dramatic way.

Hughes uses dialogue to advance the story on almost every page of this compelling novel. As you'll see below (in the continuation of the scene), Hughes writes the kind of dialogue that is crisp, crackles with conflict, and keeps increasing the tension:

“I can’t stop playing,” Nick interrupted.
“And I can’t make you stop.”
“But they can.” Nick tilted his head toward the door. “And they will, if you tell them. Can’t we just see how it goes in the next week or two?”
“Nick...”
“Lindros still plays, and he--” Nick cut himself off, but too late.
Blakeman jumped on it: “Lindros? This is a pretty dicey time for you to be bringing up Lindros.”
Eric Lindros was Nick’s favorite NHL player, famous for fighting, for scoring, for his head-down, bull-rush playing style... and for concussions.

Nick’s struggle to come to terms with his injury plays out in his relationships with his parents, his girlfriend, his brother, his teachers, his teammates, his doctor and his coach. No one is spared his anger or fear or disappointment, and it’s primarily through the use of dialogue, as in the above passage, that Hughes conveys Nick’s story.

It’s a story that spirals downward as the truth of Nick's predicament becomes clear to him and his mind refuses to clear and his anger (and the fog surrounding him) fails to lift and neither his doctor nor his parents permit him to return to the ice.

In the end there is only Nick’s grudging acceptance that he isn’t yet himself, but he takes comfort and hope from his hockey idol, Lindros, still playing after numerous concussions.

Nick may not be able to skate now. Or in two weeks. Or even two months. But by the time he’s eighteen, he hopes, he may have a chance of returning to the ice.

For now, he has to find pleasure in simply being able to put on his skates and swirl around the frozen pond near his home where he used to skate as a kid. It's a place that harbors memories of the game that he loved as a boy and still loves and hopes to play again:

He skated to the far end of the pond, collected the pucks and turned around. There was the whole empty pond, stretched out before him. Just like in the dream. No boards or lines or circles, no penalty boxes, no refs whistling, no fans screaming, no helmet echoes, nobody tap-tap-tapping their sticks looking for the pass. Nothing but...
“Open ice,” he said.
This was what he missed the most. Not the cheers, the chaos, the goals. But the speed, the exhilaration, the freedom.

For more information about Pat Hughes and Open Ice, check out: http://www.pathughesbooks.com/Pat_Hughes_Books/Home.html

For more information on using dialogue to move the story forward, visit:
http://writingunderpressure.wordpress.com/2011/01/12/you-talk-too-much-balancing-dialogue-and-narrative/
http://www.filmscriptwriting.com/anoverviewofdialogue.html
http://www.articlespan.com/article/188665/using-dialogue-to-move-the-story-forward
http://www.whythisisgood.com/?cat=62
http://www.alicekuipers.com/?page_id=249

Disarming the Plot Monster

On our beach walk this morning we were lucky to find Judy Irvin Kuns, the author of the middle grade novel, While You Were Out, (Dutton Children's Books), just coming out of the water.

She was kind enough to stop and share some thoughts on how she's learning to swim past what she calls the "plot monster."

Her guide? Jane Vandenburgh's Architecture of the Novel.

With any luck, Judy's thoughts on plot will help you swim past the plot monster, too:

As a child, I was certain there was something lurking under my bed at night--a big hairy beast of a thing--that was just waiting for an arm or a leg to dangle over the edge so it could snatch a limb and pull me under and I would never be seen again.

Today, that’s pretty much how I feel about plot. The only difference is that the plot monster doesn’t confine itself to the narrow space beneath my bed. The plot monster follows me everywhere I go.

So I decided to try and vanquish my dread and face the plot monster head on. I would read every book and article I could find on plot and I would disarm him once and for all. But my plan only managed to further confuse, confound and overwhelm me until I felt completely incapable of attempting even the briefest, simplest of stories.

Enter Jane Vandenburgh. With her casual tone and sense of humor, Vandenburgh immediately felt like someone I could trust. “We need only to think about plot in order to feel lost,” she says in her book, Architecture of the Novel.

Vandenburgh maintains that my story is not something I have to create. It already exits. It has chosen me, not the other way around. All I have to do is uncover it, expose it to the light, and I can do this by the simple act of writing scenes. That’s all. Just scenes. Oh joy! I can do that.

But wait. What about that oft repeated “rule” that says, in novel writing, the whole must be greater than the sum of its parts?

Vandenburgh assures us that we can learn the whole by creating the smallest of its parts.

And for right now, that’s enough. If it’s not meaningful yet, it will be when you make it that way. And you will do this only after observing all the other scenes you have written prior and subsequent to this particular one. Be patient. “Nothing will be as random as it might first appear.”

“There will always be a reason your story has asked you here,” she says, “as the scene contains something it needs for you to find.” I love the treasure hunt feel of this statement, not to mention the challenge put forth. All of a sudden it feels like a game rather than a chore. Reading this, I felt as if a huge weight had been lifted off of me and placed on the story itself.

So as your simple little scenes accumulate, they start bumping into each other and begin talking amongst themselves. Just leave them alone. They’re making their own plans.

And just when I felt I couldn’t get any giddier at the simple doableness of this, Vandenburgh adds, (in not so many words) oh and by the way, forget about any kind of organization. No chapters, no outline (“Keep the blueprints in the tube.”), no back story. Scenes only. And don’t try tucking memories into scenes, either. Memories are back story and back story is a plot concern. We’re not going there, remember? When a memory presents itself, just write it as a scene and worry about where it will go later. (I LOVE this woman.)

“Background, if ignored, will almost always take care of itself,” she says. Which sounds very similar to what one of my beloved Vermont College mentors, Brock Cole, told me so many years ago. “Take care of the small stuff and the big stuff will take care of itself.”

And as if all of this good news wasn’t enough, Vandenburgh explains that writing in scenes removes the need to explain things. But don’t think you can get away with just gazing at your scenes as if looking in through a window. Oh, no. You must “go to the door, turn the handle, open that door and step into your story.”

Exposed to the light and confronted by you advancing one scene at a time, the plot monster shrinks to a dust bunny.

For more information on Jane Vandenburgh, visit: http://janevandenburgh.com/about

And to learn more about Architecture of the Novel, take a look at: http://www.amazon.com/Architecture-Novel-Handbook-Jane-Vandenburgh/dp/1582435979

Judy Irvin Kuns is a graduate of the MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her first middle grade novel, While You Were Out, (Dutton Children's Books), was a Junior Library Guild Selection and winner of the Paterson Prize for Books for Young Readers. An excerpt of her middle grade novel, The Family of Things, was selected as a finalist in the Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adults and Children’s Writing sponsored by Hunger Mountain Journal of the Arts. She lives in Sandusky, Ohio.

Powerful Currents

The most compelling stories are the ones that pull us beneath the surface, draw readers into a powerful emotional current, offer a clear-sighted view into the deepest recesses of a character’s heart.

That’s the kind of first novel that Jo Knowles has written, exploring the ever-shifting boundary lines of friendship, sexuality, and identity with the precision and self-assuredness of a master novelist.

A dark, complex, emotional journey following in the tradition of work by Cormier, Lipsyte, and Coman, Knowles' Lessons from a Dead Girl is about friendship gone awry and how two troubled girls struggle, each in her own way, to find their own destiny.

Laine is pulled into a relationship with Leah, another girl her age, and their “friendship” tests Laine’s sense of self in ways that force her to question her identity–who is she, really?–and her own sexuality–is she gay or straight?–as well as whether Leah is truly the friend that she claims to be or a manipulative, spiteful girl too hurt by her own demons to know how much she’s hurting Laine.

Knowles’ eye is unfaltering as she probes each character’s heart, as in this passage:

Last year, someone left a note on my desk that said, Are you a boy or a girl? I put it in my pocket and waited to reread it when I got home. Alone in my room, I carefully unfolded the note, trying to touch it as little as possible. It was written in messy pencil on yellow lined paper. I stared at the words and cried.

And this:

“Thanks,” I say. I try to imagine Leah being caught in a lie, but I just can’t do it. Leah is the best liar ever. She told me once it was OK to lie as long as you asked God to forgive you right away afterward. Sometimes I thought I knew when she was lying because she’d pause for a minute and I thought maybe she was saying a quick, silent prayer.

And this:

“Oh, Laine. Come on. You don’t have to be afraid of me anymore.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” I lie. “I just think I should get back.”
And I don’t want to play your games.
“I think you’re afraid.”
“Why do you always do this?” I ask. I don’t know why I bother. I should just step off the gazebo and disappear.
“Do what?” she asks innocently.
“Act this way. Like you’re playing some game. Like you’re out to get me.” I pause as the familiar fear courses through me. My heart pounds so hard in my chest it hurts. But instead of running away, I take a deep breath. “Why do you hate me so much, Leah?”

The plot, part flashback, part circle, provides the reader with a kind of emotional security, even as that security is adroitly undermined each time Leah and Laine meet on the page and the powerful emotions between them pull the reader into the downward spiral of their relationship.

There are tragic consequences to friendships based on falsehood, as Laine discovers, but she learns, too, that friendship based on trust and mutual respect can sometimes lead to a deeper understanding of yourself and your life.

For more information about Knowles and her work, visit her website:
http://www.joknowles.com/

And to read a wordswimmer interview with Knowles, check out:
http://wordswimmer.blogspot.com/2008/04/one-writers-process-jo-knowles.html

Swimming Practice

“...perhaps the greatest pleasure of all is to put aside the striving and anxiety of ambition, if only for awhile, and to sit down to the blank page, clean and empty and inviting. And then you begin again.” -- Priscilla Long in The Writer's Portable Mentor

Priscilla Long’s new book on writing, The Writer’s Portable Mentor: A Guide to Art, Craft, and the Writing Life, deserves a place of honor on every writer’s bookshelf.

Long, a writing teacher who has published a wide range of essays, stories, and poetry in a variety of literary journals, shares insights into writing that will take your breath away.

By the time you’ve finished her book, you’ll know why a sentence might be better served as a complex rather than compound sentence, and why a story might benefit from a braid or collage structure rather than the more traditional dramatic story structure.

She covers practically every aspect of writing that you need to know in order to do your work. Chapters include suggestions for daily writing, working with language (gathering words, sound effects, repetition), training yourself to see (observing the here and now, observing persons, observing gesture), finding a structure (theme, collage, braid, dramatic), learning the art of constructing sentences and paragraphs (sentence craft, fragments, the phrase), and more.

You'll find examples of writing from Long's favorite works to reinforce many of her points, as well as a helpful chapter on revision, and a section on getting your work into the world.

The Writer’s Portable Mentor is an astonishing work, a master teacher's thoughts on how to write... and then on how to improve what you've written. Its depth and scope are breath-taking, and you'll find inspiring nuggets of wisdom along the way to inspire you as you explore the book's pages

Imagine taking a class with the kind of writing teacher every writer longs for.

Her name is Priscilla Long, she's collected her lessons in this book, and now she's waiting for you to sit down and join her.

For more information about Long and her work, visit:
http://www.priscillalong.com/

More Than Friends

This slim book of poems–More Than Friends: Poems from Him and Her by Sara Holbrook and Allan Wolf–may be short (it’s only 64 pages), but it offers the kind of original insights into young love that give the book the weight and significance that you’d expect in a novel three times its length.

On each page you’ll find poems that reveal the developing friendship between two teenagers (the Him and Her of the title) as their relationship progresses beyond friendship into new, unexpected territory.

Holbrook and Wolf reveal the beginning of that transition--from friends to something more--in a free-verse poem, “Veggie Panini Is the Answer to Everything”:

I don’t know what makes
two people “just friends” on Thursday
and “more than friends" on Friday.
But today was Friday.
The one-hundredth look
was different from the first ninety-nine.
Today’s “Hi” was different
from every “Hi” that came before.

Both Holbrook and Wolf are poets who have outgrown their teen years, yet they possess vivid emotional memories of what it’s like to be a teenager falling in and out of love with someone who, only moments earlier, was a friend.

Using poetic forms (including the couplet, tercet, quatrain, and refrain, as well as more complex structures: luc bat, poem for two voices, sonnet, tanka, terza rima, and vilanelle), the poets describe the many new, conflicting emotions of love: the longing for a partner; the loss of independence; the desire and pleasure of finding one’s self in the arms of another; and the sense, finally, of belonging.

In the tanka poem, “Phone Call," they share the frustration that Her and Him feel over no longer being able to hang out with old friends:

Her
No, no. I can’t go.
You-know-who is stopping by.
I’m supposed to wait.
Who knows? I can tell you this:
we’re not headed to the mall.

Him
Yo, Damon. What up?
You got tickets? ‘Course I’ll go!
No way would I miss–
Oh. No. Wait. I’ve got a... thing.
That’s cool. Y’all go ... without me.

In poem after poem, the authors strike emotional high and low notes with perfect pitch, showing readers the characters as they struggle to learn how to negotiate the subtle and not-so-subtle boundaries between longing and desire, and as they step back and forth over the ever-shifting line between fantasy and reality, friendship and love.

Part of that struggle involves each character trying to figure out who he or she is and who he or she is with another person while learning to trust that person. And part of that struggle involves discovering how things can go from great to... well, not-so-great... in the blink of an eye, as the authors show in this excerpt from the sonnet “I Thought That Things Were Really Going Great:”

You knew, from jump, that I’m no fashion plate.
Now suddenly you’re calling me a slob?
I thought that things were really going great.
You act like I’m applying for a job.
You want a full report when I’m not home.
The slightest misstep triggers your alarm.
While I admit my eyes do sometimes roam,
I look but I don’t touch, so what’s the harm?

These poems trace the arc of a friendship between a boy and girl that becomes something more than friendship and then, just as suddenly and inexplicably, flames out like a dying star, leaving both boy and girl (and readers) with a deeper understanding of love and the complexity--and unpredictability--of human nature.

For more information about Sara Holbrook, visit her website:
http://www.saraholbrook.com/

And check out Sara’s blog at http://saraholbrook.blogspot.com/

For more information about Allan Wolf, check out his website:
http://www.allanwolf.com/news.htm

or visit: http://www.loydartists.com/index.php?page=bio&display=21

A Taste of Honey

Naomi Shihab Nye's poetry and prose poems in Honeybee, her newest collection, will draw readers to the page as surely as bees are drawn to nectar to start the honey-making process.

From the moment Nye began studying the behavior of bees in a college linguistics course called “The Nature of Language," she found herself fascinated by the activity of bees.

“I buzzed about the campus for a happy semester, researching in farm journals and encyclopedias, writing strange, dramatic papers, hoping to be stung.”

And was she stung... to the point of becoming obsessed these many years later with the fate of bees today (which appears to be in danger, given the recent reports of drops in bee population).

“So, I’ve been obsessed,” writes Nye. “This is what happens in life. Something takes over your mind for a while and you see other things through a new filter, in a changed light. I call my friends 'honeybee' now, which I don’t recall doing before. If I see a lone bee hovering in a flower, I wish it well.”

Throughout this collection, with prose and poems interspersed, Nye shares her obsession with bees, building on themes of loss and change, and writing through that "new filter" about the things that are outside our control–like aging and death–and the things within our control–like war and pollution–and how we, like bees, may prove to be an endangered species if we don’t learn how to master the forces--like poverty, ignorance, prejudice, aggression, and blindness to the needs of others--at work to defeat us.

Here, in an excerpt from “Parents of Murdered Palestinian Boy Donate His Organs to Israelis,” is Nye at her best, sharing her feelings about how sharing and kindness can overcome hatred and grief:

Ahmed Ismail Khatib, you died,
but you have so many bodies now.
You became a much bigger boy.
You became a girl too–
your kidneys, your liver, your heart.
So many people needed what you had.

In a terrible moment,
your parents pressed against
spinning cycles of revenge
to do something better.
They stretched.
What can that say to the rest of us?

And here is another poem written with such powerful emotion that it touches the reader’s imagination with the force of an ice-pick shattering ice:

The Dirtiest 4-Letter Word

is “self” says the sign on a church
and I almost run off the road.

What about Kill? Hate? Rape?
Even “whip” sounds worse than “self”

or might we try “lies”? Now I remember why
Sunday School gave me a stomach ache.

What, you may ask, do these poems have to do with honeybees?

Nothing, and everything.

These poems are both valiant protest against a world intent on destroying the goodness and beauty contained within it, and, at the same time moving paeans to the beauty and potential sweetness contained in the world, if only we take the time to open our eyes to see it.

They warn of a world that we’re at great risk of losing, as well as a plea for its survival, lest we lose something that we can never regain.

Put another way, they're poignant reminders of the beauty around us that can disappear as quickly as the honeybee if we’re not protective of the riches that surround us and contribute to the richness of our lives.

Nye is a poet whose words are like the notes of a musical composition. Listen closely, and you can hear the music rise off the tip of your tongue and fill your mouth with the same sweetness and pure pleasure of honey.

If you take a moment to taste this collection, inhale its poems, and savor its prose, you'll see why poets like Nye are as valuable to us--and to the existence of our planet--as those precious honeybees.

For more reviews of Honeybee, visit:
http://kellyrfineman.livejournal.com/319999.html
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6536590.html?nid=2413&rid=
http://teenbookreview.wordpress.com/2008/03/23/review-honeybee-by-naomi-shihab-nye/
http://blaine.org/sevenimpossiblethings/?p=1301
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4063/is_/ai_n27997335

For more information about Nye, visit:
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/174

And to read her letter to a terrorist:
http://godlas.myweb.uga.edu/shihabnye.html

Lifeboat Dreams

At the start of Sherman Alexie’s remarkable YA novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Arnold Spirit, Jr.’s life is one of poverty and despair, and the 14-year-old has no expectations that his life will be any different than it’s been for his father or mother or grandmother or any of the other Native American Indians whose ancestors were imprisoned on reservations centuries ago.

This culture of despair isn’t the only obstacle that Junior has to overcome. He’s born with physical handicaps, too, and he’s viewed by his fellow Indians as “weak,” a “retard,” and describes himself as “the most available loser” who gets beaten up at least once a month.

So, Junior hangs out alone, and he draws cartoons and reads, two activities that give him a kind of freedom, even if it’s only in his imagination. Reading and drawing enable him to think of a different kind of life, a life of hope, and to dream that he might be important one day, if only he can escape the rez:

So I draw because I feel like it might be my only real chance to escape the reservation.

I think the world is a series of broken dams and floods, and my cartoons are tiny little lifeboats.

Junior desperately needs a lifeboat...because without dreams, he’s going to find himself drowning in the same cycle of despair that doomed his father and mother (who he knows once had dreams, too, when they were kids but who “never got the chance to be anything because nobody paid attention to their dreams.”) Poverty, Junior understands, “only teaches you how to be poor.”

The one glimmer of hope in his life, aside from his own tough spirit (it’s no accident that Alexie gives his character the surname Spirit), is his friend, Rowdy, who Junior can depend on to protect him if he needs protection... and who he can share his dreams with knowing his best friend won’t laugh at him just for dreaming.

Life would have gone on for Junior in the way it’s gone on for years, except that on the first day of high school he opens the textbook that the teacher gives him and finds his mother’s name in it–his mother’s name–and his anger over having to live a life of poverty (that forces his class to use the same textbooks that his mother’s class used) erupts in an unexpected way:

And let me tell you, that old, old, old, decrepit geometry book hit my heart with the force of a nuclear bomb. My hopes and dreams floated up in a mushroom cloud. What do you do when the world has declared nuclear war on you?

In anger Junior throws the book... and it smashes his teacher, Mr. P, in the face... which gets Junior suspended from school.

But that act of anger initiates a chain of events that takes Junior out of poverty... because with Mr. P’s encouragement to leave the rez Junior decides he wants to flee the poverty and hopelessness of the rez and his loser status and transfer to a new school twenty two miles away in a rich, white farm town.

It’s in Reardon where Junior falls in love with a white girl and makes the varsity basketball team and... well... manages to begin living his dreams, even if his friend, Rowdy, and the other Indians on the rez don’t understand his decision to leave the only home that they know. It’s a decision that Junior almost regrets when Rowdy and his friends turn against him, treating him as if he had become an “apple,” a traitor, red on the outside, white on the inside.

Not only does his best friend become his worst enemy, but Junior feels like “two different people living inside one body.” It’s the loneliest time of his life, and he feels less and less like an Indian. But at the same time he learns that he’s smarter than most of his white classmates... and begins to see himself doing something courageous, just like his sister when she runs away from the rez to get married:

I thought we were being warriors, you know? And a warrior isn’t afraid of confrontation.

After a series of unexpected deaths–his sister’s, his father’s best friend’s, his grandmother’s –Junior reaches an emotional low point. Only after grieving in his own way–a kind of personal ceremony that he creates for himself making lists of people and things that give him hope–does he gain the insight that he needs to keep going.

In the end, Junior develops the confidence that he needs to carve his own path, though not before feeling the shame of defeating his best friend on the court–Reardon beats Wellpinit by 40 points, and Junior shuts down Rowdy–and having to deal with feeling “like one of those Indian scouts who led the U.S. cavalry against other Indians.”

This is an amazing story, not just because Junior finds hope in a nearly hopeless situation, but because of the way Alexie portrays Junior's internal struggle for self-respect and shows readers what Junior comes to discover as a result of this struggle: beneath different skin colors, everyone shares similar hopes and dreams.

For more information about Sherman Alexie, visit his website: http://www.fallsapart.com/

An Exquisite Light

The late-afternoon light on the Gulf of Mexico is often so intense its reflection can blind you with a white, impenetrable glare.

Most of the time the light hits the blue-green water obliquely, sparkling like trails of glimmering jewels behind the gentle waves and hiding what's beneath the surface.

But, on rare occasions, you can witness a kind of miracle: an exquisite light striking the water at a magical angle and revealing simultaneously what's on the surface and what's hidden beneath.

That's the kind of light Sarah Lamstein directs onto the pages of her novel, Hunger Moon, a deeply moving story about 12-year-old Ruthie and her struggle to make sense of life amidst a family burdened by her younger brother's "slowness" and her parents' growing frustration with the challenges of caring for such a child while struggling to live on the meager income from the family's bookstore.

What Lamstein does in this novel is quite astonishing... showing both the surface of Ruthie's world and its hidden depths simultaneously.

Here's one example:

After dinner, I help Dad do dishes. He washes. I dry. Just the two of us, which makes me start telling my news of the day about spelling the states and starting on wax begonia plants in Science. Dad takes his soapy hand out of the water without turning any other part of him and points it in my direction. His soap-drippy fingers are like a goose's beak when he opens them, shuts them, opens them, shuts them, opens, shuts, opens, shuts, fast, sign language for: clam up your stories, hold your juicy tongue, you're clogging my ears.

I'm quiet after that. I dry the dishes and put them carefully one on top of the other, turning my back to Dad so he won't see a crybaby. (p. 22-3)

Do you see how the light penetrates beneath the surface, yet illuminates both the concrete details of Ruthie's life and her emotional state simultaneously?

How did Lamstein do that?

She stays on the surface, describing the act of father and daughter washing and drying dishes together, offering details in a waterfall of observations that build to a climax of sorts within the paragraph itself as Dad grows upset with Ruthie's attempt at conversation.

You get the sense of Ruthie's desire for intimacy, don't you? And, for a moment ("just the two of us"), it's there... that intimacy. And when Ruthie feels that intimacy, that safety, she begins to share her day, only to find herself silenced by her father's gesture of opening and closing his hand ("his soap-drippy fingers are like a goose's beak").

And that image of the goose's beak is, I think, what allows the reader to feel the pain that Ruthie feels at the moment... because it's as if that beak has reached out of the page and snapped at us, too.

So we understand fully Ruthie's withdrawal into silence, her care in drying the plates so as not to draw any further attention to herself, her desire to hide her feelings from this person to whom, only moments ago, she was willing to reveal herself.

And, as a result of this scene, we have a fuller, deeper understanding of their relationship and Ruthie's struggle to have her voice heard.

Here's another sample:

Thanksgiving dinner. Dad gives Mom white meat first, then Grandma and Grandpa Tepper. Good he remembers.

Michael laughs and looks at Isaac. Isaac chews fast, like a rabbit, and picks turkey pieces out of his mouth.

"Isaac!" Mom slams her hand on the table.

Eddy's spit-up comes out.

Grandma Tepper lifts off her seat, then falls back down. "Oh!" she says. After that, she pokes at her food, at her turkey, cranberry sauce, and mashed potatoes.

But no one says, "Can't you stop yelling, even for Thanksgiving?"(p. 57)

Once again, Lamstein gives us only the surface details of a seemingly uneventful Thanksgiving dinner.

But almost immediately there's a hit of danger lurking beneath the surface ("Good he remembers.") Ruthie knows the subsurface currents, the danger of forgetting when it's safe to step into the water.

And then Mom's hand comes crashing down on the table at Isaac's poor table manners, and the crash causes Eddy to spit up... and Ruthie knows (and we feel) the current has increased to a dangerous speed, threatening to sweep away the happiness of that day.

Lamstein shows us Grandma's reaction to the crash of the hand on the table... and it's through her reaction that we understand how Ruthie feels, and then Lamstein underscores Ruthie's emotional response with the final observation of what's not said at the table.

That one comment lets us understand just how painful it is for Ruthie to sit at the table and hear her mother shouting, how painful it is to live within this family.

Again and again throughout Hunger Moon, Lamstein directs a beam of light at just the right angle so that it illuminates the surface and what's happening beneath the surface, enabling us to swim through different layers of light and water simultaneously.

I'll close with just one more example... the note of hope toward which the story builds:

After cake, we clear the table. Mom puts leftovers in Pyrex and Dad washes the dishes. Eddy brings in one fork at a time.

"Thank you, Eddy," Dad says.

I go upstairs and water my begonia, growing up against the cold, green arms reaching. When it gets warmer, I'll open up my window and that plant will climb out even taller. (p. 109)

Thanks to this image, readers can hope that Ruthie, like the plant, will climb ever-taller "against the cold" and continue reaching toward the exquisite light of her own resilient self.

For more information about Sarah Lamstein's work, visit her website at:
http://www.sarahlamstein.com/

When the Sea Cries

If you stand listening at the edge of the sea long enough, you can hear the cry of injustice echoing from its depths.

That's the cry that rises out of Patricia McCormick's novel, Sold, a heart-breaking tale about 13- year-old Lakshmi who is sold into sexual slavery and taken from her Nepali village to work in a brothel in India.

Her story, which unfolds in brief poem-like vignettes, is a cry for justice in a deaf world. And it's thanks to McCormick's remarkable skills as a writer that the reader, rather than turn away from the painful truth of this village girl's life, is willing to enter the dark, prison-like brothel that becomes her home, and where for the next year, despite the horrors of her new life, she manages to hold onto the slenderest thread of her own humanity.

Lakshmi's fate is all the more painful because McCormick shows us the simple life that she led in her village before tragedy befell her. As the story opens, Lakshmi is a child playing hopscotch with Gita, her best friend, bestowing affection on her little black-and-white speckled goat, Tali, and sharing secret sweets with her mother, Ama.

But it isn't a perfect childhood. Her family is poor and food is scarce, especially after a drought dries up the spring that brings water to the village. And her step-father gambles away whatever savings the family has collected. Yet Lakshmi is happy in the way that children manage to find happiness even in poor circumstances.

As the noose of poverty tightens around the family, however, the need for money (and a solid tin roof to protect the family from the heavy monsoon rains) becomes more acute, and Lakshmi's step-father decides to send her away to work. Lakshmi, a devoted daughter, goes willingly with her new Auntie, unaware of the fate that awaits her. She thinks that she's going to work as a maid in a rich woman's house like her best friend, Gita.

But Auntie isn't to be trusted any more than Lakshmi's step-father or her new Uncle-Husband, the stranger who takes her over the border and, finally, to the brothel where her life turns into a hellish nightmare with no end. Locked in a room for days without food or water, Lakshmi refuses to "work" until the brothel's madame, Mumtaz, slips a drug into her drink so that Lakshmi can no longer resist the men who force themselves upon her.

Each day takes Lakshmi further from her memories of childhood and her village and the innocent girl who once played with a goat in the clear mountain air. Each day that she spends in her room with bars on the window, a privy hole by her bed, and rats nibbling on the crusts of bread that she saves for breakfast, Lakshmi grows old beyond her years, knowing each night she must allow men to use her body... if she ever hopes to buy her freedom from Mumtaz.

But hope is like freedom ... a dream that she's not sure she can believe in:

This ache in my chest is a relentless thing, worse than any fever.
A fever is gone with a few of Mumtaz's white pills.
But this illness has had me in its grip for a week now.
This affliction--hope--is so cruel and stubborn, I believe it will kill me.

In the end, hope doesn't kill Lakshmi. It keeps her spirit--and soul--alive long enough for her to save herself... with the help of a shy, admiring boy who feels compassion for her as he wheels his tea caddy through the brothel every afternoon, and with the kind assistance of a well-meaning American.

In Sold, McCormick has written a searing, stirring account of one girl's tragedy, a girl brought to the edge of despair, only to be spared at the last moment from the agony of losing her sanity... and her soul.

What will become of Lakshmi once she escapes the brothel? Will her family welcome her return, assuming that she can find her way back to the village, or will they find her "fate" too shameful to deal with and shun her? And will Lakshmi, given the loss of her childhood and the memories of what she experienced, ever live a "normal" life again ?

We learn in the afterward that Lakshmi isn't alone in her fate. McCormick writes that "nearly 12,000 Nepali girls are sold by their families, intentionally or unwittingly, into a life of sexual slavery in the brothels of India."

With help, according to McCormick, some of these girls are rescued by aid workers who provide them with medical care and job training.

Perhaps that's what will happen to Lakshmi now that she's free. Perhaps she, too, can become one of the girls who are reintegrated into society.

As long as such injustice exists in the world, though, the sea will cry out in protest.

And sometimes that cry of protest will find a writer with the heart and soul of a Patricia McCormick, a writer who has shaped that cry into a story that magnifies an innocent girl's plea for help a thousand-fold... so that the world might wake up and listen.

For more about Patricia McCormick and her work, visit her website:

http://www.pattymccormick.com/index.php?mode=home

For interviews with McCormick, visit these sites:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6369325.html?nid=2788

http://pdfs.voya.com/VO/YA2/VOYA200612AuthorTalk.pdf

Listen Deeply

In Stephanie S. Tolan's new novel, Listen!, a wild dog--like a mysterious healing spirit--helps Charley, a 12-year-old girl mourning for her mother, recover from grief and a leg injury that she suffered in a car accident.

It's a slow, frustrating process for Charley, a process that demands that she listen to the world again, a world that she shut out after her mother's death in a plane crash while on assignment for a magazine as a nature photographer.

Tolan develops a reader's sympathy for Charley almost immediately by showing the reader exactly what Charley has lost.

The biggest loss, of course, is the death of her mother, which strikes the core of Charley's being, the root of her spirit.

Then Tolan introduces another loss... a physical injury almost as challenging to Charley as the loss of her mother because this loss steals away her physical foundation. Her injured leg makes life even more wobbly, forcing Charley to rely on others.

But who can Charley rely on? Her friend, Amy, walked away from the accident without a scratch...and then went to tennis camp over the summer, leaving Charley alone with her father and their housekeeper.

Ever since her mother's death, however, her father's been aloof, distant. He works all the time, no longer smiles, no longer has time to play with Charley.

And the housekeeper, Sarita, is somewhat aloof, too, harboring her own grief and memories of a son killed in a motorcycle accident.

So, Tolan opens the story with Charley struggling to return to "normal," even though normal can no longer be, well, normal for her.

And into this world of loss and struggle comes a wild, beautiful dog.

When Charley first sees the dog, she feels "a kind of tremor, as if an electric shock has passed from the dog to her and back again."

Something about this dog--perhaps the dog's independence or the simple fact that he is a survivor--awakens Charley and helps her begin the process of accepting that, despite tragedy, beauty can exist in the world.

As the story progresses, Charley's longing to befriend this dog intensifies, but the dog only becomes harder and harder to tame, resisting all her treats and gifts of food.

Her deep longing for a companion, though, draws Charley into the woods to pursue the dog. And her immersion in the silent woods, a kind of sanctuary where she used to go with her mother, revives memories of their time together and enables Charley to face her loss, as well as the new, painful solitude surrounding her, so she can move beyond the pain.

Tolan is masterful at tracing the subtle changes of grief in this young girl. Not only does Tolan show us Charley healing over time, she lets us see Charley gradually recognize traces of her mother's artistic abilities and vision in herself, as in this passage, when Coyote disappears and Charley worries that she might not find him again:

Charley stops as if she has run into a wall. What if Coyote doesn't come back? What if the image of the road, the cars, was real, and there is nothing left of him now but a body among the weeds, a reason for the vultures that circle overhead to tilt their wings and drop down to the pavement? She never thought, in all these sixty-seven days, to take a picture of him. How could she--Charley Morgan, daughter of Colleen Morgan, nature photographer--not once think to go to her mother's studio, dig through the boxes, find a camera, and take a picture? If he is gone, there will be nothing to show that Coyote ever lived. Nothing--nothing at all--to show for day after day of the effort to tame him, day after day of their growing connection.

This is a story about making connections with the mysterious source of life that runs through every living creature and remains part of the world even after we're gone.

It's about becoming aware of gifts around us, gifts that may be hidden from view, if only because we haven't listened deeply or searched hard enough for them.

In the end, Listen! is about a girl and her dog, each finding a way to overcome solitude and loneliness and share in life's joys together.

As writers, we need to listen like Charley to voices spoken so softly that sometimes we wonder if we're imagining them.

Listen! reminds us to do this: listen more closely to the sound of leaves rustling, waves slapping the shore, our breath moving in and out, a dog's barking.

If we listen closely enough, perhaps we'll hear the sound of a spirit rushing through us, drawing each of us together, carrying us deeper into the mystery of life.

For more information about Stephanie S. Tolan and her work, visit her website at
http://www.stephanietolan.com.

Sirens of the Sea

Born in 1680
(No one can say for sure),
Possibly in Bristol, England,
Early life, obscure,
Teach heard them calling longingly--
The sirens of the sea.
Obsessed, he navigated west,
His landfall? Destiny.
--from J. Patrick Lewis' Blackbeard The Pirate King

Who knows? Maybe there's a bit of the pirate in every writer, each of us drawn by the sirens of our imagination, obsessed with the music that we hear as we seek our stories in the same way that Edward Teach, sailing beneath the pirate's black flag, sought his destiny as Blackbeard the Pirate King.

Even if you already know the story of Blackbeard, who returns to life in all his trembling and fearsome glory in Blackbeard The Pirate King, J. Patrick Lewis' remarkable account of his life, you'll relish the chance to sail with Lewis as he captains this sturdy ship of verse through the stormy seas of Blackbeard's many voyages.

In poems that ripple with strength and grace, carrying readers forward into unknown and sometimes dangerous waters in much the same way a ship might carry its wary passengers to a distant destination, Lewis holds readers fast on deck in these twelve poems that rock with the rhythm of the sea, plunging and rising with the force of a gifted poet.

From the opening lines of this book (which was nominated for a 2006 Cybils Award), readers will sense that they're in the hands of a master craftsman:

Down Caribbean shipping lanes,
Where buccaneers held court,
The pistol blade,
And cannon made
Their treachery blood sport.

Lewis ends the first poem with a forceful gusto that makes a reader feel as if he's standing on deck along with the rest of the pirate crew, salt spray stinging his eyes, cheering on the infamous captain:

But of all the thieves of the Seven Seas,
No one would ever reach
The height and might
Of the roguish Knight
Of the Black Flag, Edward Teach.

Along with each of the dozen poems that comprise this book are equally dramatic paintings--The Duel on the Beach by N.C. Wyeth, for instance--which draw the reader into the story, heightening the reader's sense of adventure and, at times, danger.

Lewis also includes notes with the poems that offer brief historical perspectives, aiding readers unfamiliar with the history of piracy in the 1700's or who might be interested in learning more details about Blackbeard's life than the poems themselves can provide.

And at the end of the book Lewis provides a helpful time-line extending from Teach's birth in 1680 to his death in 1718, as well as a note about the sources that he relied on to develop and flesh out the poems.

"If oceans could speak," writes Lewis, "what deep secrets the Atlantic would tell of grand voyages of discovery, famous naval battles, the last desperate hours of sea-tossed sailors, and not least, the age of piracy, cutlass, and cannon, when villainy ruled the waves."

With Lewis as our guide across the vast sea of history, we can imagine a little more clearly the mystery of Blackbeard and his life.

Perhaps that's because, as Lewis suggests, "...the mystery of Blackbeard lies not at the bottom of a shallow bay but deep in the mind of anyone who muses on the Pirate King."

Lewis talks about the genesis of Blackbeard the Pirate King with Cynthia Leitich Smith in this interview: http://cynthialeitichsmith.blogspot.com/2006/05/author-interview-j-patrick-lewis-on.html

For more information about J. Patrick Lewis, visit his website at:
http://www.jpatricklewis.com/

Heart Swimming

"Sometimes I understand something (an experience, an event, something someone said) in my head," writes Meg Kearney in the afterward to her young adult novel-in-verse, The Secret of Me, "but it's not until I write about it that I start to understand it in my heart."

It's through this kind of heart-swimming--writing and sharing her journal-like poems with the reader--that Kearney's main character, 14 year-old Elizabeth (Lizzy) McLane, comes to terms with her feelings about being adopted as an infant.

Her journey toward self-understanding isn't an easy one, even with a loving mother and father, as well as a caring older brother and sister (both of whom are also adopted).

That's because while Lizzy's life may appear to an observer as untroubled and relatively normal, the stability of her adopted world isn't enough to silence the doubts that she feels in the deepest part of herself or quench her desire to know her "real" mother:

When I was little, I used to think
she was like Mary Poppins,
and someday she'd come floating
back to me on her umbrella.

Not only does Lizzy have to deal with her feelings of doubt and abandonment, she has to do so despite the discouragement of her brother and sister, who fear their parents may perceive any expression of such feelings as a sign of ungratefulness, or, worse, disloyalty.

But in her heart Lizzy knows that she must confront these feelings or else the dreaded monster that threatens to drown her in fear, especially when she's feeling particularly low, will continue to haunt her.

Thankfully, Lizzy has close friends who understand her. And she has a gift: writing poetry. Swimming deeply into her own heart, Lizzy gains the courage to face the monster and, ultimately, learn through writing how to accept her feelings rather than deny them.

As she explores her feelings and painful memories in poems, she summons the strength to share these memories and feelings with her girlfriends, as well as with a newfound boyfriend who doesn't run when he hears the dreaded word "adopted," and, eventually, with her parents, too.

By facing her emotions honestly and sharing them with people who she trusts, Lizzy learns that she can speak about her past--and herself--in ways that not only ease her suffering and doubts but help her heal, as well.

This sense of healing comes, though, only after a deep and painful struggle with her feelings about being adopted--the secret of her life.

"A poet named Jack Gilbert says 'poetry is a way to eat your life,'" Kearney explains in the novel's afterward, where she shares resources about the adoption process and reveals that Lizzy's story was based, in part, on her own experience of being adopted as a child.

"In other words, by writing about an experience--hearing the words in your head, tasting them in your mouth, digesting them, putting them on paper--you can start to understand what they mean and how you feel about them. Some people never take the time to stop and think about their lives--not just think, but feel. That's what poems are for. They make us slow down. They help us make sense of our world."

Heart swimming in our own work means taking the time to stop and think about our life.

Not just thinking, but feeling.

As Kearney suggests, it's not until we write about something that we can begin to understand it in our hearts.

For more information about Meg Kearney, visit her website at http://www.megkearney.com/index.html


P.S. - Thanks to all of you who have stopped by this past year to join us in the water. We hope to see (and hear from) you again in 2007. A healthy, happy New Year to Wordswimmers everywhere!

Swimming Into the Unknown

In one of those bold risks of youth--the kind of risks that adults often deem foolhardy but which seem essential to those younger needing to take them--Diane Siebert and her husband decided in the early 1970's to follow their hearts and swim into the unknown.

Here's how Siebert, an award-winning poet, describes the way life unfolded for her then:

In 1971, my husband and I hatched a plan: we would sell whatever possessions we could, buy two motorcycles, and spend the summer seeing America. And that's exactly what we did... except that our summer trip turned into a ten-year journey around the country. When money ran low, we stopped, found jobs, and saved until we could travel on. We met hundreds of interesting people and gained a real appreciation for America's big cities and rural towns, its scenic wonders, and its wildlife and natural resources. We camped most of the time and had good adventures and some not-so-good adventures. Occasionally we fell off our motorcycles. But every evening, no matter what, I wrote in my journal, and the poems, prose, and music scribbled on those pages eventually turned into children's books and poetry for magazines.

Like a gardener, Siebert planted seeds--Every evening, no matter what, I wrote in my journal--so that years later the compost heap of memories fed the garden of her imagination, and the words and images, the thoughts and emotions that she so carefully tended on her journey blossomed into a remarkable collection of poems called Tour America, which is currently under consideration for a 2006 Cybils Award (see www.cybils.com for more information).

Siebert notes that the book is "a collection of writings about just a few of my favorite sights in these great United States."

Well, "just a few" is something of an understatement; there are more than two-dozen poems in Tour America, each one a dazzling doorway into the essence of a particular sight that struck a chord in Siebert's imagination years ago: gargoyles in New York City; statutes of Paul Bunyan in Bemidji, MN; Lucy the Elephant in Margate, NJ, and many others.

Much like postcards sent from the road, these poems draw the reader into places that Siebert visited years ago--whether Cape Hatteras, NC or Roswell, TX, St. Louis, MO or Gold Hill, OR--and which remain alive for her today through the power of memory and the magic of poetry.

Her poems mix impressions of city and country, desert and sea, rivers and marshlands, offering a record of her journey across America and creating a feel in poetry that's reminiscent of Woody Guthrie's classic song, This Land Is Your Land.

The collection is filled with our country's humor, history, trivia, legends, mysteries and wonders. It's a map of America's treasures--some hidden, some well-known--with each poem crafted with such skill that readers are able to feel the essence of each place emanating from somewhere deep inside the poems themselves.

Here's Siebert meditating on Mount Washington, New Hampshire:

Mount Washington's deceptive peak
Can quickly change from bright to bleak;
From raging storm to mild and meek
with sunbeams that entice.

A place of great and wild extremes,
Its smile can turn to sudden screams,
Its face not really what it seems:
a balmy paradise.

A passive mound, a tallish hill.
It stands quite commonplace, until
Great gale-force winds bring bitter chill
with blasts of snow and ice.

And those who tread without a thought--
Who, unprepared, are often caught
In temperatures that plunge to naught--
may pay the final price.

In brief narrative asides to each of the poems, which are accompanied by glorious illustrations by Stephen T. Johnson, Siebert offers some background information about the places that the poems describe:

Mount Washington. Although this mountain rises to only 6,288 feet, it stands exposed to two very active storm tracks and is noted for its extreme weather conditions. One of the world's highest wind velocities was recorded there in 1934--231 miles per hour! Warm, sunny summer weather in the valley often fools hikers and climbers, many of whom have died from hypothermia brought on by the mountain peak's nearly constant cold mist and ceaseless, chilling winds.

In another poem, Siebert takes readers further west to Las Vegas, Nevada:

Las Vegas glitters in the night
And shimmers in the day;
She opens arms of neon light
To those who come her way
With hopes of placing one good bet
And finding Lady Luck
While playing blackjack or roulette--
Well, OOPS! There goes a buck!

Accompanying the poem, Siebert adds this note:

Las Vegas means "the meadows." It was called that by Spanish explorers because of natural springs and wild grasses that existed in the desert oasis. Now each year 30 million people stay in this city's more than one hundred thousand hotel rooms. Buzzing day and night, Las Vegas has live circus acts, a man-made volcano that erupts routinely, water parks, and a roller coaster built one hundred stories above the ground, but gambling remains its biggest attraction. Casinos, which have a variety of themes from ancient Egypt to Caesar's palace to Paris, are loud and gaudy, offering good food and flashy shows but no clocks or windows-- a ploy to prevent gamblers from thinking about the time and keep them at the gaming tables where they lose billions of dollars annually.

Siebert's journey is one that readers will enjoy sharing as they discover America through this wonderful poet's eyes.

Swim with her from the Everglades in Florida to the Tallgrass Prairie in Oklahoma, from the El in Chicago to the Great Salt Lake in Utah. No matter where you happen to stop, you'll find something worth seeing... and remembering... as well as a reminder not to shy away from taking risks, whether as a youthful writer or as one who has matured in years.

Nearly forty years after Siebert first swam into the sea that is America, not knowing what she'd find, one can only give thanks that Siebert was the kind of writer willing to leap into an unknown body of water.

Today, as she spins her memories into gold, we are all enriched by her experience and by the poems that she discovered on her ten-year journey.

For a conversation about Tour America with Diane Siebert and the illustrator, Stephen Johnson, visit:
http://www.chroniclebooks.com/Chronicle/excerpt/0811850560-e0.html