I could hardly wait in the summer for the bookmobile to stop on my street. I loved listening to stories being told. Then once, on Christmas, I got some books. I wasn’t sure why all the words looped around my breath. Jumbles of traffic jams flipping forward and backward as if diving into oceans of alphabet soup. Letters jumping rope all over the pages. At times I couldn’t even write the words without them tangling like balls of yarn. One sentence, an hour-long highway of loops and zagging words. OH, the stories I could write and tell, but I had wondered if books love me. Until, at thirty-three, I read some poems. At first they seemed to laugh out nonsense letters till my breath sounded them out into perfect rhymes. Rhyme skipped rope into stories and without a doubt, I finally knew, books love me too.
Marcus Ewert has challenged us to write love poems this month– about relationships that seem unrequited, but which end up being requited after all. Click HERE for more details.
Send
your poem to TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com, or use the contact
form in the sidebar to the right. All contributions will be included in
a wrap-up celebration on Friday, October 30th, and one lucky
participant will win an autographed copy of his fabulous new picture book:
Marcus Ewert has challenged us to write love poems this month– about relationships that seem unrequited, but which end up being requited after all. Click HERE for more details.
Send
your poem to TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com, or use the contact
form in the sidebar to the right. All contributions will be included in
a wrap-up celebration on Friday, October 30th, and one lucky
participant will win an autographed copy of his fabulous new picture book:
Trail weary from chasing down Rhyme Crime desperados and haulin’ em off to the hoosegow, you slip through the doors of the Tanglefoot Saloon. But before you can sidle up the bar and order a tall cool one, a flicker of something soft and slippery catches your eye.
Dagnabit. It’s Singsong Sal, come to spoil your poetry.
Singsong Sal isn’t a hardened criminal, not like those other pesky polecats we’ve been arresting. She doesn’t break the rules of rhyme but she’s trouble all the same. She can take your rhyme and turn it into such a monotonous misery that any editor worth her salt will run for the hills.
Time to change it up, quick!
If you’ve been following along with our Rhyme Crime articles, chances are you’re feeling pretty good about your rhyme right now. You’ve got the meter solid as a rock, you haven’t let weasel words sneak in and there’s not a close rhyme in sight. It’s clap along, tap along perfection.
And that might just be a little TOO perfect.
Remember those long epic poems you read in high school or college – that went on and on in the same unvarying cadence?
On the shores of Gitche Gumee, Of the shining Big-Sea-Water, Stood Nokomis, the old woman, Pointing with her finger westward, O'er the water pointing westward, To the purple clouds of sunset...
Excerpt from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha" (Read the rest here.)
I’ll confess I never made it past three or four stanzas. My apologies to all those who were Hiawatha fans. It wasn’t what Longfellow was saying, I love Native American legends to this day. It was how he was saying it, that droning tick tock sameness. When a verse, even the best poetry, marches along in lockstep, never varying – it can fall from smooth right into …
That’s the last thing we want an editor to do. So let’s take a look at a few cures if your verse has the Singsong Sal blues.
Give your verses a dancing partner:
Try the “verse – chorus” two-step.
Ah, the magic of a repeated chorus – the part of the song we actually know all the words to, when everyone chimes in. It can be as simple as a phrase or a couplet. It doesn’t even have to rhyme. (GASP!!) What a chorus can’t be is the exact same line length and rhythm of your verses.
Here’s an example from the great Shel Silverstein, just in time for the Halloween season:
Down in Lou´siana where the black trees grow Lives a voodoo lady named Marie Laveaux. She’s got a black cat tooth and a mojo bone, And anyone wouldn´t leave her alone.
She goes GREEEEEEEEEEEE... Another man done gone.
She lives in a swamp in a hollow log With a one-eyed snake and a three-legged dog. She’s got a bent bony body and stringy hair, And if she ever sees you messin´ around there,
Shel uses just seven words and or six words and one shriek, and snap! He’s avoided the singsong repetition and he gets audience participation, whether they’re singing along (yes, you can find it on YouTube) or young readers are shouting it out. The structure is basic and predictable, but in an entertaining, engaging way.
Sometimes it takes a bit more than just a phrase to keep the story flowing. Maybe you need a regular four or six line chorus. Don’t let that worry you. It’s the change in reading rhythm that matters. And while you’re dancing those verses around, remember you’re not limited to the two step.
You can vary it to a cha-cha:
Verse-verse-chorus. Verse-verse-chorus.
Like this fun old gospel tune:
Down in the town where I was born there was a haunted house and all the folks that passed that way would creep by, like a mouse.
Now Cap’n John who owned that house had died some years before. but neighbors claimed they’d seen him there still standing in the door.
That old house is ha’nted. Folks take it for granted. If you’re down in that part of town don’t you go near that house!
Soon every night the strangest sounds would come from out that way. Those ghosts would carry on all night ‘til roosters crowed for day.
Old Deacon Brown was bold and brave at least that’s what he said. He’d often claimed he’d liked to talk and mingle with the dead.
That old house is ha’nted. Folks take it for granted. If you’re down in that part of town don’t you go near that house!
A prize was offered to the man He might be black or white Who’d stay there in the cap’n house So folks could sleep at night
Deacon Brown was bold, he said, And so he promised us That he would stay out there a week And stop that spectral fuss
Excerpt from "That Ole House is Ha’nted" by Jester Hairston
It’s up to you how often you break up the verses, and how long the chorus lasts. The choices are endless and there are no rules. Well, there is one rule, and Louis says it best:
Let your caboose loose.
Maybe you’re a rebel. You need to spice up that rhyme, but anything as traditional as verse-chorus is NOT for you. Great! Break out of the mold and try something surprising. How about a single line refrain that comes FIRST in each stanza?
I was a teenage creature. I was a junior wolfman, at night there’s a werewolf moon. Come and hold my hairy hand down at the black lagoon.
I was a teenage creature. I’m covered with a lizard scale. I’ve got to cut a hole in my jeans to wag my slimy tail.
I was a teenage creature I was a teenage vampire, a rock and rolling ghoul. Won’t you let a Dracula walk you home from school?
Excerpt from "Teenage Creature" by Lord Luther Music & Lyrics by Ric Masten, Don Stevens Les Cangas Music Publishing, 1958
It’s quirky, but it works. Maybe it works because it’s quirky – you be the judge.
Shake an extra leg:
Change your verse to use nonstandard stanzas.
This solution takes a bit more work, but it can have some startlingly good results. An unexpected stanza structure might seem a bit unbalanced at first, but that’s precisely the point. It keeps your reader from falling into a samey-samey sleepwalk. Take a risk and shorten one line, lengthen one line or even add a line at the end to make a five line stanza. See what it does for the offbeat flavor of this H.P. Lovecraft poem:
The steeples are white in the wild moonlight, And the trees have a silver glare; Past the chimneys high see the vampires fly, And the harpies of upper air, That flutter and laugh and stare.
For the village dead to the moon outspread Never shone in the sunset's gleam, But grew out of the deep that the dead years keep Where the rivers of madness stream Down the gulfs to a pit of dream.
Excerpt from H.P. Lovecraft's "Hallowe’en in a Suburb" (Read the rest here.)
The odd structure adds to the weird feeling the poem evokes, in my opinion. It might not be the right choice for a different topic, but that’s where your writer’s instinct comes in.
There are so many options and so little time to try them all. I’m sorry to say there’s no short cut, the one easy-peasy recipe for this step. You have to feel the rhythm of your story as a whole and tweak it in just the right spots. Sometimes you’ll get your rhyme out on the dance floor and bust a move. Other times you’ll tweak something and bust a leg instead. That’s why we call her slippery Singsong Sal. Getting her to vamoose can feel like one step forward, two steps back.
It’s a little like a cha-cha – or a do-si-do – don’t you think? And on that note, I’ll leave you with a bit of Bugs Bunny square dance inspiration. Thanks for joining me on another Rhyme Crime Investigation. Now get out there and get your verses dancing!
Thanks, Carrie!
(Just so long as I do-si-don't land myself in Rhyme Crime incarceration.)
Carrie Clickard is an internationally published author
and poet whose career also spans graphic design, illustration and
film. Her first picture book, VICTRICIA MALICIA, debuted in 2012 from
Flashlight Press. Forthcoming books are MAGIC FOR SALE (Holiday House, 2016) and THOMAS JEFFERSON & THE MAMMOTH HUNT (Simon and Schuster, 2017). Her poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous
anthologies and periodicals including Spider, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Clubhouse, Spellbound, Penumbra, Haiku of the Dead, Underneath the Juniper Tree, Inchoate Echoes, and The Brisling Tide.
In case you missed last week's spotlight interview with Marcus Ewert, he's challenged us to write love poems this month– about relationships that seem unrequited, but which end up being requited after all. Click HERE for more details. Featured this week were poems by Janie Lazo, B.J. Lee, and my daughter Miranda.
Marcus Ewert has challenged us to write love poems this month– about relationships that seem unrequited, but which end up being requited after all. Click HERE for more details.
Send
your poem to TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com, or use the contact
form in the sidebar to the right. All contributions will be included in
a wrap-up celebration on Friday, October 30th, and one lucky
participant will win an autographed copy of his fabulous new picture book:
Marcus Ewert has challenged us to write love poems this month– about relationships that seem unrequited, but which end up being requited after all. Click HERE for more details.
Send
your poem to TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com, or use the contact
form in the sidebar to the right. All contributions will be included in
a wrap-up celebration on Friday, October 30th, and one lucky
participant will win an autographed copy of his fabulous new picture book:
I crave her silky softness As her slender body moves Graceful passes so alluring Still my touch she dares reprove When I call to her she listens But to hasten? no not she Though I beckon - she ignores me Too aloof to hear my pleas So I sit alone in silence I'm no fool, I shall not beg Then this flighty, flirty, vixen Soon is rubbing on my leg
Marcus Ewert has challenged us to write love poems this month– about relationships that seem unrequited, but which end up being requited after all. Click HERE for more details.
Send
your poem to TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com, or use the contact
form in the sidebar to the right. All contributions will be included in
a wrap-up celebration on Friday, October 30th, and one lucky
participant will win an autographed copy of his fabulous new picture book:
Next, I picked up his award-winning 10,000 DRESSES (Seven Stories Press, 2008). It's about a transgender child who dreams of wearing magical dresses, like one "made of crystals that flashed rainbows in the sun" or another "made of windows, which showed the Great Wall of China and the Pyramids." Not only did Marcus fill an important need by addressing gender identity in a picture book, but he did so with heart and his characteristic imagination. 10,000 DRESSES has since been incorporated into anti-bullying curricula throughout the English-speaking world.
Earlier this year, when I discovered a new rhyming picture book was on the way, I jumped at the opportunity to feature Marcus on Today's Little Ditty. My next available opening was October. Mummies... Halloween... purrfect! Little did I know that MUMMY CAT would be so much more than a seasonal book. It is a treasure at any time of year.
The foundation of this book is a compelling story about a mummified cat who wakes for one night each hundred years to search the tomb for his beloved mistress, Queen Hatshupset. At the same time, we witness another, more perilous story that plays out in the murals on the walls. Elegantly designed, Lisa Brown's gorgeous and detailed illustrations capture the feel of ancient Egyptian art, and are truly a feast for the eyes.
On top of that, you'll find layer upon layer of intriguing information for young Egyptologists– about ancient Egyptian royalty and culture, their reverence of cats, the practice of mummification, a large assortment of ancient Egyptian artifacts, plus, at the back, a glossary of hieroglyphics to find within the pages of the book. This is not a one-time read. Children will be poring over and "unwrapping" the story of MUMMY CAT again and again. But now, my friends, let's delve into the mystery of Marcus Ewert. Who IS this man who lives in an honest-to-goodness turret and is allergic to cats (except for the mummy variety)?
Perhaps a few favorites will give us some clues....
Favorite color: Green Favorite sound: Rainfall Favorite children’s book: The Hobbit Favorite country you’d like to visit: Finland! And Iceland! Favorite children’s poet: Dr. Seuss(I liked him just ok as a kid, but I really love his work now, as an adult. Faultless euphony.) Favorite subject in school: History, hands down! Favorite quote: “Candor ends paranoia.” ~Allen Ginsberg
What drives you to write for children and what do you enjoy most about being a children’s author?
All the books that had the biggest influence on me were ones I read as a kid. Kids react to life in such a primal way – they haven’t learned how to hold anything back. So they throw themselves into books in a way we adults never can. Why wouldn’t you want to write for such an amazing, rapt audience?
Besides, you can be way more creative in a kids’ book. Kids take whatever you tell them as ground-zero. I could say to a kid: “Once upon a time there was a world made entirely out of kites. The people were kites, the trees were kites, and all of the buildings and rivers and mountains were kites too.”
And a kid would be like, “Yes. And then what happened?” No hesitation. That’s priceless.
Can you tell us a little about your writing routine?
Oh man! It’s taken me years and years to get to a routine that’s workable for me. I had a boyfriend once who wrote for hours and hours a day, every day, and although I can do that sometimes, when I judge myself by a 9-5, five days a week schedule, I’m doomed. It’s taken me a very long time to be ok with the fact that sometimes I can only write for four minutes at a time, before I get too worked up. My current goal is an hour a day, which often looks like twenty minutes in the morning, seven minutes on the bus, ten minutes on a break at work, another seven minutes later, two minutes here, five minutes there... whatever it takes to add up to sixty. May I also just take a moment to say that my very first boyfriend (not the guy cited above) was the poet Allen Ginsberg? I say this not to brag (okay, 5% bragging) but instead to say how DISempowering this was for me. Allen was very dismissive of my writing for a long, long time and that utterly paralyzed me. It took me a long long long time to feel confidence in my own poetic voice and compass. I have a hefty inner critic anyway; a lot of my daily craft and discipline involves facing down my myriad fears and anxieties. Three minutes of writing at a time, sometimes is all I can muster! Or two minutes! Or one! You have to sneak past your inner critic however you possibly can.
What inspired MUMMY CAT?
I was thinking about what might make for a cool kids’ book, and I landed on ‘mummy.’ But mummies have been done before, a lot. So I mashed ideas up in my head: mummy robot, mummy dentist, mummy dog, mummy...cat! “Ooh, a mummy cat!” I thought. “That’s a great idea - and the Ancient Egyptians did mummify cats, so that even makes it historical...” And as soon as I had that title/concept, “Mummy Cat,” I immediately I saw the long, lean form of a mummified cat – very horizontal – and he was padding down these long horizontal halls, and over his head long horizontal murals stretched. And I knew the story would be told in verse, in long, horizontal lines, and that the meter would be the footfalls of this dead cat as he strode the long halls... a soft, funereal tread...
So the whole thing came to me very clearly, in other words. And I knew at once that the murals above the cat’s head would be bright colorful scenes of when he was alive, and they would contrast with his dull, dry, dusty gray present existence, and they’d torment him. They’d invoke all this longing in him.
Another point of inspiration for the book: the very first thing I ever wanted to be as a kid was an Egyptologist! So working on Mummy Cat was a way to cherry-pick from that treasured childhood dream. One last impetus/influence/inspiration: How sad I was as a very young kid - as a very young gay kid - whenever I heard “Puff the Magic Dragon.” It was about two male characters who loved each other – it was, in fact, the ONLY example I had of two male characters who were explicitly said to have love for each other – i.e., not familial love, but instead love for each other as individuals – and then the boy totally turns his back on the magical creature and abandons him! And then- and it’s utterly heartbreaking - Puff is left alone in the gloom, completely bereft, voiceless, despairing, and - my god! - even his scales are “falling like rain” – in a kind of depression-induced dragon-mange! This KILLED me as a kid! If someone would just turn Jackie Paper around, and let him see what his once-friend was going through! Surely, surely, he’d feel some sympathy! So, in Mummy Cat, I wanted the book to have that same terrible longing and sadness... but I ALSO wanted the love between the human and the magical creature to be REQUITED. Hat-shup-set adores Mummy Cat just as much as he adores her. She wants them to be re-united just as much as he does. I desperately wanted that parity.
In the making of a picture book, usually there is little, if any, communication between author and illustrator. But for MUMMY CAT, you were able to meet with Lisa Brown and develop the rich layering of the story together. Can you describe for us what those meetings with Lisa were like?
We both live in beautiful San Francisco - in adjacent neighborhoods, even - so it was easy for us to meet in person and discuss. Let me back up a second: before working with Lisa, for about a year, I was working on the Mummy Cat poem myself, in private, very very slowly and painstakingly (see question #2). Sometimes it took me a month or more to complete even a single couplet. And I hadn’t shown the piece to ANYONE. But, all along, as I was working, I pictured Lisa’s artwork illustrating the poem - even though I didn’t even know Lisa’s art all that well, at the time!
VAMPIRE BOY'S GOOD NIGHT
by Lisa Brown (HarperCollins, 2010)
Click HERE to watch trailer.
I really just knew one book by her: Vampire Boy's Good Night. But always, as I kept plodding along on Mummy Cat, my inner voice said: “Lisa Brown does the art. Lisa Brown does the art.” My inner voice was insistent that she was the illustrator for the book, no argument. But I only knew Lisa a little bit at this point. And was very nervous about imposing too much on our nascent friendship. Thus, I was too shy to ask her outright to illustrate the book. For one thing, what if she said no? I’d be so bummed! That said, from time to time, I’d post these little updates on Facebook, like “Mummy Cat stanza 14: complete!” And one day Lisa commented back: “I love drawing cats. Hint hint.” And I was floored. I immediately messaged her saying “OMG, you are who I’ve been picturing all along!” and she said, “Well, why don’t you send me the ms. and let me see.” And I DID send it to her, and I was SO nervous! I mean, in the privacy of my own heart, I thought the poem was pretty great, but maybe I was totally delusional? What if the poem made no sense at all, and had absolutely no narrative traction? (See my response above regarding all my doubts post-Allen Ginsberg!) Luckily, she really, really liked it - and Lisa doesn’t even like rhyming books! But she liked this one. And so we began working together (all of this is still probably about two years before we submitted it for publication anywhere). Okay, so once we were “officially” working together, we’d meet every few weeks at a great tea house here in town called Samovar. And, as I remember it, a lot of what we were doing was “merely” gushing about how cool ancient Egypt was, and wouldn’t it be cool if we included X and Y in the book? Hieroglyphs, for instance.
On a more technical note: Lisa is a very good editor, and she made some great redactions to my text, especially at the end, which originally rambled on a bit. She just flat-out chopped a few couplets. For the better. And the whole back-story, regarding Hat-shup-set’s evil sister, that all springs from Lisa! (Lisa’s such a fan of Edward Gorey!) And I offered some not-too-unclever (IMHO) thoughts/feedback about a few of Lisa’s spreads. And then of course, once Anne Hoppe at Clarion Books bought the book, we both worked with her (and with our art director) very closely. So then even more elements got teased out and combed, and then even more tightly and gracefully interwoven.
Would you share a favorite selection from MUMMY CAT?
I like this section because it’s very earthy and concrete (something Allen always would get on my case about!). (Boy, I seem to be mentioning him a lot on this interview! Well, why not? Clearly he was a big influence on me, for good and for bad.) The details are very specific, and very cat-like, I think. And yet these specific, natural details are being used to paint a very supernatural picture: a mummified cat is rising from the dead (again). Also, points to me for spelling rustling with extra s’s, to get some onomatopoeia in there. Also, points to me for remembering to include details that are auditory as well as visual.
According to the informational section at the back of your book, “the Ancient Egyptians had many different beliefs about souls and the afterlife, but generally they believed that a properly mummified person would spend eternity enjoying the things with which he or she had been buried.” If you were “properly mummified,” what would you hope to have in your tomb?
Books, books, books, and books. Books to read and books to write in. Pens. And internet access.
Can you give us a hint about what’s coming up next for you?
Well, Lisa and I definitely want to work on another book together, and we’re mulling over several different idea-babies. And I’m working on a middle-grade sequel to my very first book, the transgender-themed children’s picture-book 10,000 Dresses. The sequel is called Bailey & the Valentine Castle. And I have a bunch of other picture-book ideas: we’ll just see which one gels first and/or most successfully. And finally, I’m working on a very very long rhyming epic called The Zillion Scoops. It’s like The Divine Comedy meets Animal Farm meets There’s a Wocket in My Pocket. It’s for older-aged kids than Mummy Cat is, though it’s possible that’s it’s ultimately for a very fervent audience of just one person: me. We’ll see!
If you had all the world’s children in one room, what would you tell them?
10 year old Marcus at a Japanese temple
Please be very nice to each other. Insults and meanness can be incredibly cruel. Just like you, everybody on the planet has something that they struggle with, something that’s very hard for them. And most of them time, we can’t see what they’re struggling with: it’s invisible to us. So please, don’t add to anyone else’s invisible struggles with meanness or cruelty. Similarly, please don’t be mean to yourself. Don’t insult yourself, don’t harshly compare yourself to someone else. Something that might be very easy for someone else might be incredibly hard for you. Please try to give yourself the love and understanding and encouragement that you would give to a dear friend.
Finally, please tell us what you have chosen as this month’s ditty challenge.
Write about a long-time love that seems unrequited, but which ends up being requited after all. Is that too heavy for a ‘ditty’? It could be about your [un]requited love for ice cream... or maybe the [un]requited love between ice cream and a waffle cone– that totally counts!
Are you kidding? I LOVE it!
...but does it love me back? Probably too soon to tell.
Please join me in thanking Marcus for today's interview, and also for generously offering a copy of MUMMY CAT, signed by both Lisa Brown and himself, to one lucky participant in this month's DMC challenge! A random drawing will be held at the end of the month.
HOW TO PARTICIPATE:
Throughout the month, send your love poem to TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail
(dot) com or use the contact form in the sidebar to the right.
For children under 13 who would like to participate, please read my COPPA compliance statement located below the contact form.
BLOGGER FRIENDS: Thank you for publishing your poems on your own
blogs– I love that! Please also remember to send me a copy of your
poem or a direct link to your post. That way I know I have your
permission to post your poem on Today's Little Ditty.
Some poems may be published on the blog as daily ditties, but all of
them will appear in a wrap-up celebration on Friday, October 30th, 2015.
Last month's ME poem challenge, courtesy of Lee Bennett Hopkins, was all I expected and more. With fulsome thanks, I must echo Lee's comment on the celebration post:
"THERE is SO much herein; SO much within; SO much therein. Thanks to all of you for reaching back, giving forward."
Random.org has determined that the winner of an autographed copy of JUMPING OFF LIBRARY SHELVES: A BOOK OF POEMS selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins, with
illustrations by Jane Manning is:
JESSICA BIGI – Congratulations, Jessica!
In celebration of Poetry Friday and diversity, Heidi Mordhorst has a juicy little roundup for us today at my juicy little universe.
