The photo above is a black swallowtail that was born in the fennel in our garden last summer, raised in the safety of our house, and released back into the garden when she (yes, that’s a female) emerged from her cocoon. Compare a real black swallowtail to the piñata version by Roberto Benavidez. Remarkable, isn’t it? Using “paper as the equivalent of paint” in a “fringe that flows,” Benavidez is able to capture the reality of a butterfly, the fantasy of mythical creatures, and nearly photographic landscapes.
If you want to know more about piñatas as well as about Roberto Benavidez and his art, you can watch this Craft In America episode on play. Piñatas are found at 12:16, and Roberto Benavidez is at 18:27.
Here’s how the other Poetry Sisters met this month’s challenge:
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
Yesterday was one of the happiest days of the year: ALA Youth Media Award Day!
Back in 2006 when Franki and I started the original A Year of Reading blog, our main purpose was to have a public chat about books all year and then see who could pick the Newbery and Caldecott in January.
We have rarely been right, but along the way, we found ways to give each other grace. The winner was in your Amazon cart? That counts. On the stack beside your bed? Counts. On reserve from the library but hasn’t arrived yet? Definitely counts. And my new one this year — read halfway through but didn’t love it and abandoned it? Still counts.
For a retired person, I’m pretty proud of how many winners in different award categories I read: American Indian Youth Literature Awards (CONTENDERS and MASCOT), Coretta Scott King (BIG, THERE WAS A PARTY FOR LANGSTON, AN AMERICAN STORY), YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults (NEARER MY FREEDOM), Pura Belpré (REMEMBERING, 1/2 of MEXIKID), Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award (THE BOOK OF TURTLES, JUMPER [on hold at the library]), Caldecott (IN EVERY LIFE, THERE WAS A PARTY FOR LANGSTON, BIG), Newbery (1/2 of MEXIKID).
I’ve got the Newbery winner, THE EYES & THE IMPOSSIBLE by Dave Eggers on reserve at the library but rather than going back to fill in any other holes, I’m going to concentrate on reading all the best that 2024 has to offer.
Did you read some winners in 2023? What 2024s are already on your TBR stack?
Just a little something about me that you never knew! This is one of those poems that wrote itself while I was in the midst of the task. Besides the sensory joys of ironing pillowcases, I also love the feeling that in some small way I can bring order to chaos, which is why I also love raking leaves and shoveling snow.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
It was a full day — the usual reading, writing, and art-making, plus baking gingerbread blondies. If I could have stopped there, I would have been happy-tired.
Then came two hours of animated read aloud plus snowflake cutting, followed by the cleaning up of the glorious mess of snippings, all of which pushed happy-tired into satisfied-exhaustion.
There was still dinner to make, though, which luckily was an easy standard casserole from my childhood made from a recipe with a note at the top that never fails to give me a shiver of connection to all my dinner-making ancestors: “November 1949 Women’s Day Kitchen.” When I got to the final step, the assembly of the layers, I discovered that we had no Bisquick.1 Sigh. At least it wasn’t raining torrentially anymore, and I was pretty sure that the nearby UDF would have Bisquick. Which they did.
When I took the bag out of the box, I noticed some powder in the bottom of the box. “That’s odd,” I thought, then grabbed the one-cup measure out of the open drawer in front of me and started filling it. As I filled the measuring cup, I realized that I was simultaneously sifting powder into the open drawer. But how? What was going on? That’s when I (holding the bag over the counter now) investigated the bottom of the bag to find that though it had been crumpled enough to pass at first for closed, it had completely missed the sealing process at the Bisquick factory. It was wide open and now there was a pile of powder on the counter along with the liberal dusting in the silverware drawer and, I discovered as I stepped away from the chaos, on the floor as well.
At this point, AJ came to the rescue. Giggling and making light of the mess, he de-fused my impending meltdown by bagging up the remaining Bisquick, fetching the shop vac to clean the counter, drawer, and floor while I finished assembling the casserole. I popped it in the oven, did all the dishes, and had exactly three minutes to collapse on the couch before dinner. Now I was full-on, head-to-toe, blurry-vision exhausted.
What a day!
1Bisquick was invented in 1930, in case you were wondering.
HAMBURGER COBBLER
1 sm. onion, chopped 1 clove garlic, minced 1 lb. hamburger 1 tsp. salt 1/4 tsp. pepper 1/4 tsp. marjoram 1/4 lb. sliced cheese (white smoked cheddar takes this recipe to a whole new level!) 1 can drained tomatoes 2 T Worcestershire sauce 3 T ketchup Bisquick
In a small bowl, mix together the tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce, and ketchup. Saute onion and garlic, then add hamburger and seasonings and brown the hamburger. Make one recipe-worth of Bisquick dough (as per directions on the box). Spread hamburger mixture in a 9×9″ baking dish, put cheese on top, then the tomato mixture. Add blops of Bisquick on top. Bake at 450º for 25 minutes.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
Pádraig Ó Tuama is three poems into the new season of the podcast Poetry Unbound. Yesterday’s poem gave me lots to think about.
The Land Acknowledgement we do at the beginning of the Casting for Recovery retreat reminds us all that the place where we will make new friends and learn new skills was originally where the Kaskaskia people and the ancient Hopewell Culture lived. At this year’s upcoming retreat, we’ll do that AND acknowledge the land itself as Conor Kerr does in “Winter Songs.”
Two words that Pádraig unravels in his conversation about the poem are DISMANTLE and REMEMBER. We usually think of dismantle as meaning to take apart. But he points out that
The verb “dismantle” comes from the noun mantle, which in some uses of it, is the placing of a ceremonial cloak to confer authority to someone. And so to dis-mantle structures…this is not necessarily about destroying, it is about placing authority where it should be placed because the structures that are being critiqued in the poem have divided.
When we remember, we are usually looking back and thinking about something again. But if we consider what it means to be dis-membered, or torn apart, then if something is re-membered, it is put back together again. I love that shade of meaning.
So there you have it: a podcast to check out if you don’t already know it, one that will not only add more poetry to your life but also provide all kinds of food for thought. Happy Listening!
Heidi’s December challenge for the Inklings came to us in the form of this mobile (which is hanging beside our mail table and yes that’s the Christmas tree reflecting in the lace swan’s glass). The card from which hang the “12 Days of Yuletide Poetry Prompts” details the precepts for the season and each of its days.
I wrote to all twelve of the prompts. Here are a couple that I especially liked. First, the introduction to Yuletide:
“On these dark nights we celebrate light and the power of the human spirit to brighten and warm the season of cold and dark. As the wheel of the year begins another turn, we think on the old and prepare for the new, lighting a candle for each of these human gifts:
25 generosity: the urge to share what we have with others (prompt: ask what generosity really means)
27 laughter: the singular human ability to convert the unexpected into joy (prompt: capture the sound of laughter)
Thank you, Heidi, for generously (and creatively!) sharing your family’s Yuletide traditions with us, and for twelve days of thoughtful writing prompts. I can’t wait to see what the other Inklings did with your challenge, because for once, we haven’t had the chance to share any early drafts. We haven’t an INKLING what the others have written!
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
Do weeks start for you on Sunday or on Monday? Mondays start my weeks, so this New Year was a new day, a new week, a new month, and a new year, all rolled into one.
I’m keeping all the usual goals and routines (exercise, DuoLingo, stitching, doodling, writing), but I’m adding a commitment to more diverse blogging, and I’m launching a year-long reading of Jane Hirshfield. I enjoyed savoring Pádraig Ó Tuama’s book POETRY UNBOUND one poem a day, so I bought Hirshfield’s new collection THE ASKING with the intention of lingering with it the same way. In conversations with my brother, and following links he sent to interviews with Hirshfield, I learned about her books of essays, NINE GATES: ENTERING THE MIND OF POETRY and TEN WINDOWS: HOW GREAT POEMS TRANSFORM THE WORLD. An essay a week seems doable, doesn’t it? I thought so.
I’m curious to see if and how this immersion will impact my own writing. Time will tell.
The Poetry Sisters’ December challenge was to write Elfchen, a type of cinquain that uses word count instead of syllable count, and links together the lines with these prompts:
Line one=A thought, an object, a color, a smell or the like Line two=What does the word from the first row do? Line three=Where or how is the word of row 1? Line four=What do you mean? Line five=Conclusion: What results from all this? What is the outcome? (This information via Wikipedia.)
Elfchen are German in origin, so for bonus points, I wrote one in German, using my limited vocabulary.
brot warm, frisch mit Schinken und Käse und natürlich viele Butter: lecker
It’s that time again. Six months have passed since last we queued up to host the Poetry Friday roundups.
What is the Poetry Friday roundup? A gathering of links to posts featuring original or shared poems, or reviews of poetry books. A carnival of poetry posts. Here is an explanation that Rene LaTulippe shared on her blog, No Water River, and here is an article Susan Thomsen wrote for the Poetry Foundation.
Who can do the Poetry Friday roundup? Anyone who is willing to gather the links in some way, shape, or form (Mr. Linky, “old school” in the comments, or ???) on the Friday of your choice. If you are new to the Poetry Friday community, jump right in, but perhaps choose a date later on so that we can spend some time getting to know each other.
How do you do a Poetry Friday roundup? If you’re not sure, stick around for a couple of weeks and watch…and learn! One thing we’re finding out is that folks who schedule their posts, or who live in a different time zone than you, appreciate it when the roundup post goes live sometime on Thursday.
How do I get the code for the PF Roundup Schedule for the sidebar of my blog? You can grab the list from the sidebar here at A(nother) Year of Reading, or I’d be happy to send it to you if you leave me your email address.
Why would I do a Poetry Friday Roundup? Community, community, community. It’s like hosting a poetry party on your blog!
Put your request in the comments (blog URL is appreciated) and I’ll update the calendar frequently. Feel free to share this post on all the various socials.
A(nother) Year of Reading 