Talkin' back to your first draft...and Happy Poetry Friday!

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Howdy Campers and happy Poetry Friday! Today's poem and Writing Workout--a poetry prompt--are below.

Poetry Friday is hosted this week by Mary Ann Scheuer
over at Great Kid Books.  Thanks, Mary Ann!

Before we begin today's dance around the campfire, I have an exciting announcement: professor and author Sylvia Vardell and poet and author Janet Wong have done it again!  Just in time for Teen Read Week (Oct. 16-22 this year) they've edited another affordable and fabulous ebook anthology called P*Tag, this one for teens--which you can read even if you don't have an ereader!  

While the 30 poems in Poetry Tag Time,
their first anthology, are for young readers,
the 30 photo-illustrated poems in P*Tag,
their newest anthology, are for teens.

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(Yes, I have poems in both anthologies--but that's not why I'm jumping up and down about these two books--they are brilliant and original and poetry tag is a game you can play with other poets and  your students!)

And now to today's TeachingAuthors topic of the week.  After five terrific posts on First Drafts: Quieting the Internal Critic, it's my turn to wrap up this topic--for now.   Just so you know, my internal critic is going nuts right this very minute because I am writing something that someone is going to actually read.

Like JoAnn, I enjoy first drafts.  Mostly.  First drafts aren't promising anyone anything.  First drafts are splashing around, figuring stuff out. First drafts are swirling paint onto the page to see if I can convey what was dancing in my brain last night.

And like Jeanne Marie, I am good at starting and not so good at finishing.  So I guess one way I quiet the voices in my brain is by ...starting.  Promising nothing to anyone, pouring a little finger paint on the page and ...starting.  So, let me see if I can write the first draft of a poem about first drafts right now...

TO MY FIRST DRAFT
by April Halprin Wayland

Dearest unlicked cub,

darling crude outline,

raw unpolished stone,

clumsy, first design:

don't pick up the phone—

keep writing, we're not home.

Do you think you might need trimming? 

Do you think you may need bulk?

You're just stalled, you're not a slacker—

and I hate it when you sulk.

You're a great extra-word whacker!

Have some warm milk and a cracker.

We are pioneers in this story,

darling sapling, dear first draft,

in a river overflowing

you're a rough-hewn wooden raft.

Yes, it's dreadful, this not knowing...

um...do you know where we're going?

c) 2011 April Halprin Wayland, all rights reserved

My first step was to look up the term "first draft" in a thesaurus.  The results were rich, including the term unlicked cub which is odd and interesting, so I began with that. Then I wandered into a rhyme scheme: ABCBCC / DEFEFF / GHIHII (each letter stands for a new rhyming sound; slashes indicate a new stanza)--and I was off and...stumbling!

The phone rang while I was frowning into the computer screen and I did not answer it...(I did look at the caller ID), so I stuck that in; I got up to make a snack in the middle of writing it because I was scared that it was so bad, so I offered the poem a snack as well (I gave it milk and a cracker because I couldn't find many words to rhyme with "tortilla with peanut butter and honey.")

And then I wrote and rewrote and rewrote and rewrote--twelve drafts so far.  

It's clearly not done yet. I think I'll delete the first stanza--it'll be stronger. I've just sent it to my friend, Bruce, who critiques my poems every day.  We'll see what suggestions he has.  

When my very smart husband came home, I moaned, "Why am I always so COMPLICATED?  Why can't I write a SIMPLE, CLEAN, SHORT poem?" 

"Did Carl Sandburg say that?  Did Robert Frost?" he asked.  

"Robert Frost wrote clear, clean poems," I whimpered. 

"How do you know what he did in private?" he said.

Sweet man.  Smart man.

So...what do you do in private?  Write poetry?  

Perfect--because it's time for a

WRITING WORKOUT!
Today we're writing Apostrophe Poems

I name things.  Do you?  My car is Mortimer, my bike is Neon Leon.  I talk to them, too.   When poets talk to things that can’t answer, they are writing in the voice called apostrophe. In the poem above I talked to my first draft.  Do you talk your pet?  Write an apostrophe poem to your snake or your bike or the toaster or the moon.  And it doesn’t have to rhyme!

Then, brave ones, send us your poems.  Reassure me that I'm not the only one who talks to inanimate objects!

And always, write with joy!

poem and drawing c) 2011 April Halprin Wayland, all rights reserved