Poetry Friday: Driving Out The Loudmouths

Here's my goal for the summer -- silencing the raucous voices in my head that keep me from writing, as poet Ranier Maria Rilke put it so well:

She who reconciles the ill-matched threads

of her life, and weaves them gratefully into a single cloth --

it's she who drives the loudmouths from the hall

and clears it for a different celebration,

where the one guest is you.

In the softness of the evening

it's you she receives.

Excerpted from Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy (New York: Riverhead, 1996), p. 64.

Poetry Friday: A Paper Tigers Celebration

If you're looking for poetry between cultures and more, head to one of my favorite sites in cyber world, Paper Tigers, where the celebration of poetry month is underway. To get started, check out the interview with poet Janet S. Wong and the essay called Pairing Poetry Across Cultures by professor Sylvia Vardell.

Poetry Friday: Light By Tagore

Yesterday I sent my editor Françoise Bui of Delacorte a close-to-the-end revision of Secret Keeper (Random House, January 2009), so today I offer a brief excerpt of the draft that includes a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, Bengal's Nobel Laureate.

The scene is set on a train, and Asha's mother is telling her daughters about how she met their father:

"We were visiting relatives in Calcutta,” Ma started, keeping her eyes fixed on the blur of rice paddies outside. “One afternoon, I was on the veranda combing out my hair. It was long then, down to my knees, and thick as a shawl. I was singing; I remember the song still, it was a Tagore love song I’d learned only weeks before.”

She began to hum, and then sing in her low, rich voice: “Light, my light, the world-filling light, the eye-kissing light, heart-sweetening light! Ah, the light dances, my darling, at the center of my life; the light strikes, my darling, the chords of my love; the sky opens, the wind runs wild, laughter passes over the earth …”

The poem “Light” is reprinted from Gitanjali: Song Offerings by Rabindranath Tagore. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1912.

Poetry Friday: And The Oscar Went To

And The Oscar Went To
by Mitali Perkins

At the end, your name hovers
like a half-orb on the horizon.

It's not aflame like the noonday name,
dazzling with glare and heat and drama.

Once it was new on the scene,
fêted with an ovation of birdsong.

Now you can barely hear the sizzle as it melts into the water.

People glance at their wrists and move on.


© Mitali Perkins 2008, all rights reserved

Photo courtesy of cybertoad via Creative Commons. Find today's Poetry Friday Roundup at Simple and Ordinary.

Poetry Friday: For The Young Who Want To

I sent it to her on December 14th and relished the holidays like a college student after final exams. But low in my mind buzzed a swarm of short sentences; small, stinging flies that needed to be smacked time after time: "It stinks. It's no good. It's a pile of —"

Yesterday was report card day. Her email winged into my box, making my pulse quicken like it did in eighth grade when that Irish redhead walked to my desk for the first time. "So not to keep you in suspense," she wrote. "I like it!"

I shouted and squeezed the nearest son, the one studying the Middle Ages. He nodded and smiled and focused on his flash cards; he's been through this before.

I've written several books now, and still the process is no less agonizing. So to any writers and the writer wannabes visiting the Fire Escape on this cold and rainy Massachusetts Poetry Friday, I give you Marge Piercy's poem about true talent:

For the young who want to
BY MARGE PIERCY

Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting ...

Read the rest here.

Poetry Friday: Famous By Naomi Shihab Nye

As I reflect on my new status as a Readergirlz Diva, here's one of my favorite poems by Naomi Shihab Nye (read past the title please lest you think my ego's running amuck):

FAMOUS

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek ...

Read the rest here.

From Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland, Oregon: Far Corner Books, 1995)

Why I Write For Kids (Reason #10)

I slept and dreamed that life was joy.
I woke and found that life was but service.
I served and discovered that service was joy.

— Rabindranath Tagore

Poetry Friday: Contest Winners

I'm delighted to present the winners of the Fire Escape's 2007 teen poetry and short fiction contests. Congratulations to the writers, and to all who entered. The 2008 contests open 9/1/07. Feel free to browse through the best poems from 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006, and prize-winning stories from the past.

Poetry Friday: Help Me Choose The Winners!

I've been judging the 2007 Fire Escape Teen Poetry Contests, and am overwhelmed by the quality and quantity of entries. I've managed to narrow the entries to those I think are the four best poems. I've already ranked them in my head, but I'd love your input before I award the prizes. Which of the poems after the polling box deserves first place in the contest?

FIRST PRIZE SHOULD GO TO...

Strokes
The House at the Top of the Hill
Syncopation
Anugraha Heights

(View Results)

Strokes
by Sophia J.

In Chinese folklore, there was a boy who heard
upon his first day of calligraphy study
that one is a horizontal slash. Considering himself clever, he
deduced that each consecutive number
would merit an extra line,
and found no more need for education
not when the stream outside
and all its silver-throated fish enticed him,
and his fingers itched for the hook, the worm, the kill.

My parents, so eager to impound in me the validity of
"try hard, work long, no play"
went on to describe the old man with the cognomen of
"one thousand" who asked for his name
to be written on the creek bed. The character is,
after all, only three strokes long.

I often wondered at the image my mind produced
of this boy, of our similar mistakes,
our similar sorrows. In these dreams, his fingers are my own,
trembling as they complete line after line of meaningless scratch,
ten hundred streaks flooding away in the next day's rain.




The House at the Top of the Hill
by Alessandra S.

Where the grass hangs like hair over
The hot road
We watched the old men sitting in their
Fold out chairs in front of
Their houses, smoking
Like slow chimneys, puffing home made
Italian cigars clenched between
Ruddy-calloused fingers.

Living slower then the
Pace of the shadows moving across the piazza
And breathing lazily like
The monotonous humming of the crickets
We cupped our small hands to our mouths
And giggled when we passed
The deserted house at the top of the hill.

Listening for the ghosts whispering
Around the broken beams
Sounding like blades of grass rubbing
Their palms against each other.
We pulled our claves through the
Wavy grass up to the house.

The front doors hung from the frame
Like an old women’s teeth
Clinging to her gums.
Saturated boards
Felt the underside of our naked feet.

An empty bathtub in the middle of the room
Wondering at the decaying tile falling, falling
From the ceiling into its
White porcelain belly.
Stairs birthed from upper unexplored floors
Breathed dust clouds onto our ankles
As we stepped onto their chipping backs,

We explored wide rooms, where glassless windows
Stared at us like wide-eyed owls.
We wanted to hide behind invisible and non-existent furniture.

The sky began to drip the beginning of
Evening.
Deaf to
Calling aunties and uncles
Mommies and daddies,
Words that had been born from the rock
And carved out of the crevices
To become Swiss.
The old men folded up their chairs and
The daddies went down to
The piazza to drink.

At the top of the hill
We cupped our small hands to our mouths
And giggled because hiding was fun.
Flash light beams darted amongst the trees
At the top of the hill
When they came looking for us.
When they found us in the bathtub
Bathing in a pile of tile

That house at the top of the hill
Where fiestas were held on sweaty nights
Held memories for my family.
Returning now to the
Town tucked away in the Swiss-Italian Alps
I hear those same ghosts whispering
But they are whispering ancestral secrets
Into the curve of my ear,
Whispers I will remember even when I go back home.



Syncopation
by Claire G.

Clack clack claack
My grandmother jumps like a little brown bird,
whirling, stepping over the hollow poles
bamboo traps snapping
at ochre ankles in rhythmic time.

Clack clack claack
Schoolmates peer from black almond eyes
she hops and twirls to the syncopated braap-brap-brap
of the Arisaka rifles.
She dances the tinikling
to the beat of the firing squad.

The gauzy symphonic overtures of the West
pour frantically from a phonograph’s brassy throat—
but its staccatos and tremolos are too, too thin
to quell the angry spit of gunfire.
Bullets hurry forward, then settle
abruptly in pounding chests of sons of the republic.

Still dancing…
and the morbid percussion ends.
Wisps of anguish escape the lips of mothers and wives,
extinguished by the wails of the phonograph.
One thousand tiny eyes watch as the souls of their brothers
rise into the pink smoke sky.

With an upward glance and a whispered prayer
my grandmother continues to hop and twirl
to the clack-clack of bamboo
and the reverberating beat of the firing squad.




Anugraha Heights
by Runjini R.

Anugraha Heights pulls me into her soft insides; I climb
her foreign steps, the humidity placing pools of perspiration
into the curves of my arms. I want to fly back home,
cry into my Ninja Turtles pillow, where my tears
don’t mix with sweat. But Apu Mami points out the Bay of Bengal –
(the little children splash in her body) buys me an Arun Orange
(the sticky taste erect on my tongue) and flipping through Tagore,
wants me to love my mother’s country.

Under the perfunctory prose of Seaward Road,
the sweating current of sunned children, beside
the pillars of Krishna Koval, around the monolithic
art towards Mahabulipuram, it grew.
Muted obedience leaning
slightly towards interest, in the walk between
India’s gangling history and aggressive peace, I wanted
(first) more Arun Orange, and s l o w l y
more recapitulations.

Later when the thunder rolled, the family
moved upstairs to Meghna’s room; I tossed
my X-Men toys off the bed, so small
in relation to the huge rain. It fell on the house and
exotic plants, but our exotic insides were licked dry
with Ramayana stories and Cadbury Chocolate Crèmes.
As the lights slapped out, we formed
the ethnic lump of family, and
I admired triumphantly for India,
how Texas never saw this kind of rain.

Afterwards , Chennai was wearing pinpricks of light
on her black sari, and I roared passively through her pleats
in the Maruti, inhaling the explicit want
for permanent family.

And when the tears of departure
became tears for return, I couldn’t imagine India
flowering jasmine in the spring without me,
the Amar Chitra Kathas stacked like
cheap napkins in the bookshelf
and the chirping sounds of incensed Indian women
in nightly soap operas
pounding through the six-storied flat.

Poetry Friday: Fire Escape Contest Closes June 1st!

Since 2003, the Fire Escape has published poetry and short stories written by teens between cultures. I'm receiving entries for this year's contests until June 1st, and prizes will be announced June 30th. Feel free to pass on the details and rules, enjoy the short story winners here, and browse through the best poems from the past:

2006 Poetry Winners

First Prize:

Mel? by Amelia, Russia/Illinois, Age 15

Second Prize:

"Soy De" Means "I'm From" by Pedro, El Salvador/Kansas, Age 15

Third Prize:

Revolution by Amy, China/New Jersey, Age 16

2005 Poetry Winners

First Prize:

Two Worlds, Two Dreams by Andrea, Colombia/Florida, Age 17

Second Prize:

Dynasty or Wang Jo by Katherine, Korea/Georgia, Age 17

Third Prize:

Lumpia and Cornbread by Billimarie, Philippines/California, Age 17

2004 Poetry Winners

First Prize:

The Little Line by Cathy, China/Texas, Age 15

Second Prize:

Choosing Names by Grace, Singapore/California, Age 15

Third Prize:

Standing Strong by Beatrice, Philippines/California, Age 13

2003 Poetry Winners

First Prize:

Two Worlds by Natasha G., India/Alabama, Age 14

Second Prize:

The Perfect One by Zhan Tao Y., China/Nevada, Age 14

Third Prize:

From Russia With Love by Laura S., Russia/New York, Age 13

Poetry Friday: Limerick Contest Winners!

I'm delighted to announce the results of The Fire Escape's First Annual Bilbo Baggins Birthday Limerick Contest, where entrants had to provide the last rhyming line to one of two poems (it's my fault if you think they're terrible, as I provided the first four lines.) First, the limerick from readers to writers, which started like this:

From Reader To Writer

To imagine the best children's book,
You must closet yourself in a nook,
Forget fame and glory,
And just tell the story,
________________________.


There were several strong contenders in this category, but the winning last line comes from Jennifer, who grasps the fundamental challenge of the writing life.

From Reader To Writer

To imagine the best children's book,
You must closet yourself in a nook,
Forget fame and glory,And just tell the story,
You should hire a maid and a cook.

Next came the blogger to writer category, which started like this:

From Blogger To Writer

I'm not wantin' to put you to shame,
But I see you've been googlin' your name,
My stat counter's showin',
Your visits are growin',
________________________.


With her usual self-deprecatory humor, Mother Reader provided the winning entry:

From Blogger To Writer

I'm not wantin' to put you to shame,
But I see you've been googlin' your name,
My stat counter's showin',
Your visits are growin',
Too bad that my blog is so lame.

Jennifer and Pam, I'll be sending you packets of spicy hot mix and personalized copies of Rickshaw Girl, so please tell me if you want the books signed for particular person, library, or school. Congratulations, and thanks to the brave souls who submitted last lines and for all the birthday wishes.

Poetry Friday: Good Friday For The Foreigner

So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself. The chief priests picked up the coins and said, "It is against the law to put this into the treasury, since it is blood money." So they decided to use the money to buy the potter's field as a burial place for foreigners. (Source: The Gospel According to Matthew).

Good Friday For The Foreigner

by Mitali Perkins


The news spreads through our tents and shacks like birdsong:
We have some soil.

It’s strewn with shards of ceramic,
broken bits of pots and cups,
clay of no use or value.
I’ll pick them up, clean the ground with my hands,
and make a holy place.
I’ll water the dirt with my tears.

Who paid for it?

The piles of bodies had grown, the stench,
disease adding more to the heap.
We begged, we cried, we pleaded:
We die, too. We are not just passing through.
No word. A civic silence.

Who spoke for us?

The coins were stained with blood, we're told.
They were useless, too, like the clay, like the dead.
Now our bones, blood, and flesh
will mingle with theirs under the ground.
An inheritance for our beloved.
I weep, and bury, and kneel,
and whisper my thanks to the Unknown.

Poetry Friday For Dummies ...

... which means, of course, I qualify to write this post. I've been researching public domain, fair use, and copyright in the hopes of using two Sara Teasdale poems in First Daughter: White House Rules (Dutton 2008), and I thought I'd share a few excellent resources with other ignorant bloggers.

When it comes to fair use, public domain, and copyright issues, head straight to Stanford University's well-written, easy to understand summaries. Here's how to stay out of trouble when reproducing images, excerpts, and even linking to other sites and blogs. Law Professor Lawrence Lessig is the author behind the site, and his mission statement is to "free culture." Whether you agree or disagree, his vision is worth thinking about:

While new technologies always lead to new laws, never before have the big cultural monopolists used the fear created by new technologies, specifically the Internet, to shrink the public domain of ideas, even as the same corporations use the same technologies to control more and more what we can and can't do with culture. As more and more culture becomes digitized, more and more becomes controllable, even as laws are being toughened at the behest of the big media groups. What's at stake is our freedom--freedom to create, freedom to build, and ultimately, freedom to imagine.

I know there's controversy over how much of our creative output can or should be in the public domain, but I recommend three tools as the way to make sure you're in compliance if you want to reproduce other people's creations. To find works in the public domain (meaning you may reproduce them sans permission):

• use the search engines at the Gutenberg Library (download over 20,000 books in the public domain);
• try Creative Commons (goal: to build a layer of reasonable, flexible copyright in the face of increasingly restrictive default rules);
• or do a search on Google Books, where if a work is presented in full view, it's in the public domain (select the button labeled "full view" before you do your search).

In short, you may publish a full work on your blog if it was published before 1923 in the United States. Other rules apply to works created between 1922-1978 (generally protected for 95 years from original publication date if proper copyright formalities were followed), and since 1978 (generally protected for the life of the author plus 70 years.)

As for excerpts or snippets, fair use allows you to copy small portions of a work for "certain purposes such as scholarship or commentary." There are no hard and fast rules as to the number of words you may reproduce, but four factors come into play, and "the less you take, the more likely that your copying will be excused as a fair use. However, even if you take a small portion of a work, your copying will not be a fair use if the portion taken is the 'heart' of the work. In other words, you are more likely to run into problems if you take the most memorable aspect of a work."

Bottom line: take the time to find out if you're violating copyright law. As St. Paul would say, I've been the "chief of sinners," so I'm going to wend my way through my archives and wrest the Fire Escape into compliance. Please let me know if any information in this post is faulty, and I'll fix accordingly.

Update: As for reproducing book covers on your site/blog, a question raised in the comments section, I'm (tentatively) going ahead with it. An article by Carrie Russell in the 7/1/06 issue of School Library Journal argues that covers are in the "fair use" category. Amazon was recently challenged on the book cover issue, and won. It seems, then, that it's legal for online booksellers to reproduce covers, so if we link to and derive the image from a bookseller, we may be safe. Of course, I have absolutely no legal qualifications, so if anybody wants to chime in, please do so ...

Poetry Friday: Saint Patrick's Prayer

In honor of my friends with Irish heritage, and for those of us who need power to create, I offer this excerpt from the prayer inscribed on Saint Patrick's breastplate:

I bind to myself today
The power of Heaven,
The light of the sun,
The brightness of the moon,
The splendour of fire,
The flashing of lightning,
The swiftness of wind,
The depth of sea,
The stability of earth,
The compactness of rocks.

Poetry Friday: Winter, Shakespeare's Way

It's 9 degrees here, with sidewalks like glass. A tropical girl gets frostbitten fast, so I'm staying on the Fire Escape just long enough to present an excerpt from Love's Labour Lost, Act V, Scene IV. Kindly replace the word "Marion" with "Mitali."

When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp’d and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit;
Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marion’s nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit;
Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

Poetry Friday: Fire Escape Poetry Contests

Did you know that the Fire Escape is accepting entries for the fourth annual poetry and short fiction contests? Writers must be teens "between cultures" (find more about the rules here), and I'm delighted to present the winning poems and stories from the past three years. Please spread the word, as this year's contest closes by the first of June and (cash) prizes are sent out by the Fourth of July.

For this week's Poetry Friday, I offer the winning poem from the 2006 contest, written by Amelia, age 15:

Mel?

an onion dome of gold
defies the pale blue sky
and glitters like a Christmas card
the small Orthodox church, a time machine beckoning
to a place lost but remembered in dreams
a genetic gift
as tangible as eyes the color of the Baltic sea

American Idol is on
and i should be watching it
but instead i find myself
lighting a candle
and breathing in incense so pungent
it makes my nose bleed

instead i find myself
in the remnant of a world
that smells of boiled cabbage
and feels like velvet
because it is lent
even in New York
and my Russianness clings to me
like soot on a humid city morning

i would like to tell you that i feel out of place
surrounded by old women dressed in black
whose prayers sound like chickens cackling softly
my ears not attuned to a choir singing in Old Church Slavonic
a language nobody seems to understand

born Yemelia Nikolayevna
i am now Mel
just Mel
Mel who wears birthday-cake lipgloss and lavendar flip-flops
who takes hip-hop on Thursday night
and knows pizza is far superior
to paper-thin pancakes stuffed with fish eggs

but somehow the deep, gold smell of the incense
and the glow of fragile white candles
and the walls filled with sad, dark saints
tell me otherwise

for when the fates were weaving my future
they used a memory yarn
that keeps stretching back
to its original shape

Poetry Friday: Otherwise

Note the time of this post (12:49 a.m.) as I struggle to complete my revision of First Daughter: White House Rules (sequel to book one in a YA series from Dutton, First Daughter: Extreme American Makeover, which, thank heavens, is done and off to the presses.) When I'm under the dark cloud of pressure like this, I turn to Jane Kenyon's wise, graceful words for solace, and my favorite perspective-inducing poem is Otherwise. Enjoy, and join me in giving thanks for two strong legs, sweet milk, the work we love, silver candlesticks, and a bed in a room with paintings on the walls. For Ms. Kenyon, it is otherwise now, but I'm convinced she's still writing poems there.

Poetry Friday: Benediction

The ancient spruce in stately stillness receives it.
Flagstones glisten like copper platters, rinsed from a day's use.
Hostas, glossy and open-palmed, quiver in delight.
Weeping, a Japanese cherry bows even lower.

— Mitali Perkins

Poetry Friday: Wordsworth, Bengali-Style

Dinner party in our Flushing apartment. Six or seven heavy saucepans simmering on the stove; three rice cookers stuffed with biryani made the day before. Ma, bedecked in a banarasi saree and bejeweled in her bridal gold, stuffing tomato halves with egg salad. The apartment, spotless, chairs borrowed from a neighbor waiting in semi-circles for guests to claim. Baba, buzzing people into the lobby, throwing open the door and greeting friends with jokes and compliments.

Loud laughter fills the hallway as people wait to take off shoes and kids head into our bedroom to play Carrom, Scrabble, or 29 with cards. Inevitably, someone pulls out Ma's harmonium, and a Tagore song's sinuous, minor-key melody saddens my seven-year-old soul, even though I don't get the high Bangla lyrics.

Then Baba calls for quiet. It's time to recite the poems he's been helping us memorize over the past several weeks. He picked a Tagore poem for Sonali, Have You Not Heard His Silent Steps?, and she delivers it flawlessly in Bangla and English. Rupali produces I Remember, I Remember by Thomas Hood and the room murmurs with the sentiment of gazing back at a childhood home. When it's my turn, I clasp my hands behind my back, gaze up at the ceiling just as Baba taught us, and launch into William Wordsworth's Daffodils:

I wandered lonely as a Cloud
That floats on high o'er Vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: --
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company:
I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.

Baba is listening with eyes closed, holding the tape recorder's mike in front of my mouth. I have no idea what "pensive" or "jocund" or "sprightly" mean, I've never seen daffodils, and I can't know that this very poem will leap into mind intact every April in New England decades down the road. But when I'm done, my eyes go immediately to Baba's face, and judging by the pleasure I see there, I know we've succeeded once again in giving our guests the incomparable gift of a poem.

Poetry Friday: Tagore's Old And New

It's impossible to understand modern Bengali culture without grasping the impact of the poetry and songs written by Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941). I hesitate to share English versions of his poems because you won't get the elegance of meter and rhyme and the nuance of image and metaphor. Nonetheless, I offer the poem recited by my sister during our wedding, "Old and New," a poem/prayer that my Grandfather gave as a gift to his "alien" American grandson-in-law (as translated by Tagore himself in Gitanjali):

Old and New

Thou hast made me known to friends whom I knew not.

Thou hast given me seats in homes not my own.

Thou hast brought the distant near and made a brother of the stranger.

I am uneasy at heart when I have to leave my accustomed shelter;

I forget that there abides the old in the new,

and that there also thou abidest.

Through birth and death, in this world or in others,

wherever thou leadest me it is thou, the same,

the one companion of my endless life

who ever linkest my heart with bonds of joy to the unfamiliar.

When one knows thee, then alien there is none, then no door is shut.

Oh, grant me my prayer that I may never lose

the bliss of the touch of the one

in the play of many.