{pf: poetry peeps attempt the etheree}


Check in: Welcome, Poetry Peeps! It’s nearly August, and a lot has happened this last month! Laura has requested that with this post we update each other, so I’m pleased to share that I’ve just gotten to vote on my favorite voice-over artist for SERENA SAYS, my middle grade book coming out in November, and I’ve just turned in the first draft of my 2021 WIP, and I am attempting to write wildly improbable fantasy as a palette cleanser. Who knows if anything will come of it; the purpose is to have fun and try to be funny – to relax into just ridiculous. I’m still gardening (badly) but my salvia is blooming and my carrots are many. Success is what you make of it.

Peeps, how are you???

♦ ♦ ♦      ♦ ♦ ♦      ♦ ♦ ♦      ♦ ♦ ♦

Etheree Taylor Armstrong arrived February 13, 1918 and departed this mortal coil on March 14, 1994. She was a poet from Arkansas, and what little else we know of her is derived from the poetic style that she invented – she was deliberate and organized, and good with numbers. That is, in my opinion, what one needs to work with the etheree.

The etheree’s simplicity is deceptive – anyone can compose ten lines with syllables matching the numbered line. But, making the poem thematically meaningful whilst counting syllables is more of a challenge.

Jump in the Wayback Machine with me and check out Sara’s, John’s, and Kelly’s from 2015, when we made our first etheree attempts. (Sara’s on the move, and Kelly’s seeing to hubby’s knees, and John’s waving from afar – all with us in spirit.) Our theme this time around was purposefully vague – summer or foresight – and I think we did it justice: Here’s Laura’s, and Tricia’s; Liz’s etheree is here. Michelle’s is here. Don’t forget to let us know where you posted yours!


San Francisco 137

A glance at the paper this week mentioned the possibility of a California running-mate on the election ticket this November. Whatever one’s political leanings, the heavy sigh in response to the reminder, “California is a code-word,” was probably loud and sustained throughout the state, knowing just how tiresome it’s all going to be. We expect the resurrection of the slew of slanderous comments about our “values;” our queer folk, our Latinx neighbors, our many vegetarians and vegans, our commitment to environmental justice, our film industry, and our tech folk. I have acquaintances who call themselves my friends yet are faintly hostile at the mention of California. I recall strangers following us singing “California girls” (the ugliest most objectifying sexist rubbish ever) when my sisters and I walked the streets of the one stoplight Louisiana town where we visited my grandparents. Eventually, one gets a thicker skin, but I cannot say I’m looking forward to more. This poem unpacked how I see myself in reference to my state – its reputation writ large against the small and varied lives which busily thrive here. My affection for my state is real, but it’s not “my State right or wrong” but more “my State, and maybe yours is a lot like it.” Wherever you’re from is home.


home
coming:
summer in
“the golden state,”
“land of fruits and nuts”
punch-drunk on sunshine, our
poppies even seem to glow.
few States polarize the nation:
bring Beach Boy dreams or fury, spitting
from strangers who have never breathed its air…
we, nightmare or California dreaming?
blue bowls of sky above the suburbs
blunt hills a thousand shades of gold
hazy blacktop mirages
fog-wreathed redwood forests.
stretching to the past
ancestors from
everywhere
coming
home

♦ ♦ ♦      ♦ ♦ ♦      ♦ ♦ ♦      ♦ ♦ ♦

I enjoyed playing with the placement of the poem – I imagine it as a the swoops of the Golden Gate, reflected on the Bay on a still summer morning. This poem is kind of a thematic fail; this is meant to have been about SUMMER, and it’s a bit State heavy, but California – in its public narrative, at least – is rumored to be an endless summer. It’s wholly a tissue of lies, but still, it counts right? Right. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Poetry Friday is hosted today at Reading at the Core. We hope you embrace what’s left of summer with all your might – and may all roads lead you to wherever you call home.

Central California Driving 46

{word wrangling in a time of pestilence}

Irvington 526

HOORAY for another completed project! Somehow, though I had published two small press books before Knopf, and four books with Knopf, I’d never before sold a book I hadn’t written. That in itself was a new and stress-laden experience. Try writing a book that a.) touches on microaggression and racial misunderstanding as social unrest regarding racism erupts nationwide, and b.) feeling like everything you say is being observed and judged by both Black and white readers, during this time, and c.) needing to quickly move up the deadline for it. Nope, it was not stress-free, and even up until early the morning I was meant to turn it in, I was sitting there, wrapped in a blanket, fussing with one scene which hadn’t quite hit the note I wanted until – ding! – suddenly, it settled exactly into its proper level. At last, I could shower in peace. Whew.

Harper-Collins/Katherine Tegen Books continues to be an utter treat to work with. Here’s a pro-tip, writing people: you’re supposed to be asked your opinion on things like cover styles, cover artists, and voice over talents for audio books. I say again: until this book with this house, (with the caveat that I DID comment on other projects without being asked) I HAVE NEVER BEEN. And it thrills me – and saddens me – every single time it happens that I’m so excited about being asked/included/considered/acknowledged as a person of intelligence who can make meaningful contribution to the publication of HER OWN DARNED BOOK. It infuriates me to know that other authors – certainly white authors I’ve spoken with – considered that de rigueur, sometimes even with their first book. I mean… you suspect that you’ve been treated differently based on race, and then you see how clearly differently you’ve been treated, and it’s like… okay, then. Maybe it was the publishing house policy. But, maybe it wasn’t…? It’s hard to know, and hard to trust your work to someone when you’re not sure about them.

Publishing remains a tricky field, friends. But, at its best, there’s a lot there to love.


Americans love humor, and children are huge fans of the silliest things, but actually producing humor, actually writing funny? It’s SO hard.

My writing group, led by the humorous ones among us, have pushed for a long while to discuss humor from a craft perspective, and I was… reluctant. Because funny, to me, is not the same as funny to them. We didn’t have a common understanding, I thought, so it was better to skip it. I wasn’t the only one who felt that way – some of us have decided to pass on this discussion, and I don’t blame them.

But… humor. It’s subjective, and yet, necessary to explore in order to understand it.

We’re making our way through an older book, THE COMIC TOOLBOX by John Vorhaus, and dissecting what we agree and disagree with in regards to actually eliciting humor from ourselves and properly setting up our work to support it. We’re pulling humorous bits from our favorite books and films. And we’re making laughably bad attempts at writing humorous dialogue, sports team names, and TV pilots. ‘Laughably bad’ is, at least, funny.

I suspect we could think of worst ways to pass the time during the plague.