Years ago, I was teaching at Centrum Writer’s Conference in Port Townsend, WA. The speakers were amazing, the students ate it all up which was just as well since the food was incredibly bad.  Everyone complained. Finally the head cook (I hesitate to call him a chef) remarked grumpily to us, “You writers. . .you publish one book and you think you’re a regular Van Gogh.”

Well, what he said went viral in the only way something could in those days. Everyone talked about it, wrote about in their (actual) journals, and in their poems, stories, etc. My class even made me a broadside illustrated with a painting of my cottage. When I got home I had it framed.

A Regular Van Gogh. Alas, how prophetic now that poor (in all senses of the word) cook was. What with e-books and self-publishing and celebrity children’s books, there are a lot of folks out there who think that once they self-publish, they are a Regular VGs.

What we are missing, in our rush to democratize the arts,to make sure everyone gets an equal chance at foisting their prose or their daubs or the off-key karaoke onto the international stage is the sense of the hard work involved, the endless restructuring, reinvention, re-visioning. No one in the arts simply does something once. Though it may look easy, we who paint, write, dance, sing spend hours exercising the muscles of our craft.

Stand in the wings—as I did as a child watching the Balanchine dancers come off stage. From the audience they looked as if they floated through the air effortlessly spinning, leaping, launching themselves at a partner. But in the wings, when Melissa Hayden—who had just danced so gloriously—was away from the lights and passing me in the wings, she was red-faced, sweaty, huffing. Then she took a deep  breath, squared her shoulders, and leaped back onto the stage.

I never forgot that. Or that before her performance she—along with the rest of the NY C ballet company, had taken a barre class stretching and straining and warming their muscles so that they could go out and make it all look easy..

Writers do the same. We stretch. We strain, We come out of a chapter red-faced, huffing, square our shoulders, and get down to the next chapter. And the next.

Put bluntly, the Arts are not for wimps.

There I visited my agent to discuss lots of things like books, e-books, foreign rights, movie deals, etc. And no there was no real news but lots of discussions. I stayed over at my friends Delia and Ellen’s apartment uptown.

And then after two days of this, I took the train to Newark Airport and flew off overnight to Scotland with nary a bump, thump, or lump. And no sleep either, oh well.

Picked up as usual by the ever-wonderful Deborah Turner Harris and after a long nap, managed to get to their house with a bottle of wine for dinner and a natter.

For some reason it took me nearly a week to recover from jetlag. But I also in the first week and a half have managed to write a lot of poetry, revise all my new poetry books, meet for lunch with my Scottish (well he’s American but living in St A) poetry editor, had tea with Christine Crow and her family, went with friend Marianna to Crail Open Studios where I found a simply wonderful children’s book illustrator and started a book for her.

I have also had lunch with Janie Douglas (we bumped into one another at the bank), as well as got an impromptu hug from my wonderful gardener Mr McGregor (yes, a children’s book writer with a gardener name Mr. McGregor, thank you Beatrix Potter!), had another old friend, Jack BEck, Scottish folk singer and book story owner with his lovely wife Wendy Welch, came over for te. I went for a day into Edinburgh for some shopping and tea with an old friend, and started rewriting the first half of the new fantasy novel with Adam because it is seriously sagging. Oh–and worked away like two friendly  beavers with Barbara Diamond Goldin on our GIRLS’ BIBLE. And sent some proposals out for new books. And, and, and, and.

Yes I am busy. Yawning. Productive. Yawning. Traveling. Yawning. Oh and did I mention yawning?

And I promised bears. Well, Heidi took a picture of one in her back yard. Neighbors in Massachusetts all reported the bear (or bears) heading through their yards as well. And Heidi took pictures of a coyote behind her house in the tall grass, too. That’s one busy yard, my darling daughter. It’s much tamer here in St. Andrews.

The Anatomy of a Poem

I thought I would walk you through my process of writing a poem. Though each poem carves its own way, they all have some similarities in the revision process, and—as I often quote (though I thought for years it was Ciardi who said it but found out last year from a a friend that it was Ciardi channeling Valery) “A poem is never finished, it’s abandoned.”

Well, I haven’t abandoned this one. . .yet.

This particular poem began with a picture posted on Terri Windling’s blog Myth and Moor. The picture is of a gnarled old tree in Devon, think Arthur Rackham, think every spooky, twisted Ent you have ever envisioned.

And these lines came to me:

The tree is the mystery,

its roots knotted

as surely as love.

I thought I was going to write a whole poem about that tree. The next three lines–about the leaves hanging heavily and some awful metaphor about fruits of ardor or some such–were so quickly erased, I have only a vague memory of how bad they were.

Then the poem took off in its own direction. They do that, you know.

The same blog entry featured Terri’s dog, a lovely and friendly female black lab mix named Tilly, which is why (I think) the poem ends the way it does.

As soon as I gave it a title, the rest came out in a rush.

At first I wrote the whole thing without any stanza breaks, possibly because the time I would have had to take making the spaces was possibly the sinkhole that would eat the poem before I got it down paper. When I am writing in a white hot heat, I rarely remember much of what I have just written. And whole it always needs careful pruning after, there is usually some good stuff I’d hate to lose.

And then I let it sit for several hours.

Some poems sit half-baked for days, weeks, months. Some are done and dusted in the first rush of poetics. Some never get out of the starting gate. If this essay were a poem and not a journal entry, I would never let this many unattached metaphors live in the same place. But I digress.

In the next round, I began to break the lines apart. Why? Because with that many discrete metaphors, each needed breathing space. Separating them helped emphasize them individually.

It’s easy enough to skip lines when reading prose. When reading poetry, skipping can be easier. The lines are shorter, faster to race across. Dense poetry without line breaks positively invites skipping. But a poet doesn’t break lines without good reason. My reason was that I was offering a tasting menu to my readers, andI needed to encourage them to get to the final, longer, key stanza, the one that tells the reader what the entire poem has been about. The shorter early pieces are discrete, pretty, but we are heading for the punchline, the pinchline, the one that wakens you into the actual dream.

And so I got this:

The Mystery

The tree is the mystery,
its roots knotted
as surely as love.

The spring flowers are the mystery,
without calendar or clock
they announce the season.

The rill is the mystery,
holding trout in its deepest,
darkest heart.

The fern is the mystery,
knowing how to uncurl
with no teacher but the sun.

The path is a mystery,
worn down by many feet
yet still willing to support them.

The gate is no mystery at all
for we have put it there
to signal that house is near,
though dog has but to lift his snout
to know we are already home.

I posted it on Terri’s blog. Then I let it sit again until it was time.

Time?

It was time to read it aloud again, not once but several times through, testing each small stanza with a combination of logic (Is the true to the nature I am describing? Is it leading me in the direction I want to go? Is it the way the poem wants to go? Are those two roads compatible? Can I cut any words out? )

Eventually I got here:

The Mystery

The tree is the mystery,

its roots knotted

as surely as love.

The spring flowers are the mystery,

without calendar or clock

they announce the season.

The pond is the mystery,

holding trout in its deepest,

darkest heart.

The fern is the mystery,

knowing how to uncurl

with no teacher but the sun.

The path is the mystery,

worn down by many feet

yet still willing to support them.

The gate. . .

                  the gate is no mystery at all

for we have put it there

to signal that house is near,

though dog has but to lift his snout

to know we are already home.

All poems ©2013 Jane Yolen all rights reserved

Let me tell you about the changes and why. Or at least as much of the why as I know. The rest is the true Mystery. And I would have to kill you if I told you! (Actually, a lot about writing a poem is a mystery to the poet as well.)

As you can see, much stayed the same, though I changed the mystery to a mystery over and over again, re-reading it both ways in silence and aloud until I was sure I wanted it to be the. It needed to be particular, not general, a singularity not one of many mysteries.

I decided while rill is a prettier word, and a bit old-fashioned which suits the idea of the poem’s numinous reach, trout really don’t hide in rills which are the fast-running part of a river, but in the hidden places of pools and ponds. And I am still actually wrestling with whether to use pool or pond. Pool/holding have a nice slanting rhyme thing working for them but pond is bigger in meaning. And I am also not sure about deepest, darkest which may be too over-used and too childlike (I am a children’s book writer after all!) for what I am doing here.

And as you can see, I changed the form of the final lines to signal how different they are from what came before. Perhaps I’ve done too much breaking apart, and I’m still wrestling with that as well. But you may find this last interesting or amusing, or both at once: I originally ended that section with the dog lifting his nose, not his snout. Eventually, I decided that nose was too refined and too human-like and I wanted him to be all animal, sniffing out the meaning of home faster than we humans who—after all—have to set a gate there to remind ourselves that we have come home.

This second version (though it is possibly about an eighth version) is the one I sent out to my daily poetry subscribers. Still, it’s clear to me I’m not yet done with this poem. But I haven’t abandoned it.

Meetings: my critique group met once, the illustratorss’ group met once (at my house, which meant cleaning up and feeding the multitudes).

Eatings: had dinner with one of the children’s writers/illustrators small group; lunch with Ralph Masiello, tea with the DiTerlizzi crew, dinner with a video crew (more about that in next paragraph)m then son Adam arrived and family dinner ahead of Maddison’s graduation party.

Video crew hired by Open Roads publication, an e-book company producing 10 of my out of print books with additional materials (including said video.) Dinner when the crew (two of them, Kai and Alex) arrived, then one full day and one not quite so full day of shooting which included hours of interview, then hours of pick-up shots such as a gorgeous long shot from the top of Mount Sugarloaf to show a view over the Pioneer Valley where I live, me walking through the Owl Moon woods and up the stone path to my house, me draped over David’s tombstone, and the like.

Writing: LOTS of work. Mostly revisions of poems for GRUMBLES FROM THE TOWN and for a new book possibly called THE TEAPOT GOSSIPS, both with Rebecca Dotlich. New poems (possibly) for adult poetry books, CRONE and MAIDEN. Getting a package of designer spreads for two proposals–ARCH:  A SPAN OF FOOT POEMS and LUNCH BUNCH  poems about how animals eat. I wrote the chapters on Naomi/Ruth and Esther for the book GIRLS’ BIBLE (provisional title) that Barbara Diamond Goldin and I are writing, then revised both of them heavily after getting her feedback. Discussed some neecessary revision and forward motion of the second Seelie Wars book (still untitled) with Adam. Worked on lists of things to discuss with agents when I am in New York.

The rest of the two weeks were down to Maddison’s Baccalaureate, her actual graduation (she is a Cum Laude scholar) and then her party preps. That party and all my own preps for going off to Scotland in the next journal entry. Hard to write in the flurry of such prep since none of it can be put off!

Here’s a new poem (I  have still kept up my one-a-day regime. This one is from May 23:

How to Know Things

“You know only what your heart allows you to know.” 

–Amy Tan (Saving Fish from Drowning 
)

Look sideways, at shadows, sometimes aura

tells more than the center can.

Look backwards where his(story) lies.

Look slantwise where all the truth is told, not once

but many times.

Look at the circuit, never the straight line.

Poems always takes the circuitous path.

Look at the earth rather than the sky.

Birds leave passage in dust not on clouds.

Trust your heart but only after your ears, your eyes

have done the Sherlock thing.

The heart only allows you to know

what it wants, not what is, nor what will be.

©2013 Jane Yolen all rights reserved

And this one is from May 26:

Graduation Day

There is nothing gradual about this,

though we have known it was coming,

prepared for years, and yet like death

it surprises us.

We speak in aphorisms

about next steps, life’s openings,

the roads taken and not taken,

but all the while the heart cries silently:

Stop, stay, never leave, only because

we are the ones stopping, staying,

we are the ones who are left.

I do not

remember such drama with my own

parents who drove me to college

and dropped me there without a blink, fleeing

back with their remaining child who had

another four years to go.

I do not

remember such drama with my own

children, as we packed their trunks

with their dreams, our hopes, extra

underwear, a hundred dollar bill neatly

tucked out of sight.

So why this over-

whelming grief, crushing regret

for the grandchild who has already

cut the strings, set the sights, shown us

the little deaths between her living

and our lives.

Oh–that!

© 2013 Jane Yolen all rights reserved

On the 17th, a dozen or more children’s book authors and illustrators donated our time to speak to kids at the Newtown, Ct. schools. I was in a middle school where I presented to two assemblies of eighth graders. At the same school was Tony diTerlizzi. Around the town were other authors, such as Neil Gaiman, John Sciezka, David Shannon, Mo Willems, Jerry Pinkey, Christopher Paolini and the like.

We were there in support of both the children and the teachers/librarians who were still shell-shocked and exhausted from sorrow, fear, worry. I like to think that we lightened their burden or at least shed a little light into some of the dark corners. It was an incredibly moving experience.

I’d driven down with Angela diTerlizzi, and stayed overnight with Bruce Degan and his lovely wife. Bruce and I had done nine books together, including the Commander Toad series. Old friends, the three of us talked long into the night.

The next day, the 18th, was all about ballet. Granddaughter Maddison was in three ballets, two performances, and as a graduating senior–one of  five at the ballet school–it meant there wasn’t a dry eye in our row.

The 19th it was all about Maddison’s senior prom, five of her BFFs were over to get makeup done, hair done, and then the show-off of all their finery. Maddison looked like a ’40s film star which my late husband, a huge Veronica Lake fan, would have loved.

So did I have time for any writing? So glad you asked.***I managed about seven adult poems, in various stages of revision.
***Revised the chapter on Esther for a book about Biblical women with Barbara Goldin
***Revised Adam’s chapter for our second book (not titled yet) in the Seelie Wars trilogy
***wrote a bunch of children’s verses for a project with the Springfield Symphony

And boy! are my wings tired.

Only I haven’t been telling you the tale because. . .because. . .Well, yes, I have been busy. Yes, I have been traveling. Yes I have been sick.

But yes, I have ignored you, dear readers. I would beg your indulgence but I don’t deserve you.

Yesterday, with a lot of good children’s book author and illustrators (like Tony deTerlizzi, David Shannon, Mo Willems,  Brian Selznick, John Sciezka, Jerry Pinkney, Dan Yaccarino, others) I spoke to kids at the various Newtown Ct schools for free. We were trying to bring hope, healing to the kids and their teachers. I think we helped some. It was an emotional experience and we will all be processing it for some time. I am wiped out.

So know I have been embarrassed by the time that passed without a journal entry. I actually lost the link for a while, but now  I have–with the help of my son Adam who is my websmaster–reconstructed it again. I will be off in two weeks to Scotland where I will have three months to try and rebuild our wonderful connection, writer to reader again. Trust me, I will not be so silent again.

I have missed you, too!

If I never see another spring–

the green thrusts of daffodils,

the violin curl of ferns–

I will still remember them.

The green thrusts of daffodils,

the scatter of crocuses.

I will still remember them

when I am under earth.

The scatter of crocuses,

like children in a playground,

when I am under earth

will still look the same:

like children in a playground.

The violin curl of ferns

will still look the same

(even if I never see another spring).

©2013 Jane Yolen all rights reserved

Intimations of Spring

Yes, snow blankets meadows.

Yes, the wind is chill.

Yes, branches are all bare of buds.

And still. . .and still. . .

Color tinges twigs,

birds chorus at the dawn,

the sun is rising early,

my heart goes on.

©2013  Jane Yolen all rights reserved

The Coral Lesson

The coral does

its sexy dance

when moonbeams lead it

to romance.

In this short poem

there is a moral:

be as receptive

as the coral.

©2013 JAne Yolen all rights reserved

There were holiday family visits, of course, and a fancy dress New Year’s eve party at Holly and Theo Black’s that we all attended. There has been snow–both one huge storm and a lot of light stuff. I had another plumbing disaster but nowhere near as expensive or debilitating or prolonged as the last. Am having a few minor medical adjustments and a cholesterol overhaul. I have given both well-attended readings and speeches, and miserable ones. Well-attended–always better.

I caught that sinus/cough/sore throat thing making the rounds, the not-flu (and yes! I had my flu shot, thanks very much!) It has lasted over three weeks. So I had to miss doing the narration for two violin poems (from the Chagall book) and my Johnny Appleseed set to music by Jerry Noble and performed at Smith but went to hear Jerry’s wife Cara nobly stepping in at the last moment, and loved it though all the while I was trying to suck on enough cough drops not to disrupt the performance.

But mostly the almost-three month hiatus from my journal has been about writing, editing, rewriting, and being surprised by stories, poems, and editorial decisions.

Quickly: the children and I finished up the complete draft (and then I edited, and Heidi will be doing the second edit) of our book of true animal stories for National Geographic. I wrote and–within days–sold a Holocaust picture book set first in Paris, then in the forest with partisans, finally in England where the family escapes–to Philomel. It’s called The Stone Angel. Almost as quickly I sold a picture book about a beached whale to Candlewick, The Stranded Whale. I finished the revision on the centaur novel, now called Centaur Rising. I sold a short story that ties into my novel Except the Queen, a bunch of poems, continued my poem-a-day project, this year bringing on subscribers who get each day’s poem by mail, the only proviso being they buy a book of mine or borrow one from the library.

I wrote another picture book about Abigail and John Adams moving into the White House, which is about to get sent out. Adam and I have gotten to chapter 8 of our second Seelie Wars novel. I am working on several speeches. Have sold four adult poetry collections. Three are short–approxmately twelve poems in each–for “envelope” books on Maiden/Mother/Crone theme as well as The Trees Commit, a book of poems on writing. It’s been a whirlwind.

A poem of mine will be featured on a sign board at a Pennsylvania park at the duck pond. A ballet of Owl Moon is being performed this week and the next two weeks as well in a Minneapolis suburb. A stage production of Devil’s Arithmetic is being prepared. Some great reviews on the new books: Bad Girls, Jewish Fairy Tales Feasts, Curse of the Thirteenth Fey, B.U.G., Wee Rhymes, and Grumbles from the Forest. Lots of interviews, especially on the first two books.

Not much to write about for three months absence? Well, that’s because all the writing has gone into the book and stories and poems.

I beg your forgiveness, dear readers, and your indulgence.

Austin (see above) Hackney’s blog:  omniscrit.com

And sometimes I get help from unexpected places.

Many of my poems have been prompted by things that are in Terri Windling’s blog, once called “The Drawing Board” and now called “Myth and Moor.” Terri is a longtime friend, editor (of my book BRIAR ROSE, among other things), artist, author herself. She is a myth goddess, one of the originators of the Interstitial Arts movement.

Recently in one of her postings I wrote this:

Between

See the space between mountains,
the moment between drops of water,
the instant between bird foot touching sand
and the track it leaves behind.
Watch the hesitation between beats
of hummingbird’s wings,
the infinity between earthquake
and aftershock. See the space
between brush and painting,
between word and story,
between bullet and the beating heart.

And while several people on the blog liked it, I was troubled with a couple of lines. I addressed the problem after one fellow, Austin Hackney (assume nothing from his last name, he is smart and a good writer and a Commedia del Arts guy) wrote this to me: “Jane, your poem is a nugget. And that last line really packed a punch, jolting me out of meditation into awakening. Great stuff.

I answered him this way and a conversation about revision was born: “Thanks, Austin, I have three thoughts about this poem: first it’s a kind of antiphonal response to your piece yesterday. Second, I really have to figure out a way not to have “beats” and “beating” in the same poem. Awake quite a bit this night trying to decide if “timid heart” or “living heart” or some other adjective might serve the poem as well or even better. Third: isn’t it strange the way a poem you think is going in one direction suddenly veers off in another. This became a different creature when the last line leaked out of my fingertips onto the keys.”  We didn’t have to reference the Newtown tragedy. It was only a week old at the time.

He responded: “Jane,I have one or perhaps two thoughts in response to your three thoughts…If one of the beats has to beat it, then I’d make it the beat of the hummingbird’s wings and leave the beating heart. Much of the punch in the phrase comes through the resonance between its rational meaning and the punctuation the alliteration gives to the rhythm, if that makes sense.

I’m really no poet, no poet at all – but might tentatively suggest an alternative to the wing beat…’Watch the hesitation on the turn of a hummingbird’s wing.’ If there’s any hesitation in hummingbird flight then it is on that moment that barely exists on the turn of the wing – as they don’t properly beat but gyrate their wings in a figure of eight pattern.”

Wow, I immediately thanked him. I mean, it was lightbulb time. I’d known that about hummingbirds, but checked it out in one of my bird books just to be sure. Then I told him thanks, adding: “Haven’t workshopped this poem with my writers group since we won’t be meeting again until January. You have helped a LOT. (I had been considering doing something with hummingbird’s wing but hadn’t gotten as far along as you have led me. Thanks for being a spirit guide.”

And then I began to wrestle with the line. I didn’t want to do it exactly as he had suggested, but close. I went through iterations, including mentioning that a figure eight is also the scientific sign for infinity. Even tried using the word infinity but liked it better in the next line where it is the key between earthquake and aftershock. Then I realized I could get a sneaky backdraft from the word which scientists and birdlovers and poet fanciers could understand with an extra frisson of recognition. And in the end, the poem goes like this, with thanks to Austin. And as someone else noted on the blog, “Just realised the happy coincidence of your combined names.”

See the space between mountains,
the moment between drops of water,
the instant between bird foot touching sand
and the track it leaves behind.
Watch the stutter in the turn
of a hummingbird’s wings,
the infinity between earthquake
and aftershock. See the space
between brush and painting,
between word and story,
between bullet and the beating heart.

©2012 Jane Yolen, all rights reserved