I do my last tribute to this year’s Poetry Month with three spine poems, an enjoyable exercise I stumbled upon a couple of years ago. Simply stack some books so that the order of their names on the spine make a poem. I’ll comment on my spine poems in the order that they came to me, sharing what they mean to me though you may find something entirely different in them. Isn’t that the way with poems?
The Dark Thirty Stories
Night
Midnight Without a Moon
A Sky Full of Stars
This poem made me think of the way night comes on, beginning with the late Patricia McKissack’s Dark Thirty Stories that I heard her tell about that time of day at a Highlights workshop. Thankfully, she wrote them down where I can hear her voice as I read them. Traveling on into Night by Elie Wiesel pictures the Holocaust in as dark a time as there is ever likely to be. I finish with Linda Williams Jackson’s two middle grade books about the Civil Rights movement where she accurately portrays the darkness of the time resembling midnight without a moon, yet with goodness peeking out here and there like the stars in the sky.
Passenger to Frankfurt
Blooming at the Texas Sunrise Motel
A Long Way from Chicago
Walk Two Moons
You Come, Too
Tour of duty in Germany over, we began our way back to the United States as passengers to Frankfort to catch our plane. Only one of us would be heading to Texas, though that was what we had requested. The oldest son would be entering Baylor University that fall where he would live in the dorm but could check as he passed to see what was blooming at the Texas Sunrise Motel. The rest of us would be living at Fort Polk, Louisiana which is, indeed, a long way from Chicago. We would walk there for two moons and more, realizing soon how fortunate that assignment was, locating us halfway between Baylor and our two aging mothers in North Mississippi. The two younger children would find a good fit in the small-town community of Fort Polk and Leesville making friends they would invite as they headed home, “You come, too.”
Great Expectations
Elements of Style
Rotten Reviews and Reflections
Surviving the Writer’s Life
Bird by Bird
Joy of Publishing
And I can’t leave without a review of the writing life! Beginning with great expectations, one studies the elements of style knowing there will be many rotten reviews and reflections. Care must be taken for surviving the writer’s life, always remembering Anne Lamott’s metaphor of working bird by bird reminding the writer that, in the end, it’s one word at a time. And now and then, with persistence, there comes the joy of publishing.