April 2020 – SALT CITY VERSE

Redwood and Ponytail, a Novel in Verse by K.A Holt

Thank you, Elizabeth Steinglass, for hosting Poetry Friday this week. On her blog you will find a delightful and well done video of Elizabeth reading poems from her picture book poetry collection, SOCCERVERSE. Don’t miss it.

I can’t believe that it is May 1st. April has been a great month for those who love poetry! So many interesting prompts and of course the progressive poem which has been great fun. I really loved every line. It was a wonderful collaboration and how often do writers get to collaborate? Thank you Michelle Kogan for your last line and also for putting this community effort to music.

I’d like to share a poetry novel I read this week. Redwood and Ponytail, by author K.A. Holt, is a serious book about identity, about a seventh grade girl discovering she is gay. It’s also a fun read and I hope it gets into the hands of kids who might see themselves in this story, about the friendship between a popular middle school cheerleader, Kate, and a school volleyball star, Tam.

Tam has already come out to her mother. But when Kate realizes that her feelings for Tam are more than friendship, she has to face her mother’s ardent denial and the disdain of her cheerleading squad, the foundations of her world. She is forced to question everything.

Holt’s free verse is full of great language appropriate for middle school students and detail. Below, Tam notices Kate on the first day of school.

TAM

Over there
strutting,
laughing,
She thinks I don't see
but I do,
I do,
that little cheerleader
looking at me.
The red bow in her hair
snapped military tight,
right?

And Kate notices Tam:

KATE

This girl in the gym today,
looking at me.
Tall as a palm tree,
shaped like one, too.
Big hair on top,
giraffe neck,
legs like a stick figure
stretching right off the page,
her skin shimmering
her head tossed back
a loud laugh flying from her mouth

It takes more than these two snippets of verse to fully show it, but Holt manages the give the two girls clear and separate voices throughout the novel.

One thing I loved was Holt’s use of a clever and entertaining device in her story telling. I’ll call it a Greek chorus. It takes the form of three personas, Alex, Alyx and Alexx, who represent the kids in the hallways at school, always watching. They give their humorous commentary as Tam and Kate’s relationship develop, in the following format, periodically throughout the novel:

“We are the kids in the halls/We are the kids you don’t see/

We are the kids watching/We are everyone/We are everywhere/We are everything /

And what do we see?/A love story? A tragedy?/ A comedy?/

Real life?/Will we cry?/Will we laugh?/

I guess we’ll find out?/ I guess we’ll find out/ I guess we’ll find out.”

Holt does not hold back on how difficult coming out to family and friends can be, there are fiery feelings here, and something scary happens. Kate has been changed by meeting Tam, and the ending is hopeful. As they read this entertaining and moving story, teens who struggle with their identity and perhaps their parents, might be able to better understand difficult feelings and gain compassion towards others.

I will end with a short poem I wrote from a photo prompt offered by Margaret Simon on her blog Reflections from the Teche, and share it again here. Imagine a little boy drawing on a driveway with chalk.

Sidewalk Artist

Small feet grip
rough concrete.
Squatting like
a frog on a rock,
a boy draws.

© Janice Scully 2020

What is Poetry Friday? Learn more at Renee LaTulippe’s blog, No Water River.

Degas’ Fourteen Year Old Dancer

Thank you, Christie Wyman, for hosting Poetry Friday this week. Check out this week’s poetry offerings at her blog, Wondering and Wandering.

I miss New York City. When we used to visit our son, which we can’t do now, we would stroll though Central Park on the way to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

We like to revisit pieces of art, such as Isis from the 2nd century A.D, Egypt during the Roman period. Today we wear much less head gear and more clothing. I usually encounter her as I try to make some sense of the time periods in the Egyptian wing.

And I never miss one of my favorite sculptures. It’s by Edgar Degas, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen who stands as unapologetic as Isis. Little Dancer has had a fascinating evolution as a work of art.

In 1881, (image, below, on the left) she was Degas’s first and only sculpture ever presented to the public at the Paris impressionist exhibition. It caused a stir. This likeness of a poor lower class ballerina, was made of tinted beeswax, wore a wig of human hair, a cotton bodice, linen slipper and a cotton-silk tutu. It is beloved today, but because of strange materials used to make the piece and the modern subject, it was considered ugly and repulsive by critics. She was threat to the art world’s status quo.

In 1917, with Degas’s death, the wax was replaced with bronze and over the years the curators of the Met have replaced the tutu three times either because it had deteriorated or they were unhappy with its look.

I discovered a fascinating video found here about the design of the last tutu by curator Glenn Petersen. Through his historical research he created a skirt like those worn by ballerinas in Degas’s time, in length and composition.

I love her proud pose and she seems as courageous as she was vulnerable to the whims of others.

I wrote this for her:

LITTLE PARIS DANCER

Inspired by Degas’s LITTLE DANCER AGED FOURTEEN
Paris, sixth Impressionist Exhibit 1881


With face towards the sky
shoulders back, hands clasped
Little Paris Dancers
did what was asked.

In short steps you scurried, 
a petite “opera rat”
“Your likeness is ugly!”
They used to say that.

Too poor to rebel,
lose your job if you do,
and can't trust the men
who act kindly towards you.

But the last word is yours,
there you are, at the Met,
in a stunning tutu,
beloved, no threat.

© Janice Scully 2020 (draft)

I’ll close with a poem about a dancer by Sir John Suckling (1609-1641). It reminded me of Paris’s little “opera rat.”

At a Wedding
Sir John Suckling

Her feet beneath her petticoat
Like little mice, stole in and out,
As if they feared the light.
And oh! She dances such a way
No sun upon an Easter day
Is half so fine a sight.

Enjoy Poetry Friday as we all continue at home making virtual trips and imagining a new and better future as we dance forward after Covid 19.

PROGRESSIVE POEM, Day 21

Greetings on this Tuesday! This is my first time participating in the Progressive Poem, which was founded in 2012 by Irene Latham at Live Your Poem. I think it’s an awesome project and has been so much fun to follow. This year it is hosted by Margaret Simon at Reflections on the Teche. Thanks to both of you.

This poem has a dramatic feel. It’s a story that begins with the “I” of the poem setting out very early, just before dawn on a spring day with provisions and a banjo. The setting is gorgeous and evolves with every line. There is constant movement forward. As we get deeper into the wooded and grassy journey, the sun awakens everything along the path, the trees, the bees.

Then something happens at the beginning of the fourth stanza and that action/scene continues. I spent hours thinking about how to move forward and I hope Julieanne likes one of my options.

Thank you, Rose Capelli for giving me two interesting lines to choose from:

Safely exiting this strange ballet

or,

My heart aware, content to share.

Progressive Poem 2020

Sweet violets shimmy, daffodils sway
along the wiregrass path to the lake
I carry a rucksack of tasty cakes
and a banjo passed down from my gram.

I follow the tracks of deer and raccoon
and echo the call of a wandering loon.
A whispering breeze joins in our song
and night melts into a rose gold dawn

Deep into nature’s embrace, I fold.
Promise of spring helps shake the cold
hints of sun lightly dapple the trees
calling out the sleepy bees

Leaf-litter crackles…I pause. Twig snaps.
I gasp! Shudder! Breathe out. Relax…
as a whitetail doe comes into view.
She shifts and spotted fawns debut.

We freeze. My green eyes and her brown
Meet and lock. Time slows down.
I scatter the cakes, backing away
Safely exiting this strange ballet.

I figure that my line has to move the poem forward, past the doe and fawn. So here are the two lines I offer to Julieanne:


I continue the path that winds down to the lake.

or

I shake from my rucksack sweet sticky crumbs,

2020 Progressive Poem

1 Donna Smith at Mainely Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch at deowriter
4 Liz Steinglass
5 Buffy Silverman
6 Kay McGriff
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28 Jessica Bigi at TBD
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
30 Michelle Kogan

Fits and Starts of Spring

It’s Poetry Friday! Thank you Molly at Nix the Comfort Zone for hosting. Stop by and when you do, check out her photographs of birds and much more on her previous post as well. They are quite beautiful.

I have two poems to share today, but just as I was searching for another poet’s work to spice up my post I received this card from a second grade student named Andrew from the Poetry Project in Happy Valley, Oregon. It made my day that had included a brief local power outage while I was about to put bread in my electric oven. Anyway, all that resolved and I can’t wait to share Andrew’s poem! Was it a coincidence that my husband and I had pizza for dinner?

Spring is coming to Syracuse, N.Y. in fits and starts. My forsythias this morning were blanketed overnight:

Change of course is the only thing we can depend on. It comes no matter what, and is determined as a main character, in a middle grade novel. Strong and persistent.

In many things, there is no clean break with what came before. Think seasons, kids growing up and adults aging. Change reveals our humble place on the planet, our part in something bigger.

The seasons here in Syracuse change like the flow of cold molasses. Seasons moves forward as if ambivalent. Spring to summer, summer to fall, fall to winter, and winter to spring takes weeks, even months.

So, with all the time I now suddenly have on my hands, I’ve been watching closely out my window and on long walks, spring approaching with its fits and starts, stepping forward and then backward. Below is a tanka and a short free verse poem inspired by this week’s weather.

SPRING CAUTION 

Trees wear snow today,
coating limbs way past elbows,
halting the lilacs.
I suspect spring was frightened
by yesterday's hyacinths. 

© Janice Scully 2020

And another inspired by a sideways windy day this week:

WINDY TUESDAY

The wind ebbed
and flowed through the trees
like a witch
with lips pursed blowing,
cheeks big as balloons
starting and stopping,
unsure if she 
wanted company or
to scare everyone away.

© Janice Scully 2020

I hope everyone is enjoying the amazing progressive poem organized by Margaret Simon at Reflections of the Teche. It’s been really interesting to see the choices the poets are making. Thank you, Molly, for hosting Poetry Friday this week!

A Stay Safe Twitter Campaign

Thank you Amy Ludwig VanDerwater for hosting this week’s Poetry Friday! Please check in with her at The Poetry Farm where you will be rewarded, as usual, with poetry and her inspiring and insightful thoughts about poetry. She possesses a remarkable wealth of talent.

The forsythia is wonderful news this week, along with my family’s good health.

Today, I would like to tell Poetry Friday authors who have the time, that there is a Twitter campaign afoot to encourage young people to stay in place and stay safe. Kids need encouragement to take social distancing seriously in order to save lives.

Thank you, Padma Venkatraman, a fellow contributor in THANKU: POEMS OF GRATITUDE and the author of THE BRIDGE HOME, for launching this hashtag campaign! Padma is requesting that authors take a selfie of themselves with one of their books, and post with it a message. It can be written on a post-it stuck on the book. Padma reminds us of the many kids who might be homeless. Your message might be “Stay safe. Shelter in place. Stay safe” or whatever message you like. This is not a marketing opportunity, just a chance to encourage kids.

Kids are “looking for guidance from people they trust: celebrities, athletes, teachers, authors.” Hashtags include: #AuthorsTakeAction, #TakeShelterInStory, #socialdistancing, #thankyoufirstresponders.

If you have the time, check out these hashtags to see what some authors have done.

Below is a cinquain addressed to the very infectious Covid 19 virus. It’s a weak plea. It cannot be heard by this bundle of RNA, this dreadful highjacker looking for a host. Once it gets in a nose, eye or mouth, it takes over the DNA in normal cells and replicates efficiently, like a house fire

Virus.
Dumb, blind pirate,
accidentally conceived,
on the wind in search of a home-
Please leave!

Stay safe and well, everyone.

First Things

It’s Poetry Friday and I hope everyone is well. Thank you Heidi Mordhorst for hosting. I found her list of “Quarantine Questions”from last week’s Poetry Friday a useful way to approach each day. So thank you, Heidi, for that.

“What am I grateful for today?” is the first question on Heidi’s list of Quarantine questions. Today, that answer was easy. I’m grateful that my family is well.

Two days ago, my son, Phil, who lives in Manhattan, called to say he developed a fever, some chest congestion. He rarely gets sick. My husband and I stayed calm but were horrified, imagining he’d get sicker, even though our son is young and healthy. But, of course, that’s no guarantee. Hearing my son had such symptoms was the first time I felt this pandemic in such a scary way.

Fortunately, the following day, which was April first, and coincidentally Phil’s birthday, he felt better and the next day better still. I have to assume he had a mild case of Covid 19; it’s not easy to find out for sure. But it seems he’ll be fine.

I attended to the other things further down on Heidi’s Quarantine Questions list such as exercising, keeping in touch with friends, and trying to create something in spite of the distractions. I made broccoli soup and planned an apple cake for later.

Then, along my driveway, I encountered another first. My first daffodil was in early bloom and it inspired this short poem.

THE FIRST DAFFODIL

Ten others will come,
buttery yellow,
faces krinkled and new,
gregarious fellows.

But one arrived early,
for the week or two stay,
and saved me from waiting
one more lonely day.

© Janice Scully 2020

Thank you for stopping by! Make sure you stop and see what Heidi has in store this Poetry Friday.