poetry Archives - Caroline Starr Rose

Words Inspiring Words

An oldie but goodie I like to pull out for National Poetry Month. My words inspired by Sharon Creech’s verse novel, Love That Dog, which was inspired by Walter Dean Myers’s poem, “Love That Boy“.

Words count.
All words,
and giving voice to those children
who don’t yet know their power
is to open the world.

Mrs. Stretchberry
knows how to woo her student Jack,
understands how to draw from him
phrases that play with shapes and sounds,
stanzas that speak to the pain
of loss
and love
and memory.

During a school year
where poetry is a regular part of things,
words work deep,
settle,
unfold,
grow
as Jack does
from a boy who thinks
writing poetry is to
“make
short
lines”
to one who finds the courage —
through the structure, voice,
and style of others —
to speak his own.

“Was it like me
when I didn’t think
my words
were
poems?”
Jack asks Mrs. Stretchberry,
and I am firm in the knowing that
teachers reach into lives,
authors speak directly to their readers,
words make impact,
transform,
compel,
demand response
every time
they’re heard.

Poetry is
as sweet as
a dog lolling in the afternoon sun,
is
as painful as
“that straggly furry
smiling
dog
Sky”
hit by a car,
sprawled on the road
“with his legs bent funny,”
taken in a moment from the boy
who’d picked him from the shelter
“with his paws curled
around the wire
and his long red tongue
hanging out
and his big black eyes
looking a little sad
and his long tail
wag-wag-wagging
as if he were saying
Me me me! Choose me!”

It is in the writing down
that loss becomes more than sorrow:
It becomes a touchstone for all who encounter
the memory,
even when it’s not their own.
Poetry is
a balm,
a battle cry,
a picture that says
this is what it means to see.

Some like to debate
the merit of the verse novel:
Is it a collection of poems tied together through story?
A hybrid somehow lesser than?
Words spoken by a blind man long ago?
A tale stripped bare, chopped to pieces for effect?

And yet,
whatever the definition,
there is no denying verse novels
open the way of rhythm,
expose through brevity
true abundance,
give readers room to live in the midst of language
rich and intricate,
stilted,
jarring,
beautiful and barren.
Sharon Creech tells a whole story
in a handful of poems,
accents Jack’s world with authenticity
that would have been lost in a jumble of prose.

Poetry gives
Jack the room to experiment with writing
and pushes him beyond,
allows him to dream
an Important Poet cares —
lets that dream come true
when Walter Dean Myers,
true poet
who inspires Jack’s bravest work,
walks into Jack’s fictitious world
and takes notice of the boy who
Loves That Dog.

Classroom Connections: All of Me by Chris Baron

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age range: 9-11 years
genre / form / topics : contemporary fiction; verse novel; body image
setting: San Francisco
Chris Baron’s website

If you have ever felt lost in the world, betrayed by your body or buoyed by a glimmer of hope or the glow of friendship, then All of Me could be your story, too.
–The Los Angeles Times

All of Me is for anyone who has been in search of a tribe, in love with a friend or in need of answers to questions that they can’t bring themselves to ask. In other words, everybody.
— San Diego Union Tribune

[A] beautifully written and psychologically acute debut. Readers will be glad to accompany Ari on his journey to self-discovery.
— Booklist magazine

Please tell us about your book.

ALL OF ME is set in San Francisco. It is the story of Ari Rosensweig, an overweight, seventh-grade boy who is an outcast. He loves cryptozoology and role-playing games. Ari is tired of being bullied and letting his weight define him. His parents’ marriage is struggling. They are too busy to focus on his life, much less help him with his already late bar mitzvah, and things take a turn for the worse. Ari’s mother, a painter and sculptor, decides to open an old gallery at the beach that summer. She puts him on a diet, and with the help of some unexpected friends, he tries to make a change physically, but that’s only the beginning of their adventures and the real change that comes. It’s a coming age of story about friendship, self-acceptance, and becoming all of who you are.

What inspired you to write this story?

It’s fun to say this — the LA TIMES called this a “fictional retelling,” so my inspiration comes from the life I have lived, my own struggles with weight, bullying, and trying to find my own way in the world — it’s also specifically tied to the magical summer in the Bay Area where the book takes place. I really do believe that middle grade — even with its wide range of ages — is a time of wonder and growth like no other. The experiences we have and the stories we read at this age are formative for how we see the world, find hope, and experience so many things.

And of course — my own, middle grade aged kids are teaching me that this age is crucial — kids are hopeful and brave, and we owe it to them to give them the best stories we can.

Could you share with readers how you conducted your research or share a few interesting tidbits you learned while researching?

I did quite a bit or research into my own Jewish heritage. I also had a lot of fun developing the setting by creating maps of what I called the “Triangle,” where Ari travels from San Francisco, to Mill Valley, to Stinson Beach, and everywhere in between. It was my way of making his journey more epic! I have pages filled with maps — some in water color-some just pencil scratches. I sat with my kids in the mornings, and we all made maps together.

I also researched about body image — male boy image especially — and the impact of diets on kids this age. I also did some interviews with psychologists and nutritionists about diet and perception. The most impactful was talking to kids — they helped me develop a bit more voice beyond my own for the authenticity for the characters.

Okay — one more interesting tidbit — some research was finding some of the people that the characters are based on and sharing some of the story with them—I really wanted to honor them in the story.

What are some special challenges associated with fictionalizing a true story?

Great question. I think that sometimes, in early drafts, I veered off into overly personal tangents that sort of trailed away from the core story. This is one of the blessings of an agent and editor who can see the story through such cohesive eyes.

Another challenge was the immediacy of the story. I wrote ALL OF ME in verse because I wanted to provide a more intimate and sometimes internal connection for the reader to be close to Ari’s thoughts — understand and hopefully “feel” what he feels in the story. At times this took massive revision because every single word really matters.

So many kid lit authors have incredibly poetic, lyrical lines in their prose, so the gap isn’t always that wide. I think that poetry speaks to the heart. We see with more than just our eyes, and the music of poetry helps to make words sing directly to us.

As I get to talk to more kids and teachers, I’m finding that poetry relates to all kinds of readers. There is space on the page, measured breaks, pacing, music, and movement of lines that a reader of almost any level can find their way into. The structure of verse creates an intimacy with a reader that allows them to hear the tone and cadence of a character’s voice. This can create even stronger connections for readers.

I also have to mention one other challenge:

Writing is so emotional. My family did an incredible job of supporting me through the process. But for long periods I really had to focus on discovering how to write something vulnerable in long stretches and still be a decent husband, father professor, and all the rest.

What topics does your book touch upon that would make it a perfect fit for the classroom?

I want to shout something like self-confidence! Self-acceptance! Hope! Adventure! I hope readers will learn about empathy and kindness for others, Jewish culture and tradition — but also about the sacred in general, overcoming struggles with body image, friendship, taking risks, and learning more about being brave and being themselves no matter what. I hope readers, especially the young ones, will know that if they are going through difficult things like the characters in the book, they will know that they are not alone.

I’m definitely looking forward to engaging with teachers, librarians, and students to talk about all of these themes!

What is Poetry?

In Celebration of the Verse Novel

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In my teaching years, no matter where I happened to live or what grade I was teaching, when I asked my students to define poetry they would all tell me the same thing: Poetry is about love and flowers. These upper elementary and middle school kids were saying more than they realized. They were revealing they’d already latched onto the message that poetry isn’t for everyone — just the people who are fans of sappy sorts of things.

Every year I tried to prove this idea wrong. I’d read my kids poetry about sports and vacuum cleaners, about growing into too big feet and laughing when you shouldn’t. We’d hunt down perfect poems to exchange with secret pals, sing Emily Dickinson’s lines to the tune of Gilligan’s Island (Try it! It works!), and share memorized poems in our classroom version of a beatnik coffeehouse. In one of my favorite lessons, we’d read aloud Robert Frost’s “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening,” clapping out the beats as we chanted the words. Sometimes we’d add in some funky rhythm, and half the room would whisper train-like chu-chu-DU sounds that lined up perfectly with each clap. Then we’d swap roles, playing with the poem’s sound and meter again and again. One year a student pulled out his trombone and blurped along to the beat. It was a magical moment, our own poetry happening.

Those kids who’d said weeks before that poetry was about flowers and love? They weren’t buying it anymore.

That sort of transformation is what I experienced the first time I picked up a verse novel. It was Karen Hesse’s Out of the Dust, and when I closed the book I had changed. The story was raw and beautiful, its spare language a straight shot to my heart. I’d climbed into Billie Jo’s skin and left myself behind. The same thing happened when I read Sharon Creech’s Heartbeat:

Thump-thump, thump-thump
bare feet hitting the grass
as I run run run
in the air and like the air
weaving through the trees
skimming over the ground

In reading those first lines I was with my students again, our hearts-beating-hands-clapping. Verse novels pushed me one step closer to the world on the page. Each word spoke doubly — first telling the story, second helping me feel it.

My students were right about the love thing. Poetry heightens the emotions. And verse novels made stories come alive for me in a way they never had before.

For a genre like historical fiction that is often viewed as distant or hard to understand, verse becomes a beautiful fit. It strips away the unnecessary and gives readers an intimate picture of a book’s central characters. I stumbled into writing my first verse novel, May B., a survival story set in 1870s Kansas, when I realized my early writing efforts felt lifeless. Once I went back to my research and re-read the private writings of frontier women, I realized I could most honestly tell May’s story through mirroring their spare language. Instead of explaining, I could let the words speak for themselves. I could get out of the way.

I chose verse deliberately for Blue Birds, my historical novel about the Lost Colony of Roanoke. My favorite passages come from the poems Alis and Kimi share. Here are two girls from two entirely different worlds who nevertheless become friends. The structure of these dual-voice poems speak the story visually. They invite the reader to look and listen in as the girls move from distrust to curiosity to mutual understanding. It was so satisfying for me to watch their friendship take shape upon the page.

Poetry isn’t exclusive, as my students first thought, but sometimes it can feel that way. That’s the beauty of the verse novel, a succinct, condensed blend of poetry and story that flows from one word to the next. Those words sink deep, move with the familiar rhythms of the everyday. The verse novel doesn’t just tell a story, it shows us how to listen, encourages us to linger. It changes us along the way.

Sing a Song of Seasons: A Nature Poem for Each Day of the Year

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I’ve wanted to read this collection of nature poems since I first heard of it months ago. Happily I discovered my library had a copy.

Organized by each day of the month, these poems can be enjoyed as daily readings, as a collection to dip into when the mood strikes, or as a cover to cover journey through the unfolding year.

There are poems both familiar and new.

Often they’re arranged thematically around weather or landmarks or plants or animals.

The artwork is delightful.

Look how lovely!

Sometimes several poems are grouped together.

Sometimes only one poem is included on a spread.

I hope you’ll enjoy Sing a Song of Seasons: A Nature Poem for Each Day of the Year as much as I did. It’s a beautiful invitation to bring poetry into your every day.

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