SALT CITY VERSE

Welcome to Poetry Friday to all nature and poetry lovers, and Happy National Poetry Month!

First, if you are not familiar with Poetry Friday and want to know more, find out HERE. Also you’ll find Mister Linky at the end of the post, so please add your blog if you have one to share.

This week I am the host and I am thrilled to share my interview with David Elliott, author of At the Pond. His new picture book is due to be on bookshelves on April 12/2022.

At the Pond, by David Elliott, illustrated by Amy Schimler-Safford, is written for children who love the beauty and drama of animals and nature. These read aloud poems, filled with clever language and stunning images, will entertain and awe readers of any age. They awed me.

Two of Elliott’s previous titles that I read, In the Wild, and In the Sea, feature fun, stand alone, rhyming poems about wild life. But At the Pond, feels more like a story than a collection of individual poems about a particular animal. It does this by providing us a time frame: One day at the pond from morning to night. The poems are all untitled which makes it feel like a story. The first poem is set in early morning featuring a red-winged blackbird:

The red-winged blackbird spreads his tail
and sings his hello morning song;
he has sung it since the bright
and misty world began.
The bullfrog leaps!
and there among the reeds,
the water ripples like a fan
unfolding on the surface of the pond.
It springs to life! Another day has dawned.

One of my favorite poems is about the Great Blue Heron. Notice Elliott’s word choice:

The pond’s nobility,
the great blue heron wades
in the shallows with ancestral dignity
both majestic and absurd.
The fish do not doubt it:
The heron is a striking bird. 

Nobility, ancestral dignity, majestic, absurd, striking, are words that resonate with the idea of a heron. The author does this throughout, choosing just the right words to create an image and mood around a creature or element of pond life. The word choice in ON THE POND challenges the reader and listener. The poetry is clever, fun and imaginative.

The last poem is set at night and it creates the lovely arc of this pond-story, anticipating the morning to come.

Cattails whisper through the night
Until the morning’s welcome light
Finds the pond’s expectant shore
 
and the blackbird sings

once more. 

I loved this ending! As a poet interested in craft involved in a poetry collection, I was impressed how David Elliott and Amy Schimler-Safford tell a story about wild life at the pond using individual poems embedded in the arc of a day.

Fortunately, I had the opportunity to ask David Elliott a few questions about On the Pond and his creative process.

INTERVIEW WITH David Elliott

JS:

When in your creative process did you know the book would be structured within a day at the pond, starting in morning and ending at night? Were the poems always untitled? 

DAVID ELLIOT:

With the exception of On the Farm, each of the other books in the series covers a wide range and variety of habitats. With In the Wild, we travel to all seven continents. On the Wing includes poems about the Andean Condor and your friendly neighborhood cardinal. In the Past adds the element of geologic time to the mix. Yikes!

But the poems in At the Pond observe and celebrate a singular biome. Often, we can see the perimeter of a pond in a single glance. In other words, a pond is intimate.  It’s also quieter than say, the ocean, or the jungle, or even the woods. I wanted the book to convey some of that intimacy and stillness, and so very early on I decided to structure the book around a single day, which, to my way of thinking at least, is also intimate and can be, if we’re lucky, quiet, too.

I have to say that I’m not sure I made that decision as logically as I’ve tried to explain it here. I work so much by intuition, but in retrospect, I think in part, at least, this is what was going on. By the way, it made me so happy to learn that you felt like the book was more of a story than some of the others. It’s what I was hoping for, the story of a single day at the pond. I wanted it to read like one long piece, which is why there are no titles for the individual poems.

JS:I admired how skillfully you found the right language for each poem, for instance, the elevated diction for the graceful Great Blue Heron. What does your research involve? Do you make word list to help spark poems? 

DAVID ELLIOT:

In general, I dislike research. I’m impatient. I want to get to the poems right away. But, of course, you can’t write about a seahorse, or a fisher cat, or a Great Blue Heron, unless you know something about a seahorse, or a fisher cat, or a Great Blue Heron. I do begin by making a list, but not a word list. I start by jotting down all the possible animals I could choose from. (You can imagine how long that list was for In the Wild.) With At the Pond, I made sure I included those that were in the water, on the water, around the water and over the water. 

Next, I read as much as I can about each creature, and watch as many films-both professional and backyard—as I can find on youtube. But the real work comes in trying to discover how I feel about the animal — what is the creature saying to me? — which is why my research involves spending a lot of time staring out the window. There is a great deal to be said for indolence in the creative process. 

With the books in this series, it’s been especially important to be mindful of the illustrator.  I do my best to choose animals which vary in form, color, and size, hoping to give the artist as much range and possibility as I can. I feel so grateful and so much admiration for the work each of the illustrators has contributed. Holly Meade (On the Farm, In the Wild, In the Sea), Becca Stadtlander (On the Wing), Matthew Trueman (In the Past), Rob Dunlavey (In the Woods) and now Amy Schimler-Safford (At the Pond) have each brought something that makes them shine.  I’m amazed at the luminosity of Amy’s work. I can’t stop looking at it.

I’m not quite sure what to say about the language except that the language of the poem –and by language I don’t just mean vocabulary. I’m talking about syntax, word choice, rhythm, meter, even punctuation, all of it — anyway, the language of the poem must come from the poem and not the poet. Think of each poem as a well into which you are dipping your bucket. Pay attention. See what comes up.

JS: Did you set out to write about a particular setting, such as a pond, or did poems you had already written lead you to focus on a setting?

DAVID ELLIOTT:

Actually, it was the series editor, the fabulous Liz Bicknell, who suggested the setting for this one. At first, I wondered if there would be anything to say about something so humble as a little pond. Then I started reading and daydreaming and remembering and suddenly an entire new world opened before me.

 JS: For aspiring children’s poets, any advice? 

Well, my first piece of advice would be not to listen to my advice. But having said that, I would say that maybe the most important thing you can do is to develop your ear. Language is sound. It’s music. Try to hear the music. The rhythms. The way the vowels and consonants are harmonizing. Or not. Is the comma doing its job or do you need a full stop to create that beat of silence? Train your outer ear to hear.

But equally, or perhaps even more important than hearing is listening, listening to what the poem is trying to tell you, what it wants to say. I try never to think of myself as a poet. Rather, I feel much more aligned with those medieval monks who sat in their scriptoria copying classical texts. In my work, I am trying to listen to what is already there. 

Finally, I would add that persistence is the name of the game. Until very recently I was a faculty mentor in Lesley University’s MFA in Creative Writing, A former student, who graduated at least ten years ago –long enough ago to have had three children –just wrote to tell me that her middle grade novel is under contract. She kept at it. She prevailed. There’s a lesson there for all of us. Hooray!

THE END

I would like to thank David Elliott for the interview and would like to recognize, as he did, the talent and artistry brought to At the Pond by illustrator Amy Schimler-Safford. Beyond the poetry, the art on every page adds something special to this lovely book.